Why Democrats still face an uphill climb to win the Senate

Analysis by Steve Kornacki.

Despite what appears to be a favorable midterm environment, Democrats remain clear underdogs when it comes to the Senate.

The reason: To capture a majority, they will need to flip at least two seats in states President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024.

Currently, Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, meaning Democrats need to net four seats to flip control. Their first order of business is shoring up their own incumbents. Three Democratic-held seats loom as potentially vulnerable: Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

The good news for Democrats is that they have won Senate races in all three of these states recently. They’ve also carried all three in at least one presidential election in the Trump era. There would be nothing shocking about Democrats winning all three of these races this year.

When it comes to pickup opportunities, Democrats appear to have six of them.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the only Republican incumbent seeking re-election in a state Trump lost, represents the clearest target for Democrats — although she has played this role before and survived.

Democrats are also bullish on North Carolina, where they believe they have a strong nominee in former Gov. Roy Cooper in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. While the Tar Heel State has been politically competitive, it has thus far remained in the GOP column in every presidential and Senate election of the Trump era. Still, a world where Democrats pick up both Maine and North Carolina is not hard to envision.

But they’d still need two more. And the four other states on their pickup list are much redder than Maine and North Carolina.

In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown is seeking his seat again after losing by 4 points two years ago. In Alaska, former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is running for Senate after losing the state’s at-large House seat by 3 points in 2024. Democrats have also nominated state Rep. James Talarico in Texas, while a June primary will determine Democrats’ candidate in Iowa.

The problem for Democrats is that the success they achieved in Senate elections in GOP-leaning states in the last two midterms came almost entirely from incumbents, who had established loyalties from voters that pre-dated Trump-era polarization.

Specifically, Brown (Ohio), Jon Tester (Montana) and Joe Manchin (West Virginia) all managed to win re-election in 2018 even though Trump had carried their states by wide margins in the previous presidential election. In that same midterm, Democrats also lost incumbents in the deep-red states of Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Indiana (Joe Donnelly) and North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp).

But partisan divisions nationally have only deepened in the years since. Both Tester and Brown were defeated when they sought re-election in 2024, while Manchin declined to run again and left the Democratic Party altogether. Today, the only states that Trump won in 2024 and are represented by a Democrat in the Senate are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And none of those states backed Trump by more than 5 points.

Across the 2018 and 2022 Senate races that took place in states Trump won and didn’t feature a Democratic incumbent, the party won only one of them. Kyrsten Sinema edged out Republican Martha McSally in Arizona in 2018, but Trump had only barely won Arizona in 2016 and went on to lose it in 2020.

In more solidly pro-Trump states, no non-incumbent Democrat won a Senate race in either 2018 or 2022. That includes races where Democrats believed they had strong candidates, including Beto O’Rourke in Texas in 2018 and Tim Ryan in Ohio in 2022.

The bottom line for Democrats: They will need to make inroads in Trump-heavy states that they weren’t able to in recent midterms to win the Senate. ( Steve Kornacki, NBC News)

One more thing.

Yesterday was Transgender Day of Visibility Day.

Trump knows the voter suppression Save America Bill can’t pass, so he is trying to take actions.

That won’t work either.

His authoritarian fantasies are in full swing. The resistance is ready.

A tribute to Hillary from an unlikely source.

Oral Arguments at the Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship begin tomorrow.

Finally.

Here is the Supreme Court Justices’ own histories with birthright citizenship.

Click on the link to read. This is a gift link.

In Supreme Court Justices’ Histories, a Story of Immigration in America