Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) sees the mandate as a significant advantage for Democrats in the battle for the Senate, a recognition that the quality of veterans running for re-election is an issue for his party.
Former President Trump is leading President Biden in several swing states, but Republican Senate candidates are trailing Senate incumbents in some of the same states, including Senators Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bob Casey (D- Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Sab.).
Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) face much tougher weather in states where Trump is expected to win easily, but they are holding out and have won against tough odds in the past.
McConnell says the power of the mandate explains the divergence between Trump and the GOP Senate candidates in battleground polls. He also argued that it was a lesson Republicans had already painfully learned in the midterm elections two years ago, when they failed to retake the Senate.
“I think the position, as we learned in ’22, is an advantage. Not a single incumbent lost in ’22. Senator Daines and I never said we thought this would be easy,” McConnell told reporters during a recent press conference with National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (Mont.).
“We have to beat an incumbent in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and anywhere else we can, but we never said it would be a cakewalk,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s respect for the power of incumbency five months before Election Day is notable, given that competitive Senate races played out overwhelmingly in the same way as the presidential race in 2016 and 2020.
But this is an unusual election in that both Biden and Trump are well known to voters and are burdened with a series of political problems tied to how voters view them personally.
Democratic senators say voters in focus groups and during constituent meetings repeatedly raise concerns about Biden’s age, while Trump faces 91 criminal charges and has just watched weeks of embarrassing testimony related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels .
Steve Jardining, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, said that although Senate races are becoming more nationalized, a significant number of Trump voters may want to split their ticket to put a check on the new president, if he is in fact elected.
“Biden is doing a horrible job of telling America what he did and the good things he did,” he added. “That’s a problem. It’s a huge problem.”
He said that while many voters may want to leave the Biden administration, they do not want to give Trump and Republicans unified control of the government.
“I think what’s happening is that Americans are saying they want to hedge their bet against Trump. That’s why Democrats are doing well in the polls in Senate and House races. It’s sad, but Americans don’t trust Biden,” he said.
The biggest question in the battle for control of the Senate is whether the personal brands of incumbents like Tester, Brown and Rosen are strong enough to overcome Biden’s.
Of the 69 Senate races in 2016 and 2020, only one Senate incumbent won in a state that her party’s presidential candidate lost — Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was re-elected in 2020 even though Biden won in his home state with 53 percent. of the vote.
Mike Berg, communications director for the NRSC, said the trend of recent elections shows that Senate Democrats are inextricably linked to Biden.
“The fact is that there is less ticket sharing today than at any other time in American history. These Democrats will win or lose with Biden, regardless of their last-minute attempts to create distance from him after supporting every one of his disastrous policies,” he said.
However, recent polls show that the Democratic Senate candidates are defying gravity by running well ahead of Biden, something that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) recently attributed to the quality of his incumbents.
“In all four battlegrounds they tested, all of our Democrats were ahead, and that’s because our Democrats are great candidates. Every week they will implement the great work we did in 2022, 2021, 2023,” he told reporters in reaction to polls in several states.
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in swing states earlier this month showed Trump leading Biden in five of the six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — and the two presidential candidates tied in Wisconsin.
However, the same poll, conducted from April 28 to May 9, showed Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) leading Republican candidate Sam Brown 40% to 38% and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa. ) leading Republican David McCormick 46 percent to 41 percent.
It also showed Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), leading Republican candidate Eric Hovde, 49 percent to 41 percent, and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running to succeed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema ( I-) who is retiring. Arizona), ahead of Republican Party candidate Kari Lake, 45% to 41%.
An internal Republican poll conducted in late May showed Tester trailing Republican candidate Tim Sheehy by just 4 points in deep-red Montana, roughly the same margin that a JL Partners poll of 503 likely voters showed in late March, which was 3 points.
Tester was re-elected in 2012 when Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate that year, won Montana with 55% of the vote, defeating President Obama by 13.5 points.
An Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll published in mid-March showed Brown leading Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno at 39% to 34%.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (R) expressed concern that Trump is expected to defeat Biden so strongly in the Buckeye State that some Republican voters may not be motivated to show up to vote in the Senate race.
“I actually worry that Biden is doing so poorly in Ohio, which is obviously good for the presidential side. But I want people in Ohio to actually turn out and if the correct perception is that Biden is getting his ass kicked in Ohio, you worry about voter turnout. If our voter turnout is lower, Trump will still win, but it could affect some of the electoral contests,” Vance told The Hill.
“We have a job at the Ohio Republican Party to keep people engaged. Because, yes, Trump will win, and I think he will win big, but there are a lot of other races at the ballot box that matter,” he added.
The strength of Democratic Senate incumbents and candidates is notable given Biden’s low approval ratings in these same swing states and voters’ generally bitter views on the economy and inflation.
Tester, Brown and Rosen tried to distance themselves on several controversial issues, such as border security and support for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Tester recently confronted senior administration officials about the situation at the border, while Brown urged Biden to be more aggressive in protecting American workers from Chinese imports. Rosen broke with the president over the retention of bombs in Israel.
More than six in 10 voters in Senate swing states disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while just 21 percent rate the economy as excellent or good and 51 percent rate it as weak.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is touting the quality of the candidates as one of the main reasons its strategists believe Democrats will maintain their majority in the Senate.
DSCC communications director David Bergstein released a memo Tuesday arguing that Senate Republicans have a “candidate quality” problem with their recruits.
The memo cited a series of negative articles published in recent weeks about Republican Party candidates in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, CNN, The Los Angeles Times and The Detroit News, among others.
“It’s only May and it’s already clear that Senate Republicans recruited inferior candidates that they failed to vet. Their lies and liabilities represent major vulnerabilities and will form an important part of the case that Democrats will use to disqualify Republican Senate candidates with voters in each race,” Bergstein wrote in conclusion.
Republicans, however, argue that the release of opposition research against candidates through the media is nothing new and will be offset by votes Democrats have cast to support Biden’s agenda and against Republican proposals to crack down on illegal immigration and the crime.
Berg, the NRSC spokesman, said poll numbers in swing states will change as Republican Senate candidates get more media coverage and help from political advertising closer to Election Day.
“Our adversaries are still building name identification, which is why they are behind on the presidential vote at this time. Hopefully horse racing numbers will decrease significantly as Republican candidates begin to announce,” he said.
“The most important number to watch right now is the Democratic incumbents’ vote share – all of which are consistently below 50. Democratic incumbents are maximizing their vote share right now, while our candidates still have significant room to grow,” he said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
