With the news that Republican representative Todd Young had overtaken Evan Bayh in a new poll of the Indiana Senate race—an intuitive result, given the torrent of negative news against the Democrat—the GOP now has their noses in front in at least three and perhaps all five Senate contests considered by most prognosticators to be true “toss-up” elections.
The states are, from west to east, Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. Assuming a victory from Marco Rubio in Florida—he hasn’t trailed in a single poll since he announced his reelection run in June, per Real Clear Politics—the GOP would retain Senate control if it were able to capture four of the matchups in these five states.
The Indiana race has been trending Young for weeks. Bayh, the former senator who departed office at the end of his term in 2011, has faced unrelentingly bad press for his out-of-state residency and private interest dealings while in and out of office. Polls of the showdown have been spaced out enough to notice the momentum: the last five, since mid-October, have been Bayh +6, +6, +2, tied, and now -5, according to a survey released Friday from Indiana-based Howey Politics. On the presidential ballot, Donald Trump is now a solid favorite to carry the state by as many as 10 percentage points. Bayh’s name recognition and longstanding reputation as a moderate still might push him across the finish line first. But there is no other case to make in his favor.
Nevada, where the race is on to replace Harry Reid, might be the most unfavorable of the five toss-up contests to Republicans. GOP candidate Joe Heck, a U.S. House representative, has a small 1.4-point lead over opponent Catherine Cortez Masto, the state’s attorney general, according to the Real Clear Politics average. But while Heck led in all polls throughout late summer, the two went back and forth all throughout October. It has the appearance of a coin flip; 538 shows Heck as about a 40 percent underdog. But it appears as if Trump, who has regained some of his strength in Nevada in recent surveys, will not be a drag down-ballot.
Roy Blunt, the veteran Missouri Republican, is now just trying to hang on. His Democratic challenger, Missouri secretary of state Jason Kander, narrowed the gap in October and threatened to turn the state’s Senate delegation pure blue. But the race is no more than a couple of points in either direction—and in the Real Clear Politics average, Blunt is up 1.5 points. The well-regarded Monmouth poll has him up one. And of this writing, 538 has the showdown a complete 50-50 split. (Maybe this race will be decided by a noise hair, not a nose.)
It looks a bit more comfortable for the GOP in North Carolina, where incumbent Richard Burr has led state senator Deb Ross in most polls since the beginning of October and has a two out of three shot to win, according to 538. In the Real Clear Politics average, he’s up a point and a half. North Carolina is also another state where the top of the ticket has surged to make it competitive.
The same can be said of New Hampshire, as John McCormack wrote Thursday, where Trump may have tracked down Hillary Clinton. The incumbent Republican there, Kelly Ayotte, has led in most recent surveys; disregarding an outlier in mid-October that showed her opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, with a nine-point lead, Ayotte has not done worse than a two-point deficit in any of the polls included at Real Clear Politics, and her lead has been at least four in three surveys since late October. 538 has her as a small underdog—one of the two toss-up states the website tilts toward the Democrat.
The map may be a bit wider than these toss-up states yet. The GOP is not favored in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but it has a realistic shot to win in either, now that Wisconsin Republican incumbent Ron Johnson appears to be catching up with challenger and former senator Russ Feingold.
Whatever the case, Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican with improving fortunes in recent days. The Senate is still there for Republicans to retain.
