Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
The six-year cycle of Senate elections is crucial to understanding the chamber's partisan makeup.
A Senate class elected in a midterm will face reelection in a presidential ytors.ear, and vice versa. The political conditions of the second will be different from the first. A wave election brings in a set of senators who are vulnerable to defeat six years later. The GOP took control of the Senate in the Reagan sweep of 1980, and lost it in 1986. The GOP tied in 2000, suffered a big setback in 2006.
Democratic Sens. Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey have had a lucky streak of election environments since they first came to the chamber in 2006. That luck seems to have run out.
The first elections for Tester (Mont.), Brown (Ohio) and Casey (Pa.) coincided with a Democratic midterm wave after six years of George W. Bush in the White House. In their second campaigns, their party’s presidential nominee won the popular vote by 4 percentage points. The third? Another blue wave repudiating Donald Trump.
But 2024 is a different story. At best, the two parties face a neutral political environment, as evidenced by tied polling from the presidential race down to Senate contests.
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The first elections for Tester (Mont.), Brown (Ohio) and Casey (Pa.) coincided with a Democratic midterm wave after six years of George W. Bush in the White House. In their second campaigns, their party’s presidential nominee won the popular vote by 4 percentage points. The third? Another blue wave repudiating Donald Trump.
