To hold the Senate, Democrats have to do something extraordinary | They must pull off the biggest reversal of electoral disadvantage since 1978

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>AMID THE congratulatory messages for Kamala Harris, there has been one notable absence. Jon Tester, the longtime Democratic senator from Montana running for re-election, has declined to endorse his party’s standard-bearer. Currently down by an average of one point in the polls against his Republican opponent Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, Mr Tester told local newspapers that he did not want to nationalise his race. “This isn’t about national politics, this is about Montana,” he declared.

>Democrats aren’t complaining about this strategy. Mr Tester has won his past three Senate races in a very Republican state by an average of just 2.7 points. And this year Democrats’ hopes of keeping the Senate hinge on Mr Tester eking out another victory. In addition to the race in Montana, Democrats are defending Senate seats in six other states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. To retain control of the Senate, Democrats will need to win all six of those races plus Montana and the presidency, or flip seats in other Republican states like Florida and Texas.

>Democrats must do battle in such unfavourable terrain because the Senate is heavily skewed against them. In every presidential election since 1980, Republicans have tended to win rural states that receive the same representation as more populous, urban states where Democrats do well. This year the Senate’s Republican bias is compounded by the fact that a disproportionate number of Republican-leaning but Democratic-held states will elect senators. If Democrats are to end up with 50 seats this year, they will have to win at least one state where in 2020 Republicans led by at least ten points more than the national average (see chart). That would go against a pattern that has held since at least 1978.

>The best hope for Democrats therefore lies in Senate candidates who can run ahead of the presidential ticket. So far, encouraging polls for Democratic candidates suggest this might be the case in some races. When pollsters have asked voters about their Senate and presidential preferences in the same survey, the Democratic Senate candidate’s margin has been about three percentage points better than Ms Harris’s (excluding Maine, where independent incumbent Angus King is running for re-election). In states where the Democratic candidate is an incumbent, this number swells to nine points.

>In some races Republicans have themselves to blame for their poor numbers. In the 2022 midterm elections they failed to gain seats despite a favourable Senate map and national environment. MAGA Republicans lost close races in swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia. This year Arizona Republicans appear poised to repeat this mistake in the state’s Senate race by nominating Kari Lake, who is running against Democrat Ruben Gallego, a former US marine. Ms Lake lost her gubernatorial race in the state in 2022 by 0.7 points while her colleagues in Arizona’s House races won by 13 points. Mr Gallego is now polling six points ahead of her, and two better than Ms Harris.