While taking control of the U.S. Senate seemed out of reach for Democrats at the beginning of the year, probabilistic election forecasters now put the chances of a Democratic Senate majority at 58 percent to 75 percent. That should not be attributed primarily to the national shift in the electorate toward Democrats (although that obviously helps), but rather to the particularly strong field of Democratic candidates competing on Republican turf and the relative weakness of their opponents.
We can make a preliminary assessment of where individual candidates are overperforming and underperforming by looking at three data sets: the generic congressional ballot poll average, Senate race poll averages, and the Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index (PVI).
The generic congressional ballot poll question asks respondents which party’s House candidate they plan to vote for, without using candidate names. This gives us a baseline of how well an average candidate should be performing. In the Real Clear Politics generic congressional ballot poll average, Democrats have been holding a roughly eight-point lead since mid-September.
Cook’s PVI gauges the partisan lean of a state or congressional district with a weighted average of presidential candidate performance in the last two elections, with more weight given to the most recent election. For example, A Republican candidate in a state with a PVI score of R+5 should be expected to receive a vote share that’s five percentage points more than the share Republicans receive nationwide. So, if the national House popular vote favors Democrats by eight points, roughly translating to 54 percent for Democrats and 46 percent for Republicans (setting aside third-party candidates), a Republican candidate in a R+5 state should be expected to get 51 percent.
If all of the Senate races simply tracked the national mood, based on the PVI scores, Democrats would only flip Maine and North Carolina, without sacrificing any of their own seats, leaving them two short. They need at least two candidates that will overperform. Fortunately for Democrats, they appear to have twelve.
I calculated the average margins in this year’s Senate races from polls sampled since September 27, not including any internal polls from candidates or allied political action committees. I calculated a baseline expectation, assuming a 54-46 Democratic victory in the House popular vote and adjusted each state’s vote shares based on its PVI score. Then I compared the average poll margin to the baseline expectation to see which candidates are overperforming and underperforming the most.
Our two biggest overperforming Senate candidates, in order, are two that have received scant media attention: Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner and South Dakota independent Brian Bengs.
Admittedly, the evidence for this high honor is flimsy because neither race has been extensively polled, with just one Arkansas poll and three South Dakota polls. The Arkansas poll from Hendrix College shows Republican incumbent Tom Cotton winning by nine. The results of the three South Dakota polls are wildly different. But the one from the most reputable outlet—Emerson College, which has the incumbent Mike Rounds winning by eight—tracks closely with the average Republican margin of victory among all South Dakota polls: 9.7 points.
Such caveats aside, both states have PVIs of R+15, which means an expected final vote share in a D+8 year is 61 percent for the Republican and 39 percent for the Democrat. But the available polling suggests each challenger will get around 45 percent. To be precise, Shoffner poll overperformance is 6.5 points and Bengs’ is 6.2 points, which is impressive but not necessarily impressive enough to make victory plausible. Bengs appears to have more believers in donor circles; he has attracted just over $1 million in outside spending, slightly more than Rounds, while Shoffner has no outside help at all.
The next strongest overperformer is Nebraska independent Dan Osborn, running a populist, acerbic campaign excoriating incumbent Pete Ricketts as a tool of billionaires, health insurance companies, and data-center-loving Big Tech. This is another lightly polled race with three polls sampled in the past month (and I’m including a YouGov poll sampled between September 24 and October 3). Osborn trails by two points when averaging the polls, but Nebraska is a R+10 state. That makes the baseline expectation result a Republican 56-44 win, meaning if Osborn is heading toward a 51-49 defeat, he’s overperforming by 5. While my calculations are based on minimal available polling, both parties must also have internal data indicating the race is tight. Party committees and other independent expenditure operations have spent $24 million on Osborn and $23 million on Ricketts.
The strongest overperformer with at least a nominal lead in our poll average is Kansas Democrat Adam Hamilton. Yet again, we have only three polls sampled in the past month: two by the same pollster, InsiderAdvantage, and one by Trafalgar. Republicans run both firms, but all of their Kansas polls show a statistical dead heat, with Hamilton leading the average by a scant 0.2 percentage points, which would amount to a photo-finish 50.1-49.9 victory. Similar to Nebraska, the close polls are to be believed, as outside groups have spent $22 million on Hamilton and $17 million on Marshall.
Kansas has a PVI of R+8, so in a year when Republicans get 46 percent of the national vote, a Kansas Republican should get 54 percent and the Democrat 46 percent. Hamilton, in turn, is overperforming by 4.1 points. He is likely buoyed by his 36 years as a pastor, his nonideological and bipartisan rhetoric, and his merciless skewering of incumbent Roger Marshall, whose obstetrician practice was found to have a record of aggressive medical debt collection.
We have five Democratic candidates leading in their respective poll averages while overperforming in the 2-3 point range: Alaska’s Mary Peltola (3.3), Texas’s James Talarico (3.2), Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (2.6), North Carolina’s Roy Cooper (2.4), and Iowa’s Josh Turek (2.2).
North Carolina’s PVI is R+1, so Cooper’s relatively modest overperformance yields a monster 10.7-point average poll lead, making this the one state almost guaranteed to flip. Ohio’s PVI is R+5, which should be red enough for a typical Republican to survive a Blue Wave against a typical Democrat with 51 percent of the vote. Yet it is Brown with an average 3.2-point lead, which would translate into a vote share slightly higher than 51 percent. Both Cooper and Brown, a former governor and senator, respectively, are familiar figures who have won statewide in the past.
The other three states in this group have PVIs of R+6. Peltola and Talarico have similar average poll leads–2.5 and 2.3, respectively–while Turek clings to a slight 0.3 lead. Like Cooper and Brown, Peltola, a former U.S. Representative, has won statewide before (Alaska has only one at-large congressional district). Talarico, like Hamilton, leans on his religious background as a Presbyterian seminarian and has the fortune of facing a scandal-tainted opponent in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose list of alleged transgressions is long. Turek, a state Representative, hasn’t won statewide before but has won a district that voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections.
Two other candidates are overperforming in the 2-3 point range but are not leading in the poll average: South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews and Montana independent Seth Bodnar. South Carolina has a PVI of R+8 and Montana’s is R+10, so wins in those states require a stronger overperformance. Neither race has been polled much, making firm conclusions difficult, but Andrews is only behind by 2.7 points while Bodnar trails by 7.1, although one poll has him ahead by 2. The Montana race also has four candidates, so Bodnar does not necessarily need to reach 50 percent of the vote to win.
Mississippi’s Scott Colom is probably an overperformer, but we have no public polling over the past month to know by how much. All we know is Democratic groups have pumped in over $7 million, and Donald Trump has a rally in the state planned for Monday, so both parties think the race is close. Mississippi has a PVI of R+11, which would translate to a 57-43 Republican win in this environment, meaning Colom needs to overperform by more than 7 points to win.
Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, the only incumbent Senate Democrat who began the year targeted by Republicans, has built a lead of 7.8 percentage points that’s strong and stable enough to prompt Republicans to start pulling money out of the state. But Georgia’s PVI is a very light red R+1. So, as it stands, he’s only overperforming by 0.9 points. However, since Republicans are no longer seriously contesting the race, don’t be surprised if Ossoff’s final margin and final overperformance score end up bigger.
We also have five Democratic candidates who are currently underperforming: New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas (-2.4), Florida’s Angie Nixon (-2.5), Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed (-2.6), Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan (-5.5), and Maine’s Troy Jackson (-7.1). Except for Nixon, all the candidates in the group lead the poll average.
The bluest state of this group is Maine with a PVI of D+4. But it’s also the state with the Republican incumbent with the greatest track record of winning on blue turf, Susan Collins. And I’ve previously argued, Jackson has a unique weakness among Democratic Senate challengers: Having served in a state legislature majority, giving Republicans tax-related voting-record fodder. Nevertheless, as it stands, Jackson is not underperforming enough to be behind Collins in polling, but he can’t feel comfortable with a 1.9-point lead.
Flanagan is in a somewhat similar position to Jackson as a candidate with a record in state government. She is the sitting Lieutenant Governor, and her administration has been tagged with failing to prevent Medicaid fraud. Minnesota is a D+3 state, which should set her up to win with 57 percent of the vote; her average poll lead is only three points, which would translate to a 51.5 percent vote share.
New Hampshire is a D+2 state, and Pappas’ mild underperformance still leaves him with a solid 7.2-point average poll lead and little danger of losing. Michigan’s PVI is a flat zero, so a Democrat here should be matching the generic congressional ballot’s average eight-point lead. But El-Sayed’s average lead is 2.9 points, close enough to keep the state in Cook’s “toss-up” column. One could argue that El-Sayed’s leftist positions and cocky persona are weighing him down, or that his charisma and rhetorical agility are keeping him afloat amidst a barrage of Islamophobia. Whichever is closest to the truth, as it stands, he is underperforming.
Overall, the averages of polls sampled over the past four weeks currently show seven states with Republican-held seats and Democrats ahead, two states with Republican-held seats and challengers trailing by less than three points, and no states with Democratic-held seats and Republicans ahead. Almost none of these poll leads are safely outside the margin of error, so, probabilistic forecasts aside, a wide range of outcomes is still possible. But Democrats can trace multiple paths to Senate control, even in some of the reddest turf in the country, because many of their candidates are performing better than a generic candidate would.
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