'Make a big difference': Dems win nearly all swing state Senate races despite Harris loss

09 November 2024

Democrats may have lost the White House and their U.S. Senate majority, but one silver lining is that in nearly every battleground state, Republicans lost close Senate races.

According to USA TODAY, almost all of the Senate races in the states that decided the Electoral College majority — like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — broke for Democrats. The lone exception is Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), with the Associated Press (AP) calling the race for Republican Dave McCormick. This may change, however, as NBC News has yet to call the race and Casey has yet to officially concede. With 126,000 more votes that have yet to be counted, Casey is only behind McCormick by 41,000 ballots.

While the AP has yet to call the Arizona Senate race, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) currently leads Republican Kari Lake by roughly 30,000 votes. There are roughly 622,000 more outstanding ballots remaining. The bulk of those votes are in reliably Democratic Maricopa County, which houses Phoenix.

Some of the marquee Senate races that ended up in Democrats' favor include Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) defeating former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) in the Mitten State, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) winning a third six-year term over Republican businessman Eric Hovde in the Badger State and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) prevailing over Republican Sam Brown.

While red-state Democrats like Sens. Sherrod Brown (R-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) lost their reelection battles, they still outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris by eight percentage points and 13 percentage points, respectively. And control of the House of Representatives still has yet to be determined, with neither party currently clinching the 218 seats needed for a majority in the lower chamber of Congress.

Democrats' strong performance in down-ballot races is particularly surprising given that President-elect Donald Trump swept Vice President Kamala Harris in almost all of those states (Arizona ballots are still being counted, but Trump is ahead). USA TODAY reported that even though Senate races are for federal office, voters often split tickets as they feel more personally connected to Senate candidates given their strong relationship with their home states.

"[V]oters in some places are making real distinctions to say this is not somebody who is aligned with Trump or represents him in the same way, or this is someone who has the state’s interest in mind in a way that other candidates don’t,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden told the paper. “And that really is a different story from one state to the next.”

Democratic Senate candidates' success could also be chalked up to candidates staking out their own positions independent from President Joe Biden, whose popularity rating has been underwater for several years. While Gallego touted his positions on border security, Slotkin emphasized her pro-manufacturing industry positions, Rosen talked up her work with Republicans to improve Nevada's infrastructure and Baldwin embraced Wisconsin's farmers.

"[Swing state voters are] much more responsive to who the individuals are and to their performance in office and much less susceptible to the Washington style of defining politics," Burden said. He described voters who split their tickets between both parties as "more casual voters," though he observed that "they end up being the ones who make a big difference."

Click here to read USA TODAY's article in its entirety.

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