It's been well established that 2024 poses a real problem for the Democratic Party. While Democrats are considered favored to hold onto the Senate, they entered 2024 at a significant disadvantage in that they have to defend a larger number of seats than Republicans do. Worse yet, several of these seats are in battleground states like Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and red states like Arizona, Ohio, and Montana.
However, Democrats can look at polling and think they're doing pretty well right now. On its face, it kind of looks like they're right. According to the latest poll from The Hill/Emerson, the Democratic candidate is ahead in every poll of the aforementioned states.
While this may seem like bad news for the GOP, according to Sean Trende of RealClearPolling, there's a lot of good news for the GOP in these numbers.
"Let’s sort these races into two bins," he explains. "We’ll start with open seats. In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leads Republican Kari Lake 45% to 43%. In Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin leads former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers 42% to 40%. The latter is roughly in line with our poll average, while the former is a better showing for Lake than some recent polls."
The problem is one of expectations.The Michigan poll isn’t bad for either party; it shows a close race with a large number of undecideds, which is probably what our baseline should be. The fact that Lake has made it so close this early, however, is a bit of a surprise. Given some of the problems she’s had with more moderate segments of the Arizona GOP, I would have expected a healthy lead for Gallego before the race closed somewhat at the end. If the race is close now, it’s a welcome surprise for the GOP, and a sign that Lake actually has a decent chance to win.
What Trende sees as problematic for the Democrats is the races with incumbent Democrats.
"The news in the other three races is considerably worse for Democrats," he says. "Sen. Jacky Rosen is up 45%-37% over potential nominee Sam Brown, Sen. Bob Casey is up 46%-42% over businessman Dave McCormick, while Tammy Baldwin is up 46%-43% over Eric Hovde."
Related: Democrats Are Getting More Desperate as Hopes of Keeping the Senate Wane
Of course, this comes with the caveat that it's better to be ahead than behind; however, Trende notes that "to be an incumbent hovering in the mid-40s against unknown opponents is a sign of weakness. To be in the mid-40s and only up three or four points is bad news."
The most recent Hill/Emerson poll of the Montana race between incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Tester and Tim Sheehy showed Tester up only two points, though a more recent poll from J.L. Partners showed Sheehy up three.
So yes, Democrats currently have an advantage in these races, but these leads are generally too close for comfort. On top of that, the recent vote to quash the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas may be hurting several candidates in a year where immigration is a top issue for voters. It's been obvious for a while that Democrats are nervous about the Senate.
