Winning in 2022

Senate victory is in doubt and Missouri may complicate things

If the GOP is likely to win in 2024, it should be virtually certain to win in 2022. By 2024, inflation might be under control and the economy might be in good shape all around. The war in Ukraine might even be over. As a result, Joe Biden’s approval number might be considerably higher than it is now.

But these things won’t happen to any appreciable degree during the next four months. Thus, the Democrats’ fate should be sealed when it comes to the mid-terms.

It is sealed, I think, in the U.S. House, where the GOP need only pick up a handful of House seats to take control. As I discussed here, Republicans are poised to accomplish this and more.

Republicans should be poised to gain control of the Senate, too. Doing so requires a net pickup of only one seat. The president’s party typically loses more than that in mid-term elections even when the president isn’t as unpopular as Joe Biden is.

But when we look carefully at the map and the polls, the GOP doesn’t seem all that well positioned. At first glance, the task doesn’t appear so difficult. The only seats Republicans are defending in states carried by Joe Biden are the ones in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And Donald Trump nearly carried those states in 2020, a so-so Republican year. In a good year, as 2022 is expected to be, the GOP should be able to hold both seats.

Meanwhile, Democrats are defending seats in four states where Republicans should do well in a good year — Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and New Hampshire. At a minimum, in a good year the GOP could expect to pick up two of these seats. In that event, the party would need to hold only one of the two seats in jeopardy — either Pennsylvania or Wisconsin — to get to 51.

Real Clear Politics breaks down the Senate races this way — Republicans should hold 47 seats, Democrats should hold 46, and seven are “toss-ups.” The seven toss-ups are the aforementioned Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and New Hampshire, plus North Carolina where I think the GOP has a clear edge (North Carolina has been pretty reliably Republican and the GOP candidate leads the Dem by four points in the RCP average.)

In a typical mid-term cycle, the out-of-power party wins most of the toss-ups. If the president is particularly unpopular, as Biden manifestly is, the out-of-power party usually wins the vast majority of these races.

The GOP need win only four of seven toss-ups to take control. If you agree that North Carolina actually leans Republican, the party only needs to split the remaining six. Why wouldn’t it be able to accomplish this?

The answer, I think, is the weakness of some Republican candidates in these races. Plus the weakness of the possible Republican nominee in Missouri.

Let’s start with Pennsylvania where, thanks to Donald Trump, Dr. Oz is the GOP nominee. Oz is a smart, capable guy. However, his conservatism is in doubt.

More importantly for purposes of this discussion, so is his electability. Oz trails Democrat John Fetterman in the polls by at least six points, even though Fetterman has been too sick to campaign.

In Georgia, another Trump favorite, former football star Herschel Walker, shows little aptitude for discussing policy and little regard for telling the truth about his past. The polls show him basically even in his race against the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock.

This constitutes underperforming. After all, Joe Biden’s approval rating in the state is below 40 percent. And most polls show Governor Brian Kemp running ahead of Stacey Abrams.

We don’t know who the GOP Senate candidate in New Hampshire will be. Ideally, it would have been Chris Sununu, the popular governor, but he declined to run. As it is, incumbent Maggie Hassan, who was considered quite vulnerable, is running at least six points ahead of her potential rivals in the most recent polls.

In Arizona, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly is six to nine points ahead of his likely rivals in the polls (and running particularly well against the Trump-endorsed candidate). I question whether this race should still be considered a toss-up.

Democrats also have small polling edges in Nevada and Wisconsin, but these contests look like genuine toss-ups, along with Georgia. However, if the Democrats win in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Arizona, they will only need to win one of Nevada, Wisconsin, or Georgia to hold the Senate.

Then, there’s the suddenly problematic case of Missouri. This state turned Red some time ago. In a two-way race, any Republican Senate nominee would be heavily favored.

However, John Wood, a former US Attorney in Missouri, has launched an independent candidacy. He claims he’s running as an alternative to former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, whom Wood considers the likely GOP nominee. However, he also says he’s “in this race to win it no matter who the Republican nominee is.”

Readers may recognize Wood as one of the lawyers working for the January 6 Committee. He questioned Michael Luttig, the former Fourth Circuit Judge for whom he clerked. Wood has the backing of former Missouri Senator John Danforth who seems to have become a man of the center, if not the center-left.

Wood’s unhappiness with Greitens is understandable. Greitens resigned as governor amid criminal charges and legislative investigations, is accused by his ex-wife of abuse and bullying, and has run an ad suggesting that he’s hunting members of his own party (“RINOs”) with a gun.

Trump has not endorsed Greitens yet. However, he has praised the former governor, calling him smart and tough, while ripping one of Greitens’ two main rivals for the nomination — Rep. Vicki Hartzler. Trump’s says (correctly in my view) that the Dems want to run against Greitens. This, I hope, is the main reason why, so far, he hasn’t endorsed the ex-governor.

Greitens has been leading the GOP race in most polls. However, he seems to be fading. A new poll from the Tarrance Group finds Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt in the lead at 28 percent. Hartzler was second at 24 percent. Greitens garnered the support of only 16 percent.

The poll, though, was commissioned by an anti-Greitens PAC. We should probably give more credence to a poll with a much larger sample size conducted by the respected Trafalgar Group in late June. It has the three leading candidates deadlocked — each with 23-24 percent support.

As noted, Wood says he’s running regardless of whom the GOP nominates. However, if the nominee is Schmitt or Hartzler, Wood’s candidacy will probably fizzle.

Even with Wood in the race, the GOP can hope to hold this seat. Hartzler and Schmitt lead the likely Democratic candidate by double digits in the (somewhat dated) polls. I don’t see Wood siphoning off enough votes from either of these two to change the result.

Greitens only leads the Dem by about six points. Thus, it’s possible that Wood’s candidacy would turn this race into a toss-up or worse for the GOP.

I should add a caveat to this entire discussion. A decade ago, polls (or poll averages, to be precise) were a great vehicle for predicting statewide outcomes, whether for the Senate or the presidency. Nate Silver was getting virtually all of them right.

Nowadays, poll averages are less helpful and tend to underestimate support for Republican candidates. Folks who disregard polls entirely are just being obtuse. But so are those who deem polls the be-all-and-end-all.

The polls indicate that the Democrats have a better than 50-50 chance of holding the Senate. A sense of what normally happens to the president’s party in mid-term elections and what the mood of America is right now suggests that the Republicans are more likely than not to take control of that chamber.

This much seems clear to me: The Republicans aren’t in as good a position to take back the Senate as they should be. And sub-optimal candidates, especially Trumpy ones, are largely to blame.