Where the 2024 Senate Elections Stand as of January 2023 - Part 3
Article by Lorenzo Levi | Photo by Kyle Glenn
Pennsylvania
Despite Trump narrowly winning Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point in 2016, Democrats have triumphed in every statewide election in Pennsylvania since then. Even in a year where the national environment was not ideal for Democrats, John Fetterman won Pennsylvania’s Senate seat over the TV charlatan and puppy-killer Dr. Oz by nearly five points, even though Fetterman had a stroke right when he received the party’s nomination, barring him from campaigning on the campaign trail to a significant degree. This context being combined with the fact that incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey Jr. is popular in his state and won his last election by over 13 points indicates that Casey is in a pretty comfortable position.
The only complicating factor to Casey’s position is his abortion stance. Casey is personally anti-choice and as such sometimes breaks from his party on abortion-related issues. Casey’s father, Bob Casey Sr., was governor of Pennsylvania and was the Casey in the 1992 Supreme Court Case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case that narrowed the abortion protections of the older Roe v. Wade case. That being said, this abortion position is far to the left of almost any Pennsylvania Republican. The votes that Casey would lose by not having a 100% pro-choice record could very well be replaced by single-issue voters who would vote for Democrats but don’t due to their stance on abortion. Even if he ends up net losing votes, he can lose quite a few and still win, so Casey is on the slightly less vulnerable side of Democratic incumbents in 2024.
Texas
People have been predicting that Texas will inevitably go to the Democrats on the state level eventually, due to the state getting more demographically diverse. On the presidential level Texas has been shifting steadily towards the Democrats since 2012. On the Senate level, Democrat Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 points of unseating incumbent Republican Ted Cruz in 2018. One might be tempted to think that if Ted Cruz could win a Democratic wave year like 2018, then he could certainly win in a year that isn’t a Democratic wave year, like 2024. However, since 2018, Ted Cruz has received scrutiny not only for his absurd far-right antics but also for infamously going on vacation to Cancun while his state was experiencing crippling power outages and a harsh winter, a blunder he then proceeded to blame on his wife and children.
It must also be noted that even in a state with some of the worst instances of gun violence in recent memory (e.g. the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde and the 2019 shooting in El Paso), Texans overwhelmingly vote for pro-gun politicians. It remains to be seen how a pro-gun Democrat, or at least a gun “moderate,” would fare in a statewide contest in Texas. This scenario is obviously not ideal for people who want the government to decrease the numbers of gun deaths, but not only would it almost certainly be better than having Ted Cruz, but it could also be helpful for a variety of other top Democratic priorities.
Virginia
Virginia used to be a swing state. George Bush won it on the presidential level as recently as 2004. Ever since, however, it has gone to Democrats on the presidential level. President Biden won it by over 10 points in 2020. Incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (who is notable as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016) won re-election in 2018 by 16 points.
However, some Democrats are slightly worried because in 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship in an upset against former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe, and Republicans flipped the Virginia House of Delegates the same year. The timing of this election is significant. 2021 was Biden’s first year in office, and the party not in the White House almost without fail does well in off-year and midterm elections. Republicans didn’t have as many upset victories like this in 2022 for a variety of reasons, but by far the most important reason was the Dobbs Decision. The Republican that runs against Senator Tim Kaine will have to answer for the deeply unpopular position, especially in Virginia, of restricting the right to an abortion, thus making Kaine’s campaign much more likely to be successful than McAuliffe's.
West Virginia
West Virginia voted for Donald Trump in 2020 by 38.9 points, but truly miraculously for the Democrats, incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Manchin won re-election in 2018 by 3.3 points, representing a shift of over 40 points. Through his undying love of the filibuster, Manchin, like his pal Kyrsten Sinema, is one of the two key Democratic obstructors to the Democratic agenda in the Senate, which undoubtedly plays well to his heavily Republican and conservative-leaning independent base. In fact, when prominent progressives take shots at Manchin in the media, that only makes Manchin look even more appealing to his voters.
Manchin cannot lose very many votes and still win. He got lucky in 2018 with a national environment heavily favoring Democrats and an obscure Republican opponent with nowhere near the same amount of name recognition and fame in the state as Manchin. The 2024 national environment will not be nearly as favorable for Democrats as 2018 was, and there is speculation that the popular Republican Governor Jim Justice, who used to be a Democrat, will run against Manchin, thus also eating into Manchin’s crucial crossover appeal. As much as Democrats are legitimately frustrated by Manchin’s obstruction of a once-in-a-generation chance to pass legislation with a Democratic trifecta, he is almost certainly the only Democrat that will possibly be able to win statewide office in West Virginia for the foreseeable future. Given how difficult this upcoming Senate election is set to be for Democrats, Manchin winning his election will be crucial for Democrats retaining a Senate majority.
Wisconsin
Like other states in the Rust Belt, Wisconsin has been gradually getting redder for similar reasons to Michigan and Pennsylvania. President Biden only won Wisconsin by less than a percentage point, and the unpopular and scandal-ridden incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson (whose alt-right policies would make you think he represented a state like West Virginia, not a swing state Wisconsin) won re-election over the charismatic and popular Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes by just about a single point in 2022. That being said, incumbent Governor Tony Evers won re-election that same year by 2.4 points, and incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election in 2018 by over 10 points. As shown by Ron Johnson and Governor Evers, incumbency is a huge advantage in Wisconsin, so it seems likely that Senator Tammy Baldwin will pull it off one more time
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/01/18/senate-republicans-2024-races-candidates/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/20/early-action-2024-senate-battle-00078606
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/09/2022-election-results-analysis-and-takeaways-00065878