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After days of hints at it, Democrats are now making a serious foray into Florida and Texas in a last-ditch effort to hold on to their Senate majority. Before calling it “last-ditch,” I wondered what to call it. Is that too pessimistic? Too optimistic? I’m really not sure. You know the background. Democrats went into this cycle with an almost historically bad map. One seat in West Virginia was, by universal agreement, hopeless. Beyond that preordained loss, Democrats had incumbents up in a several of the swing states and new candidates trying to hold existing seats in other swing states. On the other side of the ledger there were no obvious pick-up opportunities. Starting from those inauspicious beginnings, the Democrats’ map has held up remarkably well. In all but one case, Senate Democratic candidates go into the last month of the campaign either favorites or strong contenders. That one exception is Montana, where Jon Tester is now a decided underdog. Which brings us to Florida and Texas.
Are these races really plausible?
I’ve seen many discussions of this. Some of those amount to guffaws, that this is a desperate attempt at un-winnable races. “Un-winnable” isn’t accurate, though they certainly won’t be easy. But that uncharitable way of looking at it, regardless of just where you put the odds, is wrong in general. The goal is to retain the majority. The most obvious way to do that was for Jon Tester to win his reelection. If that’s not looking likely, you look for the next best options. And these are clearly the next best options. The answer isn’t to say, “welp, I guess we’re not going to be in the majority.” This is where the best shot is, so you go for it. It’s really as simple as that. The underlying variable, of course, is money. And Democrats have the money. So it would be malpractice not to put everything behind the effort.
So how possible is it that Democrats will win in these states?
Let’s talk about the factors in play.
Start with the fact that neither Ted Cruz or Rick Scott is very popular. They’re basically going to be held up by the Republican tilt of their states. Florida has been trending away from Democrats while Texas is trending toward them. But both remain clearly in the Republican column. In a cranky year with a strong “change” sentiment, there’s a definite opening against an unpopular incumbent. An August poll showed Rick Scott with a 35% public approval rating. That, needless to say, is really bad. There are also abortion rights and pot legalization propositions on the Florida ballot. And the presidential race itself is fairly close. Just four percentage points separate Harris and Trump.
Given all those numbers, it would be crazy not to make a big play for Florida. The two things Scott has in his favor is, first, that he’s loaded. He can pour in basically as much money as he wants to counter a big Democratic push. The second is that he’s just on the merits a very successful candidate. Despite the reptilian persona, he has won three consecutive statewide races in Florida — two for governor and one for Senate. In each case, people very reasonably asked, how can this lizardly dude win? But he did win.
Now Texas. Everyone hates Ted Cruz. This is just doctrine. But, pains me as it does to say this, his approval numbers in Texas don’t really bear that out. His approval numbers this year have been in the mid-high 40s. That’s not great. But those aren’t terrible approval numbers in this era. And they’re not the approval numbers of someone who is only competitive for reelection because of his Republican brand. Trump is up by 6 points against Harris in Texas compared to four points in Florida. Meanwhile Texas doesn’t have an abortion ballot initiative like Florida does. This analyst notes that Colin Allred has gotten close to Cruz by massively outspending him, a deficit that will now be erased. Meanwhile, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has been dramatically outspent by Rick Scott so far and is not far behind. It’s another sign that a new infusion of money is most likely to have an impact in Florida.
By all these measures, Florida looks a bit more likely as a pick-up opportunity than Texas. But a decent amount of the calculus may come down to the Harris campaign rather than Colin Allred’s in Texas or Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s in Florida. We live in a straight-ticket voting era. That’s why Jon Tester is in such a bad position. He’s well liked in the state but it’s a heavily Republican state. And Trump will win by a big margin.
There are various equations that say that if a Democrat is running for Senate in Florida or Texas in a general election, the presidential candidate has to keep the race to some low number to make it even possible for the Senate candidate. I don’t know just what that number is. It can’t be too far off since the top-of-the-ticket polls are pretty close already. But to make this possible, Harris probably has to make some additional push in those states. Obviously Harris has her own race to worry about. So it’s not like she can take time away from the core swing states to invest in trying to bank shot long-odds Senate races in states Trump is highly likely to win. But the one thing Democrats seem to have in abundance is money. So perhaps it’s possible without a major sacrifice of candidate time.
The final point is the possibility of significant Democratic overperformance on Election Day. In any election, exceeding expectations is possible. Democrats tend to focus, understandably, on the possibility of Trump over-performing the polls. That’s definitely possible. But it’s also possible the opposite will happen. And this is possible not just in the general sense that this can always happen. There are some particular reasons why it’s possible. I’ve argued before that the Dobbs decision represented an electoral pivot separating the preceding six years of Republican overperformance in the polls and starting a new period in which Democrats seemed to overperform their numbers. As time has gone on, I’ve more seriously considered the possibility that when pollsters rejiggered their methodologies to account for the 2020 presidential polling error they may simply have over-adjusted, over-shot the mark. Perhaps it’s a mix of both. I don’t talk about this a lot because it’s really more a hunch based on some specific data than something I’m sure about or want to make an affirmative case for. In this context I’m not saying it will happen. I’m saying that if it were to happen, you’re going to want to have turbocharged these Senate races as much as possible. With a two- to three-point polling error, suddenly these races that seemed like long-shots could actually be very competitive.
The other factor is abortion, not just in the general sense, which may be affecting Democratic overperformace in recent elections, but specifically because it’s on the ballot in Florida. The odds of that initiative winning are much longer since Florida requires a 60% majority. But Florida has a draconian six-week ban in effect. So that is another factor possibly making Florida more competitive than it looks.
What the whole thing comes down to is money. If you have a lot of it, these are certainly races to invest in because they’re possible and Plan A for maintaining Senate control is looking quite rickety. And Democrats do have a lot of it. It makes sense to spend it in these races, and we’ll know more on November 6th.