2020

With the last election past, time to look forward to the next one!  In 2020, the Senate geography favors Democrats, though not to the same degree that it favored Republicans this year.  With their net gain of two, the GOP will hold 53 senate seats headed into 2020, which means the Dems need a gain of four to win a majority.  And there are definitely prospects.

1. Maine. Republican Susan Collins was the key vote to confirm Kavanaugh, and in her speech announcing her decision, she advanced the theory that his accuser had certainly been assaulted but was confused about the identity of the perpetrator.  I guess Collins knows better than the woman who was there!  Her vote  suggests she's more fearful of losing a primary to a wingnut than the general election to a Democrat, but the Democratic candidate for president has carried Maine in the last seven elections.  She can be beaten.
2. Arizona.  The governor appointed John Kyl to fill out John McCain's term, which is up in 2020.  Consequently, there will be an open race in 2020--no incumbent--and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema just won an open race for US Senate in the state.  A different Democrat could do it again in 2020.
3. Colorado.  Republican incumbent Cory Gardner faces the voters.  Clinton carried the state, as did Obama, twice.  In the 2018 midterms, no Republican won a statewide election in Colorado.  The governor's race was not close.  The Democrats have majorities in both Houses of the state legislature.  None of this can be encouraging for Gardner.
4. Iowa. The Republican incumbent is Joni Ernst.  Trump carried Iowa by 9.5 points, and the state just elected a new Republican governor.  On the other hand, going into this year's midterms three of Iowa's four congressional seats were held by Republicans, and Democrats flipped two of them.  Team Blue needs to recruit a good candidate, because Ernst is not as formidable as Charles Grassley, the state's other Republican senator, and Grassley is pretty clearly senile.
5. North Carolina.  Republican Thom Tillis is up for reelection.  Trump won North Carolina with less than 51 percent of the vote.  It's a state that Democrats have felt was headed their way, and Obama carried it in 2008, but since then they've only come close.  Charlotte is a magnet for the kind of new residents who vote Democratic, and the Research Triangle area--Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill--is another strongly Democratic population center.  Time to get over the top!

On the other side of the ledger, Democrat Doug Jones is vulnerable in Alabama, but he's a canny politician and you just never know who those crazy Republicans will put up against him.  For the sake of argument, let's say Jones loses.  To get to 51, the Democrats would then have to avoid any upset losses and sweep the above five races, or score an upset themselves somewhere.  Of course, getting to 50 would do the trick if they also won the presidency . . . .

My sense is that, until the 2018 midterm result was in, Trump was possibly a slight favorite to win reelection, assuming no cataclysm such as might be injected by, for example, the findings of Robert Mueller.  Trump's national approval ratings are abysmal, but that's to some extent because he's at sea bottom in several of the country's largest states--think: New York, Illinois, California.  He won't get negative electoral votes for losing these states by stupendous margins.  The all-or-nothing allocation of electoral votes suggests that a better gauge might be to consider his prospects in the states he barely won or barely lost.  In this regard, the first observation is that--as you'd expect considering that Trump lost the national vote by close to 3 million--there are a lot more electoral votes that he barely won than electoral votes he barely lost.  Four states were decided by less than one percent of the vote.  They are, with their electoral vote count: New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), and Wisconsin (10).  Trump lost only New Hampshire.  If all four flipped, and nothing else changed, the Democrat would pick up 42 electoral votes and land at 274, 4 more than needed to win.  It happens that the three Trump states all had midterm races for both governor and US Senate, and the Democratic candidates won all six.  Only one of the six, for the governorship of Wisconsin, was very close.  Trump probably needs to win at least one of these states and all appear headed in the other direction.

We could spread a wider net and consider, too, the states decided by more than 1 but less than 2 percent of the vote.  This brings into play Minnesota, whose 10 electoral votes were won by Clinton, and Florida, whose 29 electoral votes were won by Trump.  So if both flipped the Democratic candidate would net another 19 electoral votes.  The midterm result, however, suggests that the Democrat has a much better chance in Florida than Trump does in Minnesota.  Republicans won statewide races for governor and US Senate in Florida, but both were so close as to require recounts.  In Minnesota, Democrats swept all the statewide elections, including the governorship and two US Senate contests by double-digit margins.  

Trump's electoral fortunes appear to be dimming and, being ignorant, incurious, and corrupt, though apparently convinced of his own magnificence, he doesn't seem a likely candidate for turning things around with some midterm adjustments.