2018 SEN Midterms - all 100 seats (33+ races), Part I

Derideo_Te · Sep 29, 2017

Statistikhengst said: ↑

Nice analysis.

Is it really called Drumthwacket???

lol...
Click to expand...

Yup!

Big white mansion in Princeton, NJ, just a couple of miles north of the capital in Trenton.

Statistikhengst · Oct 3, 2017

On Friday, September 29th, 2017, there were 208 declared candidates for the US-Senate. As of today, Tuesday October 3rd, there are now 210:

There were changes in: AZ-SEN 1* (10), MO-SEN 1 (10), OH-SEN 1 (4), PA-SEN 1 (13), TN-SEN 1 (5, clerical error fixed)

Note: as of September 29th, 2017, for each Senate Seat change, the party in control of that seat is now marked by color (the now widely accepted red vs blue) and the current number of candidates for that seat are listed in parentheses to the right of the seat itself.

*in AZ-SEN 1, Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09) is giving up her seat to run for the US-SEN, presumably against incumbent Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who is being primaried on the hard Right by Kelly Ward, who also primaried John McCain in 2016 and who has won Pres. Donald Trump's support. That is the big Senate news of the last days.

On today's list we see 3 currently Democratic-held Senate seats that are all considered in play for 2018: MO, OH and PA. MO is one of the states were the Democratic incumbent (Clair McCaskill) is considered most in danger and this is true. MO has been swinging more and more to the Right since 2008. That being said, McCaskill won her seat the first time around (2006) in a squeaker, won it narrowly in 2012 over Todd Akin of rape-being-G-d's-will fame and so she is used to hard races. That being said, Mary Landrieu (former D-LA) went through the same but was vanquished in 2014.

13 candidates are in the offing for Casey's seat in PA. He may be in danger, or maybe not. He is extremely popular within his own state and easily won re-election in 2012, the year where Obama's winning margin in the Keystone state was halved. So, wait and see.

In OH, I would say that everything is hard to measure at this moment. The state is verifiably moving more red (it had been moving blue for a number of years), so I really think this will depend upon who becomes the R-nominee after the primaries.

Source (with entries going back to and including October 2nd, 2017)

Don't forget: the link to the EXCEL document containing all of the numbers plus various links is at the OP, but for ease of reference, HERE as well.

-Stat

Natty Bumpo · Oct 3, 2017

One intriguing aspect in the matter of party prospects is Senator Susan Collins, ME (R) mulling a gubernatorial run in 2018 since Maine's crackpot governor is term-limited.

She may be the only Republican that could be expected to win the Senate election in Maine in 2020 so, if she opts for the governorship, her seat very likely goes over to the "D" column in a special senatorial election.

That places the sensible woman in the position of having McConnell, Trump, and a number of full-mooners (whose disastrous healthcare bills she was instrumental in killing) begging her to stay.

In the closely-divided Senate, that gives her enormous bargaining power in preventing the radicals from contriving a budget bill reform that screws average Americans like their aborted not-ObamaCare fiasco.

Maybe, that's her strategy in suggesting she is considering the executive office in the best state in the nation.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/susan-collins-main-senate-governor-243309

Statistikhengst · Oct 9, 2017

As of Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017, there were 210 declared candidates for the US-Senate. Today, October 9th, 2017, there are now 215:

There were changes in: MT-SEN 1 (10), RI-SEN 1 (4), TN-SEN 1 (6), WV-SEN 1 (9)

Note: as of September 29th, 2017, for each Senate Seat change, the party in control of that seat is now marked by color (the now widely accepted red vs blue) and the current number of candidates for that seat are listed in parentheses to the right of the seat itself.

Source (see postings from October 9th back to October 4th)

Don't forget: the link to the EXCEL document containing all of the numbers plus various links is at the OP, but for ease of reference, HERE as well.

-Stat

Statistikhengst · Oct 10, 2017

In the OP, I focused on the possibility of incumbent Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) retiring. That will not be so. She is running:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/dianne-feinstein-running-243594

Statistikhengst · Oct 10, 2017

Natty Bumpo said: ↑

One intriguing aspect in the matter of party prospects is Senator Susan Collins, ME (R) mulling a gubernatorial run in 2018 since Maine's crackpot governor is term-limited.

She may be the only Republican that could be expected to win the Senate election in Maine in 2020 so, if she opts for the governorship, her seat very likely goes over to the "D" column in a special senatorial election.

That places the sensible woman in the position of having McConnell, Trump, and a number of full-mooners (whose disastrous healthcare bills she was instrumental in killing) begging her to stay.

In the closely-divided Senate, that gives her enormous bargaining power in preventing the radicals from contriving a budget bill reform that screws average Americans like their aborted not-ObamaCare fiasco.

Maybe, that's her strategy in suggesting she is considering the executive office in the best state in the nation.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/susan-collins-main-senate-governor-243309
Click to expand...

Indeed.

perotista · Oct 10, 2017

Statistikhengst said: ↑

As written in my thead about the 2018 HOR races, I would like to again compliment the people who publish THE GREEN PAPERS. They really do excellent work at searching for an organizing information pertaining to US-elections and their site is well structured.

Similar to what I did with all 435 HOR races, I have also created an extensive EXCEL document about all 100 Senate seats, 1/3 of which are up for grabs in 2018.

There are lots of advantages to doing it this way, at least until the primaries are over with. I think that people of all ideological stripes will be thankful for this thread and please, feel free to click on and use the information.

Ok, so what is in the table and what is not at current? Here we go:

-Each state (abbreviation under "Senate-Class", first column) is hyperlinked to the Green Papers page that deals specifically with all 2018 races and is tagged to start with the SEN races.

-The 33 scheduled Class 1 races are highlighted in yellow across the respective rows. The other Senators (Class 2 and Class 3) are not highlighted, but rather, in italics. I will come back to this point later.

-Each seat-name (first column) is color coded according to the party of the current seat-holder.

-The background for both seats for each state (also first column) is colored according to the winner of that state in the 2016 presidential election. This is a feature in the SEN excel document that is not in the HOR excel document and for that very reason I screenshotted starting at MT and ending in NH; MT is a state that Pres. Trump won (and so the background is red), but has one D-Senator and one R-Senator and as history will have it, the D-Senator is up for re-election in 2018. Conversely, NV is a state that Hillary Clinton won (and so the background is blue), but has one R-Senator and one D- Senator and as history will have it, the R-Senator is up for re-election in 2018. NE and NH, on the other hand, are states where the entire senatorial delegation is of the same party as the winner of those states in the 2016 GE, respectively.

-Each candidate who has his/her own campaign website is also hyperlinked (second column).

-The year in which that senator is next up for election is in the third column. Of course, excluding AL-Spec (which will then become a 2020 race afterwards), the three possible dates right now are: 2018, 2020 and 2022.

-The year in which the Senator was first elected to that seat is listed in the fourth column.

-The type of election (Incumbent or Open) is listed in the fifth column. Currently, all 33 scheduled races for 2018 are INC races. And the one race still slated for 2017, in AL, is also currently an INC race.

-Afterwards, for Ds, Rs, Is, Ls and unaffiliateds, the NUMBER of candidates already declared for the primaries is recorded. The state link will also show whether they have already made an FEC financial filing, or not. This number has nothing to do with quality/electability of candidates nor is it a predictor of who will win. It simply shows where the candidate interest/action is as of this point in time.

-The final, comments column is helpful to see incumbent races where one of the two major parties has not fielded a candidate yet for the primaries. At this time, a small number of races are officially unopposed, but that is sure to change.

Here a map of the races to expect in 2017 and 2018:

Deliberately not color-coded red or blue. The map is only there to show where the contests will be held. Geographically, most of the mid-west, northeast and west-south-west will have contests. Half of the South will not have contests.

And while we are at it, here are the maps for Class 2 (2020) and Class 3 (2022):

This information is also in the second tab of the excel document linked to at the top of the OP. Here's a moving GIF of all three cycles:

Now, to the nuts-and-bolts. Currently, including the 2017-special in AL, here is the numeric summary of declared candidates:

No, your eyes are not deceiving you: for 34 races, at current, 188 individuals have declared themselves as candidates. Now, a boatful of them are from the upcoming AL-SEN-special, the primary for which will occur in 4 days and then those 18 primary candidates will be reduced to 2 who will go on to the General in December, but even discounting them, there are still 170 declared candidates for the primaries for 2018.

Unsurprising, as occurs every cycle, both Red and Blue teams are looking for what they perceive to be the weakest candidates on the other side. For instance, in California:

This is a good learning example for all of us, I would wager to say. Dianne Feinstein, Senior Senator from California, was first elected in 1992 in a special election and then won in 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012, so this will be her 6th senatorial campaign. She has currently drawn 7 GOP challengers, 3 Democratic challengers, two official Independent challengers and 4 unaffiliated challengers making for a crowded field of 17 candidates for the Jungle Primary. But beware, precisely because of the nature of the Jungle primary, this many candidates is not necessarily good for a Republican challenger in a state that Hillary Clinton just won by +30% in 2016, because all 17 names will be on one ballot and the top-two vote getters will go on to the General Midterm Election, which means it could be just as likely that it may be a D-vs-D race instead of a D-vs-R race in the Fall of 2018. This has already happened in California more than once. It is also fair to note that Sen. Feinstein has set a massive NPV record for the entire county, in 2012, where she accrued almost 7.9 million raw votes and beat her Republican opponent by +25%. Also to note is that in the Jungle Primary of 2012, there were a whopping 24 candidates plus one write-in. So, the 17 candidates already declared is just the start. Now, Sen. Feinstein has just turned 84 years old, which justifiably brings up the question as to whether she may retire. Wait and see. Life is change and the Senate is never exactly the same from cycle to cycle.

Another good example of a crowded field but also of a far more endangered candidate is that of Dean Heller, Senior Senator from Nevada. See: first screenshot. Now, there are only 6 candidates in that field right now, but it's a normal primary process (not a Jungle Primary) and Heller is being primaried from the Right by Danny Tarkanian. Working for Tarkanian is the fact that he is more to the Right than Heller in a state where the Republicans there tend to be more Conservative. Working against Tarkanian is that he is verifiably a perennial GOP candidate for something and always loses: he already lost two Senate primaries in 2004 and 2010, lost the primary for NV SOS in 2006 and lost two HOR races, in 2012 and 2016. I am not writing that to disparage him, for I myself am a great fan of tenacity, but in politics, losing this often usually doesn't help. Heller is in deep trouble for the mixed-messaging he sent by first voting against the repeal of Obamacare and then suddenly for the repeal. In doing this, his didn't just anger one possible constituency, but rather, two and that in a state that likes Obamacare. He is also from a state that Hillary Clinton won, but her win was small. NV is also a state where polling has more often than not been somewhat more off to the Right (see: Reid vs. Angle, 2010). I am not even going to try to prognosticate any winners or losers in the GE, but I think it's healthy to point out that this primary system in NV is probably costlier than the Jungle system in California. Wait and see.

In ND, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat in a deep red state, is up for re-election and at current, she is running unopposed. That is surely going to change and in no way reflects my opinion on the race. Surely this is going to become a marquee race to watch in 2018.

Joe Manchin, arguably the most Conservative Democrat in the Democratic Party, is up for re-election in West Virginia, a state that Pres. Trump won by over +40 points, making it the second most Conservative state in the partisan rankings, right after Wyoming. Manchin beat his last opponent in 2010, a Republican-wave year, by about 10 points. But this time he himself is getting primaried by two D opponents and 5 Rs are competing for the R nomination. Could be a very interesting race to watch in a state where Manchin is literally the last Democrat left standing, and that in one of only 6 states that stayed true to Jimmy Carter in 1980. Ahhh, life is change. If a good, civil conversation gets started up on this thread, I would be more than willing to discuss other key states. OH and PA come immediately to mind.

So, looking at the strategema for 2018, and first concentrating on the numeric strength of Republicans who have announced for office, this excel table is kind of a mirror image of the excel table for the HOR, where Ds are coming out of the woodwork to challenge Republicans. Right now, in 164 Republican HOR districts, there are now D challengers. In only 62 Democratics Districts are there R challengers. Of course, this may also change and change again.

Back to this table: why did I publish information on all 100 Senators and not just those officially up for election in 2018? I did it because you never know when a surprise is going to happen and virtually every cycle, someone whose seat was not planned for election according to the Class 1-2-3 set schedule either retires or dies or there is a massive scandal and that person resigns. John McCain, the Senior Sen. from Arizona, has brain cancer, but he is not the only one who has a major illness. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii also has cancer. Only, she is up for re-election (currently unopposed) while McCain is not. But I see a chance that one or two Senators from either Class 2 or Class 3 will exit the stage and therefore we could have more than 33 Senate elections in 2018. In fact, in the current Senate, 16 Senators were either appointed in an off year or elected in special election to replace a Senator who either retired or died. That's almost 1/5 of the current Senate.

Many more Democratic incumbents are up for re-election than Republicans, which means that the Ds will be playing more defense than offense this time around. However, if you look at the Class 2 schedule for 2020, it's exactly the opposite. What goes up, must come down.

And finally, a note about the stats concerning the Senate, found in TAB 4. Ted Kennedy was once a Lion of the Senate and he served for a very long time, but more Lions are appearing: 7 US Senators have now served more than 30 years and of them, as of January 2019, 3 will have served 40 years or more: Patrick Leahy (D-VT), first elected in 1974, Orrin Hatch (D-UT), first elected in 1976 and Thad Cochran (D-MS), first elected in 1978. Say what you might about favoring or not favoring term limits, but a Senator doesn't get elected 7 or 8 times if he's a dummy. And these older Senators - OF BOTH PARTIES - bring a sage wisdom to the august body that is needed in every legislature. Of those three Senate Lions, Hatch is up for re-election and 4 Democrats are vying for the nomination to face off against him in the General election in a state that, until 2016, was the most Conservative state in the partisan rankings.

Now, these numbers are going to change quite a bit, but I encourage you to go to the GREEN PAPERS links to see when the primaries will be, what type of primaries they will be, how many candidates are in the mix and maybe even follow the money via the FEC filings.

2018 may end up to be a very exciting mid-term cycle, in both houses of the US-Congress.

Hope this information was helpful.

-Stat
Click to expand...

I think the question is with 25 Democratic seats up for re-election vs. 8 for the Republicans is how close can the Democrats come to maintaining then status quo. The Democrats have a good chance of picking up Arizona and Nevada. While the GOP best chances are in Missouri and Indiana. Although West Virginia, Ohio and North Dakota probably will be hard to defend for the democrats. Manchin is popular in West Virginia, but the Democratic Party brand isn't.

far too early for any fairly accurate predictions, but I don't expect to see much change in the senate. Perhaps a seat or two one way or the other.

Statistikhengst · Oct 17, 2017

On Monday, October 9th, 2017, there were 215 declared candidates for the US-Senate. As of today, Tuesday, October 17th, 2017, there are now 218:

There were changes in: AL-SEN 2 (4, special election coming up), CA-SEN 1 (20)*, FL-SEN 1 (11), MD-SEN 1 (7), MO-SEN 1 (7), MT-SEN 1 (11)

Note: as of September 29th, 2017, for each Senate Seat change, the party in control of that seat is now marked by color (the now widely accepted red vs blue) and the current number of candidates for that seat are listed in parentheses to the right of the seat itself.

*in the California race, Democratic incumbent Diane Feinstein has now received a serious Democratic challenger, state Senator Kevin de León. In the OP itself I specificallyl mentioned the California race and used it as an example to explain how a Jungle primary system can produce unpredictable results. With now 20 candidates in the primary race (the largest group for any primary in the country), an exact breakdown is important: 8 Ds, 4rs, 2Is and 6 unaffiliateds. This list is almost as big as it was the last time Feinstein was up for election. In 2012, there were 24 candidates on the Jungle-list and the breakdown was D6, R14, L1, "Peace and Freedom" 2, AM Ind 1. Now, let's use some logic here: with 14R candidates on the Jungle-Primary list in 2012, Republican candidate Elizabeth Emken still managed to be the 2nd highest vote getter (albeit with only 12.7%, while Feinstein was just under 50%). So, if an R was able to do that out of a field of 14 from the same party, then an R in 2018 should have every bit as good a chance. So, don't believe the press hype about the entrance of de León making it likely a 2D race come November 2018. Again, read the information I provided in the OP. If anything, with less Rs in the Jungle field, the chances that the base of the Republican Party in California (which is verifiably the minority party in that state) will coalesce around one candidate in order to get to the GE, is very high. What is hurting the Republican Party in CA right now is the money: none of the 4rs have listed any finances with the FEC, at least as of yet, and none of them enjoy a big reputation in the state at all. So, wait and see.

Source (see postings going back to October 10th)

Don't forget: the link to the EXCEL document containing all of the numbers plus various links is at the OP, but for ease of reference, HERE as well.

-Stat

Statistikhengst · Oct 20, 2017

On today, Tuesday, October 17th, 2017, there were 218 declared candidates for the US-SEN (not just the 2018 primaries, but also, some in Class 2). As of today, Friday, October 20th, 2017, there are still 218.

Whilst there were many changes in the HOR races, there were none in the Senate. An independent candidate for the AL-SEN Class 2 special election whom I already listed on October 17th was officially listed by the Green Papers yesterday (it too that long to get the FEC filing, I assume).

Source (see postings going back to October 18th)

Don't forget: the link to the EXCEL document containing all of the numbers plus various links is at the OP, but for ease of reference, HERE as well.

-Stat

Statistikhengst · Nov 3, 2017

On Friday, October 20th, 2017, there were 218 declared candidates for the US-Senate. Today, Friday, November 3rd, 2017, there are 226:

Note: as of September 29th, 2017, for each Senate Seat change, the party in control of that seat is now marked by color (the now widely accepted red vs blue) and the current number of candidates for that seat are listed in parentheses to the right of the seat itself.

There were changes in: AL-SEN 2 (5, special election) AZ-SEN 1 (11, now an open seat, Flake is retiring), FL-SEN 1 (10), IN-SEN 1 (11), MD-SEN 1 ( 8 ), MI-SEN 1 (10), NY-SEN 1 (4), PA-SEN 1 (13), TN-SEN 1 ( 8 ), TX-SEN 1 ( 8 ), VA-SEN 1 (3)

Source (see postings going back to October 21st)

Don't forget: the link to the EXCEL document containing all of the numbers plus various links is at the OP, but for ease of reference, HERE as well.

-Stat

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2018 SEN Midterms - all 100 seats (33+ races), Part I

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2018 SEN Midterms - all 100 seats (33+ races), Part I

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