It’s not enough for former President Donald Trump to get his old job back. He’ll need significant margins in both houses of Congress, as well — and that means winning a number of contested Senate races.
We’ve already gone through five of the 10 races that will determine whether a second Trump administration will be able to easily pass the MAGA agenda or whether compromises will have to be made.
If you want to read the first part, click here. Here’s the second half of our look at the 10 races, which could determine the shape America takes legislatively during the Trump 47 administration, if he gets re-elected.
Ohio
The Ohio race for the seat currently held by Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown is a lot like many of the races we’ve already profiled: He’s running against a Republican businessman, he spent most of the summer way ahead, and the polls have now closed up.
Brown is running against Bernie Moreno, one of the candidates in the 2022 GOP primary that J.D. Vance eventually won. (Whatever happened to that guy?)
This time, Moreno has always been the frontrunner, and polls between last summer and August generally showed Brown with a healthy lead — sometimes by as few as two or as many as 10 points, according to RealClearPolitics.
As the race hit September, though, the polls began narrowing to the point where Brown was, at best, up within the margin of error. Of the three polls that count in RealClearPolitics’ polling aggregate taken in October, two show Brown ahead — a Washington Post poll by one point and a Marist poll in which he leads by two — and one shows Moreno ahead. (That’s a Rasmussen Reports poll that shows him with a one point lead.)
Overall, the RCP aggregate has Brown ahead slightly as of Oct. 14, 47.3 percent to 46.7 percent.
What remains to be seen is how other factors affect this race. Ohio isn’t considered a swing state in terms of the presidential race; both Trump’s selection of Sen. Vance as his vice presidential pick and the general swing of Ohio to being a red state in national races mean the former president holds a considerable advantage over Vice President Harris. This could drag Moreno over the line — or it could also lead to voters simply viewing the national race as being over and tuning things out.
He has Trump’s full-throated endorsement and has had it since last December: “Bernie Moreno, a highly respected businessman from the GREAT State of Ohio, is exactly the type of MAGA fighter that we need in the United States Senate,” Trump said in a statement last year.
Republicans have also outspent the Democrats in the state, with the GOP having shelled out “roughly $188.4 million on ads since the March 19 primary, compared with $159.7 million by Democrats,” the Associated Press reported. However, with just two weeks to go, it appears neither candidate can agree on a debate — which could affect Moreno’s ability to chip away at Brown, an entrenched incumbent who has been in office since the 2006 blue wave.
West Virginia
To be fair, the question isn’t whether or not the GOP will take over the seat being vacated by former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin — who became an independent after breaking with his party over energy issues and the filibuster — but by how much.
Gov. Jim Justice is the GOP nominee, and former Wheeling, West Virginia Mayor Glenn Elliott is the Democratic sacrificial la– erm, candidate.
The only major poll in the race recognized by both major aggregates — RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight — is an August poll by West Virginia MetroNews, which showed Justice ahead by a 62 percent to 28 percent margin over Elliott. FiveThirtyEight also included a poll by Kaplan Strategies from June, which only shows Elliott down by a 60 percent to 27 percent margin, a slightly slimmer gap. (One is put in mind of the famous Jim Carrey quote from “Dumb and Dumber“: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance …”)
West Virginia won’t be one of the races pundits will be watching on Nov. 5 except for two things. First, it’s a barometer of just how far the Democrats have fallen in Middle America, particularly in energy-producing states. It’s something that we could see play out in other Rust Belt swing states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin: Without the power of incumbency from an old-school Democrat like Sherrod Brown or Joe Manchin, the party is sinking or sunk in those places.
Second, even if every other seat is a matter of the incumbent party holding power, West Virginia would guarantee that the Senate will be 50-50. Mind you, if Trump wins, that still means he’d need the vice president’s vote to break ties, and he’d also need to keep a few RINOs on board to get his way. That being said, for Democrats who threw hissy fits about Joe Manchin’s moderate politics, this is a reminder of why he was so important to their electoral chances.
Michigan
Speaking of Michigan, there’s a seat up for grabs there, too. Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is retiring in the swing state and two representatives — one current, one former — are vying for the position.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, widely seen as a rising star within the party, is the Democratic nominee. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was once chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is the Republican candidate.
Slotkin, who entered as a prohibitive favorite, has a 3.0 percent lead over Rogers in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, 47.4 to 44.4 percent.
In the final debate for the seat, Rogers made an appeal to Michigan’s working class voters, asking the usual question about the economy and inflation: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
“My opponent voted 100 percent with Biden-Harris [Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic presidential nominee] on all of the things that have raised your prices,” he said, according to the Detroit Free Press, adding that he would check “outrageous and wasteful spending” by Democrats.
“I will go back to Washington and make that change. I will have your back,” he told voters.
Slotkin, meanwhile, has made gun control one of her top issues, saying that Republicans like Rogers oppose restrictions “in the face of murdered children … because they receive campaign donations and they’re scared. They’re scared because they don’t want to lose their election, and it’s terrible.”
In addition, Rogers opposes mandates forcing America toward electrification of our vehicles, while Slotkin supports more incentives for EV production, claiming that “China is eating our lunch on these kind of vehicles.”
Montana
If there’s another state where the GOP is likely to make a pickup this cycle, it’s in Montana, where Tim Sheehy — yes, another businessman; the private sector is well-represented this election cycle, and thank goodness — is pulling away in the polls from incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Tester, another entrenched incumbent who has survived several close calls after also surfing the blue wave of 2006, has been in trouble since the beginning of the race on a whole host of issues, not the least of which is his continued support of the Democratic Party’s agenda amid its lurch to the left.
Take, for instance, the border, which Sheehy — also a Navy SEAL and aerial firefighter — has been beating up Tester over. In May, after Republicans said his support for the Laken Riley Act was mere political expediency, this was Tester’s response to the GOP tying him to the border crisis: “They’re full of s***. And whoever told you that, you can say ‘Jon Tester said you’re full of s***.’”
Quotable though that may be, voters don’t seem to be buying it. Most of the polls FiveThirtyEight aggregated have shown Sheehy up by anywhere between six and eight points since August, with Sheehy holding a 5.4 percent lead in the weighted aggregate. RealClearPolitics’ aggregate, meanwhile, has him up by 7.0 percent — 51.2 percent to 44.2 percent — as of Oct. 8.
Meanwhile, a last-minute push to claim that Sheehy lied about a wound he says he suffered in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to have dinged his chances. Republicans have long felt that Tester was, at best, renting his seat from Republicans; that’s turned into quite the long-term rental. However, unless something drastic happens in the last few weeks of the campaign, it appears that his lease might have finally run out.
That being said, it’s worth noting, as The Hill did, that Democrats think “the GOP has become too confident in a state that is known to be tough to poll and where Tester has previously prevailed despite being down in the polls.”
“I’m still not betting against Tester. That’s the bottom line,” one Democratic Montana strategist said. “He knows how to win close races,, and he knows how to turn out a vote. … That muscle memory is something I’m not going to bet against.”
“They’re clearly, in my view, making a mistake,” Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said. “Never count out Jon Tester.”
That being said, Trump is polling ahead of Kamala Harris in Montana by an even higher number than he beat Joe Biden by in the state — 17 points, meaning nearly one out of every five Trump voters would need to vote Tester for him to win. Considering how tied he is to the Democratic Party’s agenda on a polarized Capitol Hill, that’s a tall order.
Nebraska
We close with one of the odder races of this or any Senate election cycle, and one the GOP was sure it had in the bag: Nebraska.
Incumbent Republican Sen. Deb Fischer wasn’t supposed to see any serious Democratic competition — and, indeed, she hasn’t. Instead “nonpartisan” candidate Dan Osborn, a mechanic, former union leader and Navy veteran, has stayed stubbornly close in the polls.
“I am frustrated with both sides catering to the extremes,” Osborn said during a town hall meeting, according to USA Today. “Less than two percent of our elected officials both in the House and Senate come from the working class, so I can bring a unique perspective to Congress.”
He’s promised not to caucus with either the Republicans or Democrats if elected. However, the fact that Democrats pulled out of the race to give him an edge probably gives you a good idea which way his bread is buttered — and he’ll likely find out awfully quickly how difficult it is to get things done in the Senate without being caucused with a major party.
That being said, if he wins, he could end up being a swing vote. How close he is to winning depends on which campaign you ask. Quite literally, in fact, since most of the major polls in the race have been conducted by the Fischer and Osborn camps.
According to FiveThirtyEight, the four polls sponsored by Osborn in October have him up by two, three, six and two points, respectively. Two polls by Fischer have her up by six and seven points.
Spokesmen for each individual campaign touted their campaign message down the home stretch: Osborn’s saying he’s a true independent with a grassroots movement behind him; Fischer’s saying her opponent is a Democratic Trojan horse.
“Deb Fischer’s party bosses and corporate sponsors are panicking about this race, spending millions of dollars to smear Dan Osborn and bail out Fischer’s failing campaign,” said Dustin Wahl, a spokesman for the Osborn campaign, in a statement to the Nebraska Examiner last week. “But Dan has a grassroots movement behind him … and that’s not going to be stopped by smear ads.”
Meanwhile, Fischer campaign spokesman Derek Oden had them confident of victory.
“We expect this positive trend to continue as time goes on and more Nebraskans learn that Dan Osborn isn’t an independent,” Oden said. “We still have work to do, and we’re running hard, but this is a good sign.”
Considering the margin of error on the polls, the fact most of it has been sponsored by the candidates themselves and the number of voters who are undecided — 10 percent, for instance, in the poll that had Fischer up by six — this race is still too close to put in the books.
Ten races that will change the trajectory of America. Eight of the seats are held by Democrats, two by Republicans. Two are trending the GOP’s way. More could fall.
The question is: Can Donald Trump make his closing argument to America effectively, not just to win the presidency but to carry a lot of candidates through on his coattails? The MAGA agenda may depend on it.
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