Democrats Will Be on Defense in 2024 Senate Elections

Three highly vulnerable incumbents and a handful of light-blue seats will ensure Republicans have no shortage of opportunities to win back control of the Senate in 2024, according to new ratings from the Cook Political Report.According to the report’s Senate and governors editor, Jessica Taylor, Republicans are looking at a highly favorable map in 2024.“Republicans need to win back just one seat if their party regains the White House or two if they don’t,” Ms. Taylor wrote. “That seems eminently doable given the map, but as the GOP should have learned last November, candidate quality still counts.”The report rates West Virginia and Ohio — states with Democratic senators that President Trump carried in 2020 — as toss-ups. Another such state, Montana, is rated as lean Republican.While the three states will undoubtedly attract Republican efforts in 2022, the Cook Political Report also identifies Arizona as a toss-up state and four others as “lean Democrat” — Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.In Arizona, which saw highly competitive elections for governor and Senate in 2022, the race is already heating up and could be headed toward a true three-way contest.A formerly Democratic senator of Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema, will be seeking re-election in 2024. While Senator Manchin, a longtime ally on the Democratic Party’s right flank, has said he would support her, it’s not clear who else will.Ms. Sinema, who became an independent in December, is unpopular with Arizonans of every party affiliation, according to a January 11 Morning Consult poll. A Democrat, Representative Ruben Gallego, announced Monday that he would challenge her from the left. “I’m sorry that politicians have let you down but I am going to change that,” he said.“Growing up poor, all I had was the American dream,” Mr. Gallego said. “It kept me going: as a kid sleeping on the floor, a student scrubbing toilets, a Marine losing brothers in Iraq.”Ms. Sinema has already filed to run for re-election as an independent, meaning the Democratic coalition that elected her in 2018 is likely to be split. It also means that she will not have access to the same Democratic infrastructure that helped her then.On the Republican side, no candidates have made official announcements, but two failed 2022 candidates, television anchor Kari Lake and venture capitalist Blake Masters, appear to be contemplating runs.A Republican solar industry executive, Jim Lamon, who lost the GOP primary to Mr. Masters, is also on the list of candidates looking to throw hats in the ring, according to one of his advisers, Stephen Puetz.“Jim knows that the right Republican could have beaten Kelly and will get elected to the US Senate in 2024,” Mr. Puetz said in a statement. “If a winning candidate emerges, he will strongly back that person — if not, Jim will run in 2024.”An associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Miles Coleman, told the Sun that Ms. Sinema’s unpopularity could create an unusual situation depending on the Republican candidate.“Arizona I think is sort of a weird situation. To put it mildly I don’t think Democrats are in a rush to vote for Sinema,” he said. “I’d almost say that she would pull more from Republicans.”In Mr. Coleman’s opinion, Wisconsin is the next most likely target for Republicans, after the state re-elected Senator Johnson, a Republican, by only one point in 2022. Senator Baldwin has said that she will be seeking re-election in a state President Biden carried by less than a point in 2020. No Republicans have announced candidacies there yet.According to Ms. Taylor, Michigan and Pennsylvania will have similar dynamics to Wisconsin as Democrats seek to rebuild Mr. Biden’s 2020 coalition.“Several Senate seats are also presidential battleground states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which Biden won by less than three points and flipped to blue from 2016 to 2020,” Ms. Taylor wrote. “We still give Democrats an edge in most of these races.”In Michigan, Senator Stabenow’s retirement is creating both an open field for Democratic hopefuls in a state that Democrats swept in 2022 as well as a potential opening for Republicans.Given the failures of the Michigan Republicans in 2022, Mr. Coleman sees Democrats having a slight edge in the state. So far, Representatives Ruth Johnson and Debbie Dingell appear to be considering bids.In Pennsylvania, Republicans will be picking up the pieces after what proved to be a bad year in 2022, with defeats in both the gubernatorial and Senate elections.Senator Casey will be protecting his seat, which he won by 13 points in his last re-election bid in 2018. Because 2024 is a presidential year, Pennsylvania will undoubtedly be receiving significant attention from both parties.

Democrats Will Be on Defense in 2024 Senate Elections

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