Regarding the Senate, is it too early to peek ahead to 2022? Unlike in the House, where every even-numbered year there's an election for every seat, the six-year Senate terms are staggered so that a third of them are up for election in each even year. This means that, by chance, the calendar might favor one or the other party. For example, in 2018, a good year for the Dems—picked up 41 House seats to wrest control from the Rs—they nevertheless went backwards by two in the Senate. Trump attributed this to his popularity, perspicuity, and puissance, naturally, but really it was just a bad map for Democrats, who had to defend seats in such deep red states as Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. General rule: a party that enjoys unusual success in the Senate elections of a given year should gird up its loins six years hence.
Above—thanks Wikipedia!—is the 2022 Senate map, which plainly favors the Dems. For one thing, of the 34 seats up for election, 20 are held by Republicans. The extra exposure wouldn't mean a lot if the Republican seats were in Trumpy states while the Democrats, as in 2018, were trying to hang on in some Republican-friendly territory. But that's not how it is. Of the 14 seats Democrats have to defend, not a single one is in a state carried by Trump. Republicans, however, are defending seats in two Biden states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, the incumbent, Ron Johnson, is a Trump water boy; in Pennsylvania, the race will be for an open seat as the Republican incumbent, Pat Toomey, is retiring. The retirement of Richard Burr means that there will likewise be no incumbent in North Carolina, which Trump carried very narrowly. Ditto for Ohio, where Rob Portman announced his retirement earlier this week. So far as I know, every Democrat whose term is expiring will seek reelection.
I read somewhere recently that not since 2002, when Norm Coleman defeated Walter Mondale after Paul Wellstone suddenly died a few days before the election, has a Senate challenger won a seat in a midterm election in a state that two years earlier had voted for the presidential candidate of the opposite party. That last sentence is a bit of a thicket. It only means that in 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore won Minnesota; then, in the midterm election two years later, a challenger from the opposite party (Republican Norm Coleman) won a Senate seat in Minnesota; and that's the last time that happened, in either direction, in any state. I point this out only because, assuming no unforeseen event whereby a new senator takes a seat via appointment, Democrats will retain their Senate majority unless some Republican can pull off in 2022 something that hasn't happened since 2002—and only then in very unusual circumstances.
Scanning the map, it might seem that the Republicans best chances for pickups are in Georgia and Arizona. Biden won them both, barely, and both states also had special Senate elections to fill vacancies that were won by the Democrat in competitive races. The natural term for those seats is expiring in 2022 so the Democratic winners, Kelly in Arizona and Warnock in Georgia, have to face the voters again in two years. I suppose the question is whether these states will be like Virginia and Colorado, which in twenty years have gone from deep red to navy blue, or more like North Carolina, where Obama won in 2008 in what now looks like kind of a one-off. For what it's worth, here are the results of the last several presidential elections in Arizona and Georgia:
2004: Arizona R+11; Georgia R+17
2008: Arizona R+8; Georgia R+5
2012: Arizona R+9; Georgia R+8
2016: Arizona R+3; Georgia R+5
2020: Arizona D+<1; Georgia D+<1
This looks more like the progression of Colorado and Virginia than the doddering of North Carolina but I guess we'll see.
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