Opinion: Swing-state Senate races looking bad for Trump’s election

There are seven presidential swing states, five of which also have U.S. Senate races. That’s important because Senate races, like the presidential race, are statewide. While polling indicates that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are essentially tied or close to it in those states, the Democratic Senate candidates are leading in all five states, and in some cases by a lot.

To put it simply, if the swing-state Democratic Senate candidates win by anywhere near their current margin, Trump will likely lose those states — and the election.

I wrote about this last May , when President Joe Biden was still in the race. Swing-state Democratic Senate candidates were ahead of their Republican opponents — or likely Republican opponents, since some states had not yet held their primaries. Post-Labor Day, those Democratic candidates are even further ahead.

Let’s start with Arizona, which is an open Senate seat (i.e., no incumbent). According to Real Clear Polling , Democrat Ruben Gallego leads Republican Kari Lake by 8.2 points in RCP’s average of polls, with a spread, depending on the day and the polling firm, of between 4 and 15 points over the past two weeks.

In Pennsylvania , Democratic Sen. Bob Casey is leading Republican David McCormick by 6.5 points in the RCP average, with a spread of between 3 and 14 points over the past few weeks.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin is leading Republican Eric Hovde by an average of 6.4 points, with a spread of between 1 and 10 points. In Michigan’s open Senate seat , Democrat Elissa Slotkin leads Republican Mike Rogers by an average of 4.7 points with a spread of between 2 and 10 points.

Finally, in Nevada , Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is beating Republican Sam Brown by 10.8 points, with a two-week spread of between 9 and 14 points.

In fact, if you look at Real Clear’s tracking of the five swing-state Senate races over the past several months, the Republican candidate has never led in any of them.

And while swing-state North Carolina doesn’t have a Senate race, it’s the only swinger with a gubernatorial election, which, like Senate and presidential elections, is statewide. There, the Democratic candidate, Josh Stein, has a pretty solid lead over Republican Mark Robinson. RCP has Stein up between 5 and 14 points in the various August polls.

Here’s the point. If current polls are accurately reflecting swing-state voters’ choices for their respective Senate candidates, those leads will likely determine those states’ choice for president.

It’s true that some voters will split their vote, supporting a Republican for one office and a Democrat for a different office. But that trend is down. According to a Pew Research Center poll just before the 2020 presidential election, only 4 percent said they would consider voting for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden and a Senate candidate from the other party.

Perhaps more tellingly, Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics at the University of Virginia has examined the post-war history of split presidential/Senate outcomes.

It was fairly common for people to vote for a Republican president and Democratic Senate candidate, or vice versa, up through the 1990s. But that trend has declined and has largely vanished as the parties have become more polarized. According to the Center , in the 2016 presidential election, not one state voted for the presidential candidate from one party and a Senate candidate from the other party. In 2020, only one state did: Maine, which voted for Republican Sen. Susan Collins but also Biden for president.

If swing-state Senate Democratic candidates were leading by 1 or 2 points, Trump might still win that state. But Democratic Senate leads of 4, 6 or 8 points would take a lot of split-ticket voting for Trump to win. It can happen. Collins of Maine was way down in the polls in 2020 and still pulled out a victory with 51 percent. But that’s unusual.

What that means for the upcoming presidential election is that if these swing-state Senate candidates’ leads persist — and this close to the election it’s hard to see what could dramatically change any of these Senate polling numbers — it is unlikely Donald Trump will win any of the swing states. Which means we get President Kamala Harris.

Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.” Follow him on X@MerrillMatthews .

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