The relatively good news is that it appears, at least at this point in time, likelier than not that the Democrats will be able take control of the Senate. We aren’t going to assign percentage odds to that likelihood, but Democratic candidates lead in enough separate races in Republican-held seats that, if the eventual results match current polling, there would be a Democratic majority.

You might have heard that story before; if you recall back to 2014 (when the fight was to hold control the Senate), 2016, or 2018, it looked plausible several months out in each of those years that the Democrats could win a majority, but the wheels gradually fell off over the course of the last month of the cycle. The difference this year may be that Democratic candidates seem to have bigger and more consistent leads in the probably decisive races, as well as few places where they’re on the defensive and a broader array of second-chance races if any of the big ones take a late bad turn. While there is plenty of time for things to still go wrong, Democratic candidates in the biggest races have seemed unexpectedly resilient this year, in much the same way that Biden has at the top of the ticket.

Let’s start with the basic math: Democrats (and Dem-aligned independents) currently hold 47 seats, while Republicans hold 53 seats. So, the Democrats would need a net gain of three seats to control the Senate, assuming that they also win the presidential race and a Democratic vice-president is present to break ties. To be on the safe side, you might think of a net gain of four as a better target as insulation against a Republican vice-president (though because of the important role of coattails in downballot races, it’s extremely unlikely we’d be gaining that many Senate seats against the backdrop of a Republican presidential victory).

Another way to think of a four-seat gain, though, would be that’s enough to create not just a majority but a Joe Manchin-proof majority, which could make all the difference between a Senate that merely does no harm versus one that can pass progressive legislation — or even, say, have the votes to eliminate the filibuster in order to even contemplate passing such legislation in the first place. Of course, then, you might start thinking about also needing a five-seat gain to create a Kyrsten Sinema-proof majority, a six-seat gain to create a Tom Carper-proof majority, and so on, but let’s not go wild just yet.

So, there are several ways to achieve the bare minimum three-seat net gain. The simplest way, of course, would be to win three seats while losing none; for instance, those might be Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, three races where the Democratic candidate has consistently led all year, often outside the margin of error. The bad news, however, is that most likely the Republicans will be picking up a seat in Alabama. If anyone is capable of holding that seat, it’s probably Doug Jones — but this has been a widely expected outcome after he won a 2017 special election in one of the nation’s reddest states against a bizarrely flawed Republican opponent, Roy Moore — and polls currently show that the widely expected outcome is indeed likely to happen.

That makes a fourth pickup necessary. Luckily, the Democratic candidate in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham, is also routinely leading in the polls. In fact, it wouldn’t be outlandish to think that North Carolina is a better bet than Maine, if you’d prefer; while the polling average in Maine has a showier lead, the lead in North Carolina has been very stable and is based on many, many more polls. The Maine number, in fact, is heavily driven by last week’s Quinnipiac poll, which is the only poll this race has seen with a double-digit lead for Democratic candidate Sara Gideon.

On top of that, there are near ties in Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina, and Georgia’s regularly scheduled race, along with races within arm’s reach in Iowa, Montana, and Texas. Compounding the Republicans’ problems, there is only one other competitive race where they’re on the offense (but still losing), in Michigan. (If we ran a thousand permutations, you’d probably get a few “five minus two” instances where we, say, lost Alabama and Michigan but gained Arizona, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Iowa, and thus the majority. That’s too marginal a case to really plan for, though.)

To help visualize this, as we did in 2018, we’re going to arrange the competitive Senate races in something of a “totem pole,” with the likeliest Democratic wins at the top and the likeliest Republican wins at the bottom. To keep the scope manageable, we aren’t going to include the races that we rate as “Safe” for one party or the other — with a couple exceptions, which I’ll mention later. It won’t increase your situational awareness to know that we’re on track to win the Virginia Senate race by 20 points, for instance. Slicing through the middle of the totem pole is the Red Line of Death, at the 50 D/50 R seat mark. To win the Senate along with winning the White House, there need to be either three Democratic pickups above the line and no losses below it, or four Democratic pickups above the line and one loss below it. (Well, it’s not actually red; you’ll have to use your imagination.)

As you can see from the table, the Democrats are doing the latter: they’re picking up four seats and giving up one. And that’s a net gain of three without counting the two races that are, for the moment, precisely tied in our averages. We’d still need at least one more of those, however, to have a Joe Manchin-proof majority (or, less appealingly, a Mike Pence-proof majority).

There are two races on here, as I mentioned, that are currently rated Safe Republican in Daily Kos Elections’ qualitative ratings, but which I’m including in this chart anyway (largely because I’d be asked about them all the time anyway, if I didn’t). One is the race in Mississippi, where, in a rematch of the 2018 special election, Democratic ex-Rep. Mike Espy is running against appointed incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Espy lost that race by a surprisingly close eight points, and he’s coming even closer in the current polls. The reason we have this race at Safe R, however, is that because Mississippi has the highest African-American percentage of any state, it’s actually not unusual for a Democratic candidate to hit the low-to-mid-40s here, despite Mississippi’s usual dark-red status. However, that’s because of its heavily racially-polarized voting, so, in an “inelastic” state with few swing voters, the final ascent to the 50% mark is brutally difficult.

The other is Kentucky, which is high on most people’s wish lists and where Democratic candidate Amy McGrath is raising money at an astonishing clip. The unfortunate reality, though, is that McGrath is nevertheless trailing Mitch McConnell by double digits, in another state where it’s not hard for a Democrat to break 40 (thanks more to a lot of white “ancestral Democrats,” rather than a large African-American base) but getting to 50 in a federal race is a Herculean feat. (As a caveat, Kentucky did elect a Democratic governor last year — the son of a popular ex-Governor, against a terrible incumbent, who won by only a fraction of a point.) Think of McGrath’s job more as to raise a ton of money and keep McConnell pinned down and unable to help in closer races.

Finally, there’s one other race that isn’t on the chart simply because the cake hasn’t even gone in the oven yet. That’s the special election in Georgia, where appointed incumbent Kelly Loeffler faces voters for the first time in an odd format. All candidates from both parties participate on one ballot in the vote on Election Day, with the top two advancing to a January runoff — so what’s happening on Election Day is more like the primary. Unfortunately, what’s happening right now is that the top two slots in the polling average are both going to Republicans: Loeffler at 24 and Doug Collins at 20. The top Democrat, Raphael Warnock, is only narrowly behind at 17 and there are still many undecided voters, so it’s quite possible he (or another Democrat) breaks into the top two. But, really, we won’t know until after Election Day whether this is even a potential pickup or not.

I would also urge you to consider the Daily Kos Elections qualitative ratings as well, which take other factors, like spending by committees like the DSCC or Super PACs like the Senate Majority Project, how red or blue a state is at the presidential level, and how willing a state has been in the past to ticket-split. That could be a helpful corrective in the case of, say, Maine, which we still rate as a “Tossup.” That’s because there have been relatively few polls here, most of which until recently showed a much closer race, as well as Mainers’ long tradition of ticket-splitting and the ease with which Susan Collins has dispatched previous opponents — though a good sign is that whatever magic touch she had in the past seems to have entirely vanished this year.

Similarly, you might consider the reasons we still have South Carolina at “Likely Republican” despite the very close polls there; it’s a reliably-red state with very racially-polarized voting, where undecided voters are more likely to break to the Republican candidate, and while being at 46 is pretty impressive, it’s still a loooong way away from being at 50. (The same could be said of, for example, Alaska or Kansas.) That contrasts with, say, Iowa (which we have at “Tossup”), where a tied race gives a Democratic candidate a pretty good shot at winning, given its long-standing swing state status and tendency to oscillate back and forth between the two parties based on distaste for whichever party is currently in power.

Finally, this week we’re going to briefly veer off into talking about the forgotten step-child of the elections world, gubernatorial races. Back in 2018, there were so many exciting races that we maintained a separate weekly gubernatorial preview. This year, we won’t. Largely, that’s because most gubernatorial races happen in midterm years; only around a dozen states do it during presidential years. And beyond that, there’s really only one (yes, one) gubernatorial race this year where the outcome seems truly in doubt, and it’s in one of the nation’s least populous states.

That’s the Montana gubernatorial race, which we currently rate “Lean Republican.” This would lead to a net pickup of one gubernatorial seat for the GOP, since it’s an open seat where termed-out current Democratic governor Steve Bullock is currently running for Senate. After 16 years of Democratic governors, it appears that Montana is on track to revert to its usual red-state status, which is unfortunate because this year’s GOP nominee is Rep. Greg Gianforte, probably best known for assaulting a reporter during his 2018 House campaign. However, what few polls we’ve seen have shown a close race between Gianforte and Democratic Lt. Governor Mike Cooney, so it’s possible we’ll get lucky and see no change whatsoever. Here’s the table of the few races that Daily Kos Elections qualitatively rates something other than “Safe,” at least where we have polls. (We rate West Virginia “Likely Republican” but have no polls of the current matchup, period.)

Rather than having a separate gubernatorial preview on a regular schedule, which would bore even the most devoted of elections junkies, we’ll just pop back in and add this table to a future week’s Senate preview if a noteworthy-enough poll drops in any of these races to change its trajectory.

There’s still the matter of the House side of the equation, where the Democratic majority is in little danger and, in fact, is poised to grow slightly; my esteemed colleague Steve Singiser will be doing regular House previews, also to launch in the coming weeks. And, of course, there’s the presidential race. Daily Kos Elections will not be doing a predictive model as we did in 2016 or aggregating presidential polls. Partly, that’s because Drew Linzer, who programmed our 2016 model for us, is currently otherwise occupied running our polling partner, Civiqs. We also feel that there are already a number of trustworthy practitioners (many of whom are named Nate) providing services in that area, with whom you’re probably already familiar.

Beyond that, there are simply the lessons of 2016, which demonstrated that the business of trying to assign a precise percentage likelihood to a black swan event or systematic polling error is something of a fool’s errand. In fact, research suggests that predictive modeling goes beyond mere fool’s errand territory to having actual harmful effects, possibly lowering turnout among voters who misapply the data or misunderstand probability. (Nevertheless, if you want to look at our “totem pole” and say to yourself “it looks like there’s a 50% chance of the Democrats winning a Senate majority” or “no, actually, it looks like there’s a 66% chance of a Democratic majority,” I won’t try to stop you, and in fact those would both be fairly reasonable conclusions.)

8 PM ET

Michigan

Delegates: 27 statewide at-large, 16 statewide PLEO, 4 in MI-04 and MI-10, 5 in MI-01, MI-02, MI-03, MI-06, and MI-07, 6 in MI-05 and MI-08, 7 in MI-09, MI-11, MI-12, and MI-13, 9 in MI-14 (125 pledged delegates total)

Polls: Biden 54, Sanders 31 (weighted average)

The Michigan primary in 2016 was one of the most memorable of that entire primary season: It was a must-win for Sanders, who had had some big losses in prior weeks, and yet he did win narrowly, despite what the polls were suggesting. Theoretically, we could see the exact same thing this time. The average of the polls puts Biden ahead, though not by an insurmountable amount, and Sanders has forgone campaigning in Mississippi and Missouri in the last few days in order to focus heavily on the Wolverine State.

There are some problems that might prevent a repeat, though. Sanders managed to win Michigan last time thanks to a surprising surge from rural counties that are mostly white and that usually vote Republican in the general election. But results from similar counties on Super Tuesday (from, say, rural Minnesota or Oklahoma) saw Sanders losing big in the same counties where he won four years ago; instead, those were places where Biden and Bloomberg did well. That’s suggestive that Sanders benefited from a large “not Hillary” vote in 2016, and those numbers don't hold up when there are other options that are both more moderate and more male than Clinton.

With the campaign whittled down to essentially two candidates at this point (sorry, Tulsi), both candidates should have no trouble hitting the viability threshold both statewide and in all of Michigan’s congressional districts. The state’s biggest delegate prize is the 14th Congressional District in Detroit, which of course has a large African American population but also has a significant Arab American community where Sanders may have made some inroads, so it may not be as monolithically pro-Biden as you’d at first think. Also, Sanders still has a good shot at scratching out wins in the districts with large universities, such as the 8th and the 12th.

A brief technical note: Parts of the state's Upper Peninsula are in the Central time zone, and polls there will close one hour later than in the rest of the state. That only reflects a small percentage of the total state, and it’s possible that if the race is not close, it may be called before that time.

Mississippi

Delegates: 8 statewide at-large, 5 statewide PLEO, 5 in MS-01, 9 in MS-02, 5 in MS-03, 4 in MS-04 (36 total pledged delegates)

Polls: Biden 74, Sanders 23 (weighted average)

We can probably expect to see Mississippi called for Biden at 8 PM Eastern, maybe at 8:01 PM if the networks are being extra careful. The polling averages in Mississippi give him a huge lead. In addition, the result last week in Alabama—Mississippi’s neighbor and one of its most demographically similar counterparts—is a similarly good indicator: Biden won there 63-17, and the result in Mississippi is likely only to improve for him with Mike Bloomberg out of the race.

It’s remotely possible that Sanders won’t even end up hitting the 15% statewide viability threshold in Mississippi—he barely hit it in Alabama. It’s even likelier that he will miss the threshold in Mississippi’s 2nd district, the state’s lone black-majority congressional district—which also has a much bigger delegate share than the state’s other districts, since that’s where most of its Democratic electorate is packed. Sanders may still gain a few delegates in the state’s three other districts, though.

Missouri

Delegates: 15 statewide at-large, 9 statewide PLEOs, 4 in MO-08, 5 in MO-03, MO-04, MO-06, and MO-07, 6 in MO-02 and MO-05, 8 in MO-01 (68 pledged delegates total)

Polls: Biden 55, Sanders 31 (weighted average)

Sanders lost Missouri only narrowly in 2016, in fact by only 0.2%, so the result was even closer than in Michigan that year. However, the polls that we’re seeing this year do not bode well for him this time: What we’re seeing looks similar to what we saw in nearby border states such as Arkansas and Tennessee on this year’s Super Tuesday. A significant part of Missouri’s Democratic electorate is African American, concentrated heavily in the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas and the state’s rural southeast. And while Sanders performed well in the whiter rural parts of the state last time, as we’re also likely to see in Michigan, he can’t rely on what was the “not Hillary” vote going his way when Biden, rather than Clinton, is in the race.

Looking more closely at congressional districts, Biden looks likely to do well in the big-city districts such as the 1st and 5th, which, not coincidentally, have the highest delegate totals. Sanders’ best district may well be the 4th, which both is mostly white and has the state’s largest university in Columbia, though that makes up only a small part of the district, and even the 4th may be out of reach for him to win outright.

North Dakota

Delegates: 3 statewide at-large, 2 statewide PLEO, 9 in ND-AL (14 pledged delegates total)

Polls: none

North Dakota is actually a “firehouse caucus,” which means that it’s a primary election that’s administered by the state party, not the state government, in a limited number of voting locations. So you get the partial voter suppression of having to travel a longer way to cast your vote, but at least you don’t have to spend several hours sitting there listening to people bloviate before doing so. North Dakota is split into two time zones, but the caucuses are timed timed so that they end at 7 PM Central time and 6 PM Mountain time, so there’s a uniform closing time.

We’re flying totally blind in North Dakota pollwise. While Sanders won big in North Dakota in 2016 (when the format was more of a true caucus), the nearby and demographically similar rural counties of Minnesota, which voted last week, might be a better comparison point for this year. That would bode much better for Biden this time. There are still a handful of counties in northwestern Minnesota that Biden didn’t win last week, but they went to favorite daughter Amy Klobuchar, who’s no longer in the race and whose votes seem more likely to gravitate to Biden.

11 PM ET

Idaho

Delegates: 4 statewide at-large, 3 statewide PLEO, 6 in ID-01, 7 in ID-02 (20 pledged delegates total)

Polls: none

We’re also flying blind in Idaho, with no polls. But I suspect this will be Sanders’ strongest state of the night, and possibly his only win of the night. Sanders won one of his most lopsided victories of 2016 here (78%-21%, and 18 to 5 delegates), though that was with the benefit of the caucus format; Idaho is using a primary this year instead. However, Idaho is demographically and ideologically similar to nearby Utah, which was one of the few states on Super Tuesday where Sanders won. Sanders’ 2020 Utah win was greatly diminished from his 2016 win there, though. His 2020 win in Utah was also with Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren putting in strong performances, so Idaho might go differently with them out of the race now, especially with Biden likelier to inherit would-be Bloomberg voters.

The state’s two congressional districts are pretty demographically similar to one other. One thing to keep an eye on is the more southerly 2nd district, which has a larger Latino population than does the 1st, though it’s unclear whether the Sanders campaign has been able to mobilize them as effectively as it did in Nevada, for example. Much of the 1st district’s population is in the Pacific time zone, and polls there close at 8 PM local time (11 PM Eastern), so it’s unlikely that we’ll see a call statewide before then, even though the majority of the state’s polling places will have closed one hour earlier.

Washington

Delegates: 19 statewide at-large, 12 statewide PLEO, 3 in WA-04, 4 in WA-05, 5 in WA-03, WA-08, and WA-10, 6 in WA-01, WA-02, and WA-06, 7 in WA-09, 11 in WA-07 (89 pledged delegates total)

Polls: Biden 40, Sanders 36 (weighted average)

One of the forgotten stories of the 2016 campaign was that Washington state actually gave Sanders his largest net delegate haul of any state (74 to 27, a net of 47 delegates). The important thing to know about that, though, is that those results came from caucuses. The state also had an entirely nonbinding vote-by-mail primary on a different day, and that went totally the opposite direction: Clinton won it 52-48. Now it’s distinctly possible that Sanders would have still narrowly won Washington if there had only been a primary (as he did in nearby Oregon, which did use only a primary), because that’s what he would have emphasized in his campaigning, but the fact remains that he benefited greatly from Washington being the largest state in the nation that used caucuses that year, and its decision to stop using them in 2020 is an underrated obstacle to his gaining the nomination, and was so even before the events of Super Tuesday happened.

The few pre-Super Tuesday polls of Washington that we saw gave Sanders a mid-single-digit advantage over Biden. However, we’ve now seen two post-Super Tuesday polls, from SurveyUSA and Data for Progress, and they both give Biden a low-single-digit lead instead. One thing to keep in mind is that Washington is a vote-by-mail state, and ballots were sent out several weeks before Super Tuesday, so some of those ballots were already returned before the Great Winnowing.

Since Washington will count ballots that are postmarked on Tuesday, even if they arrive later, strap in for a protracted counting period. We may not know for a week or more who has won. But we could see two competing trends in the late ballots, which may wind up canceling each other out: On the one hand, Biden may benefit in the late-breaking ballots, since they’re less likely than earlier ballots to include errant votes for Bloomberg or other candidates who’ve dropped out.

On the other hand, Washington’s younger and more liberal voters are notorious for waiting until the last minute to drop their ballots, meaning that as the count goes on, left-leaning candidates who were trailing on election night often end up winning in the end. That could end up benefiting Sanders. Though, given that Sanders is facing possible delegate annihilation in Florida one week after Washington, it’s at least worth considering that he may have already ended his campaign by the time Washington finishes counting!