When you wake up Wednesday morning, the House could look a lot bluer while the Senate has turned even redder in a topsy-turvy midterm election that is as unpredictable as the president who will be very much on voters’ minds, even if he isn’t on the ballot.
That’s because the path to the majority of the House runs through places like the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia, where President Trump is anathema even to many affluent, college-educated voters who normally cast their ballots for Republicans, while control of the Senate will be decided in places like North Dakota, where Trump remains popular.
Democratic gains in the House of Representatives have been a near-certainty all year. But the exact size of those gains — a blue wave or a purplish ripple — remained hotly debated on the eve of Election Day while the possibilities in the Senate range from a new Democratic majority to Republicans actually gaining seats.
In the House, Republicans have been buffeted by dozens of retirements in competitive districts, the need to defend a 23-seat majority with about as many GOP-held districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016, Republican incumbents being massively outraised by their Democratic challengers, a Pennsylvania redistricting decision that advantages Democrats, and a year of conventional wisdom saying the lower chamber was as good as lost.
One Republican campaign veteran estimated that Democrats are playing offense in as many as 60 congressional districts while Republicans are realistically doing the same in about five. That gives Democrats a huge numerical edge and a lot of margin for error.
The Senate, on the other hand, always had Democrats defending more seats than Republicans. Only one incumbent GOP senator is running for re-election in a state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. This same senator previously won in 2012, while Barack Obama was on the ballot. Yet 10 Democratic senators are seeking another term in states Trump won.
That’s why Trump has been barnstorming the battleground states for the Senate while mostly leaving the House races alone. The president appears to have helped shore up the Republican candidates in two states that were seen as possible Democratic pickup opportunities despite their red hue, Texas and Tennessee, though Arizona remains a more complicated case. There Sen. Jeff Flake is retiring and the polls have been all over the place.
The smart money is on Republicans to hold the Senate, but this outcome is far less certain than in the House. Republicans are only playing in about half the Trump states where they had hoped to knock off sitting Democratic senators, even with impressive candidates like John James in Michigan. Some of this is because they were states Trump only won narrowly, and his approval rating is now underwater.
Even in the states where Trump is still well-liked relative to his national numbers, Senate races are too close for comfort. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota is the only Democratic incumbent Republicans have really put away, now trailing by 11.4 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri is the only other Democrat who is trailing; in the same average, she is down by less than 1 point.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana are up by about 5 points. Both are states where a majority approves of Trump’s job performance. The president won West Virginia by 42 points. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., is clinging to a narrower lead in Vice President Mike Pence’s home state. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is slightly favored in a tough race against Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are all Trump-state Senate races that never really came online.
In a true blue wave, most of the competitive Senate races will break the Democrats’ way. That still might not be enough to recapture the chamber — even if they pick up Nevada and Arizona while losing only North Dakota, they’d need to win in Texas or Tennessee to get to 51 and negate Pence’s tie-breaking vote — but it will be a setback for Trump, who has invested a lot of political capital in the red-state contests.
Democrats saw Nancy Pelosi’s first speakership coming from a mile away during their last wave election in 2006. But their Senate majority, made possible by the collapse of GOP incumbent Sens. George Allen of Virginia and Conrad Burns of Montana, was more of a surprise. Similarly, Republicans were well-positioned to win both houses in the Tea Party wave of 2010 but fell short in the Senate.
There is a small chance Democrats could fall short of a majority in the House, a massive disappointment that would probably triggers major leadership changes. The odds are low, but not much lower than Trump’s were in 2016.
Republicans are hoping for a replay of that year, in which the polls understated support for Trump in the states that decided the election and pundits overstated the certainty of their Clinton-friendly models. Democrats are eyeing Virginia in 2017 as a better precedent. Those races looked close in the polling but a suburban revolt against Trump and an influx of new voters translated into much bigger Democratic wins.
