Now that the Republicans’ opportunity to take control of the Senate has crashed on the shores of an electorate seemingly, if inexplicably, wedded to the status quo, much attention has already turned from the one remaining Senate race next Tuesday in Georgia to the next round of elections in 2024. And no matter the outcome in the Peach State, the Dems’ control likely won’t last long – based not on anything Republicans have achieved, or because people on the left have suddenly turned rightward, but on the GOP-friendly geography of the next round of Senate elections.
To say Republicans hold the upper hand in 2024 would be an understatement. In any given year, one-third of the seats in the upper chamber are up for election. The type of political landscape that creates each election cycle is largely a product of chance and changing political winds. As it turns out, the Democrats will be forced to defend 23 seats in two years compared to just ten for Republicans. That is an anomaly on which the GOP must capitalize – or lose a golden opportunity that is unlikely to present itself again anytime soon – to not just control but dominate the nation’s highest legislative body.
A Deep Red Senate Ahead?
(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Even more promising for the GOP than Democrats having to defend 70% of seats up in two years is that three of them held by Democrats are in deep red territory. In West Virginia, the famously moderate Joe Manchin will seek another term in a state Donald Trump won in 2020 by 39 points. In Montana, another moderate, Jon Tester, will try to flip an electorate that favored Trump by 15 points. And in increasingly red Ohio, liberal Sherrod Brown will stand for re-election after Trump twice won the Buckeye State by eight-point margins. All in all, adding the battleground states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan to the list of competitive races in ‘24, Democrats will be defending eight seats that Biden either lost or won by less than three points. That is a markedly different field of play than in 2022.
But perhaps just as auspicious for Republicans is that, in striking contrast to their opponents, they would appear to have no seriously vulnerable incumbents among their ten who will be up for another term in 2024. Thus, in a best-case scenario for the GOP, they could hold up to 58 seats in the Senate once the next election cycle is over if facts on the ground are favorable, Joe Biden continues his low approval, and the GOP fields a winning presidential candidate. While that big a potential margin may seem like pie in the sky, it does drive home the point that circumstances beyond anybody’s control have provided the Republican party with an enormous opportunity lying just ahead. And it is one which they cannot afford to miss, lest they not happen upon a more favorable landscape for controlling Congress until many more years have passed.
