WASHINGTON — Democrats are the underdogs in the battle to control the Senate this year, and if they are unable to limit their losses in the upper chamber, they could be stuck in the minority for many years to come.
Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told the Beyond the Bubble podcast Tuesday that even though Republicans will be defending significantly more Senate seats in 2020 than 2018, Democrats will likely still have few pick-up opportunities.
“This Senate map sets up the next one in that if Republicans are able to make a two or three seat net gain this year, which seems possible, they could effectively shut out the Democrats in 2020 even if the environment is bad for Republicans,” Kondik said.
Looking ahead to 2020, there are 22 Republican-held seats and 12 Democratic-held seats on the map. Kondik said the most vulnerable member of the cycle is a Democrat, Doug Jones of Alabama.
Otherwise Kondik currently rates just two GOP-controlled seats as tossups: Arizona and Colorado.
In 2018, Democrats are defending 26 Senate seats, including 10 in states President Trump won. Even if they aren’t able to win back the majority this time, Kondik said flipping seats like Arizona and Nevada could be critical to doing so further down the road.
“The problem for Democrats in the Senate is the Senate map, just like the House map, has this inherent Republican lean,” Kondik said. “If they could pick up a seat or only lose one net seat or keep it neutral, that would probably be a good outcome for Democrats as we shift into the 2020 map.”
Liberal activists have expressed their frustration with the makeup of the Senate in the aftermath of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination process. Many felt the upper chamber is stacked against them, since less populous states that are represented by Republicans send as many senators to Washington as more populous states that are represented by Democrats.
Some have proposed making Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico states to provide balance, while others on the extreme end of the debate have floated abolishing the Senate altogether.
Molly Reynolds, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, told Beyond the Bubble that neither of those outcomes are politically feasible. But she said the frustration these activists are expressing goes well beyond the Kavanaugh confirmation.
“People think that Washington isn’t making policies and producing outcomes. At this very moment, one way that frustration is realizing itself is in this particular criticism of the Senate and the idea that the coalition that voted for Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice … only represents some portion of Americans,” Reynolds said. “And people don’t feel like they’re voices are being heard.”
Even as Democrats lose their grip on more predominantly white, working-class states, Reynolds noted that Democrats may be able to counterbalance that with gains in more demographically diverse states moving forward.
“We’ve seen other periods of regional realignments with the parties,” Reynolds said. “It’s the story of American history that the two parties aren’t fixed.”
McClatchy’s Beyond the Bubble show is produced by Jordan-Marie Smith and Davin Coburn. McClatchy national political correspodents Alex Roarty and Adam Wollner recorded this episode at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, October 16, 2018.