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There's not much disagreement about the map. Together, Democratic and Republican super PACs have reserved $137 million in ad time across the country, more than twice as much as Joe Biden spent to win the Democrats' presidential nomination. Most of that money has been thrown into Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine and North Carolina. Some of it has been reserved to boost Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., or to put one of Michigan's Senate seats in play for the first time in years.
Six months out, we have an increasingly clear idea of what's in play, what's unlikely to come on the board, and what could suddenly decide control of the upper house if the presidential election breaks for one party. Here's what to watch.
• Extremely flippable
Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., is in the position that Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts found himself in eight years ago - he won a special election under extraordinary conditions and now must run 25 points or so ahead of his party's presidential nominee to survive. He defeated a deeply flawed candidate, Roy Moore, to get to the Senate, but the other party is determined to pick a credible nominee this time, with a runoff coming up between former attorney general and senator Jeff Sessions and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. (Moore's defeat in the March 3 primary went mostly unnoticed.)
Republicans talk about the Alabama race as a done deal, even if Sessions, who has been repeatedly mocked by the president, escapes the runoff. Democrats don't talk much about Alabama at all, pointedly leaving it out of their first ad reservations. Jones told Politico that he doubted national Democrats would "leave us out," and he will have a cash lead over his Republican opponent, but he needs to persuade hundreds of thousands of Trump voters to split their ballots.
• Clearly competitive
The party committees have tipped their hands: The most immediately competitive races in the country will unfold in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Montana and North Carolina. That's where nearly all the ad reservations are, and that's where each party has a strong recruit facing a less-than-invincible incumbent.
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan is the only incumbent Democrat on this list, and he has been narrowly outraised by John James, a veteran and businessman who lost by single digits when he sought the state's other Senate seat two years ago. Five of the other six senators on this list have been out-fundraised by Democrats; the exception is Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who has outpaced Theresa Greenfield, a businesswoman who might have won a House race in 2018 had her campaign manager not falsified ballot petition signatures.
The five other targeted Republicans have better-known opponents, who keep piling up cash. In Arizona, astronaut and gun-control activist Mark Kelly cleared the primary field and easily outraised McSally, who was appointed to the seat after losing a 2018 race. In Maine, state House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat, has largely gotten past a minor financial scandal and heavily outraised Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican. In Montana, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock gave in to party pressure and filed to run shortly before the pandemic; his popularity has surged, and he's in a tight race with GOP Sen. Steve Daines. In North Carolina, Republicans viewed former state senator Cal Cunningham as a weak Democratic recruit, someone the party tapped after better-known Democrats passed. He nonetheless dispatched a left-wing primary challenge and has outraised Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican.
Colorado also looks tough for Republicans, with Democrats making massive gains throughout the state since Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, narrowly won his 2014 race. Former governor John Hickenlooper, who leads Gardner in polls and fundraising, has to get past left-leaning former legislator Andrew Romanoff first; if he does, Democrats think his personal popularity and the presence of President Donald Trump on the ballot will close off Gardner's path.
• On the bubble
The races shaping up in Alaska, Kansas, Minnesota and Texas are not competitive now, but if the national mood changes, each state has a credible challenger. In Minnesota, Republicans recruited former radio talk host and congressman Jason Lewis to challenge Democratic Sen. Tina Smith but have left him out of their early ad buys. (This race is a good test of whether Republicans seriously compete for Minnesota, a state Trump lost narrowly in 2016 and has become mildly obsessed with.) In the other states, Democrats have gotten behind unusual candidates who are not well known statewide, but do not have many traditional ties to their party.
Kansas is the only open seat here, and while the state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since the Great Depression, even Republicans have been nervous about former secretary of state Kris Kobach grabbing their nomination in the August primary. Last year's on-again, off-again effort to pull Mike Pompeo out of the State Department to run for this seat was rooted in worry that Kobach, who bungled a 2018 run for governor, would be vulnerable against a decent Democratic recruit. Democrats have rallied behind Barbara Bollier, a state senator who left the GOP two years ago.
In Texas, Democrats will pick either veteran MJ Hegar or state Sen. Royce West in a summer runoff, then face GOP Sen. John Cornyn, who has few of the vulnerabilities that made Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's 2018 race so close. In Alaska, which Democrats narrowly lost six years ago, the party is supporting Al Gross, a doctor running as an independent, though first-term Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, may be vulnerable only in a wave.
• Georgia
It gets its own category here because its ballot line takes some explaining. Georgia will hold two elections in November, a reelection race for Sen. David Purdue, a Republican, and an all-party primary for the seat currently held by Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican.
The best-known Democrats have piled into the first race, with 2017 congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, 2018 lieutenant governor nominee Sarah Riggs Amico and Columbus Mayor Tess Tomlinson all competing in the June 9 primary. The second race is messier, as Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat over Republican Rep. Douglas Collins, has spent her brief political career embroiled in a scandal over stock trades.
That was an immense help to Collins, who has watched Republican defenses of Loeffler melt away as Democrats signal that they'd rather run against her than him. Their problem: Their candidate in this race have no electoral experience at all. While the Rev. Raphael Warnock jumped into the race with the endorsement of Stacey Abrams, he was hurt immediately by his wife's accusation that he ran over her foot with his car. (He denies it, and no charges were filed.) Polling has found Democrats split between Warnock and Matt Lieberman, the son of former senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., with some risk that neither make it to the January 2021 runoff.
• Stretches for challengers
There are very different races underway in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico and South Carolina, with one common thread: Were the election held today, it's probable that none of these seats would change hands.
In New Mexico, the only race here with no incumbent, Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luján quickly put away a more left-wing challenger, and the best-known Republican candidate is a local TV personality. In New Hampshire, where Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, has never won by more than single digits, the decision of Gov. Chris Sununu to run for reelection instead of the Senate dampened Republican enthusiasm. (The GOP primary is a contest between two military veterans with no experience in elected office, one of whom has poured $3.2 million of personal wealth into the campaign.)
The contests in Mississippi and South Carolina have Democrats trying something they have never done before in a regular election: running African American candidates, Mike Espy and Jaime Harrison, with serious political résumés. Harrison has out-fundraised Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a Republican whose reputation and political base have been transformed since his 2014 race - a senator best known for pushing immigration overhaul is now a loyal ally of the president. But Espy lost a 2018 special election under better, lower-turnout conditions than he's likely to get this year, and Harrison has consistently trailed Graham in polls.
In Kentucky, 2018 congressional candidate Amy McGrath, a Democrat, has outraised McConnell, who has never run for reelection as a majority leader before. But McGrath failed to scare more liberal opponents out of the race, while McConnell has been reintroducing himself as an effective and powerful legislator who has helped a popular-in-Kentucky president succeed.
• Formerly blue, forever red
Four seats that Democrats held for ages were won by Republicans in that midterm, in Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and West Virginia. They quickly fell off the watch list, with Democrats essentially writing them off and betting that their current electoral coalition is stronger elsewhere. Just as Spain isn't trying to take back the Philippines, Democrats have abandoned their claim to South Dakota. Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia won by double digits in 2014 and are more secure now.
Most of the Democrats seeking the nomination for these races have raised less than $100,000. The exception, West Virginia's Paula Jean Swearingen, is best known for losing an uphill primary challenge to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin two years ago. Her competition in the primary is former state senator Richard Ojeda, who raised $2.8 million for an unsuccessful congressional bid, then briefly ran for president. He has raised less than $40,000 for this race.
• Safe, for now
Democratic incumbents are up for reelection in Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia; Republicans are defending seats in Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming. All of these states are safe for the party's respective presidential nominees, and none have the makings of competitive Senate races.
The only excitement on any of these ballots is in Massachusetts, where Rep. Joe Kennedy, a Democrat, is challenging Sen. Edward Markey in a September primary. The winner of that primary will face a token Republican challenge, potentially from Shiva Ayyadurai, who ran as an independent in 2018 against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (Ayyadurai's 2018 slogan, "Only a real Indian can defeat the fake Indian," is less applicable to Kennedy or Markey.)
Republicans have no such issues in their safe states, with Rep. Liz Cheney opting not to challenge former congresswoman and fellow Republican Cynthia Lummis for Wyoming's open seat. Tennessee is messier, with 16 Republicans fighting over their nomination and none of them particularly well-known. Democrats haven't invested much to take advantage of that. James Mackler, a Democratic attorney and veteran who ended his 2018 Senate campaign to make way for the better-known Phil Bredesen, is the favorite, but Bredesen's lopsided defeat soured Democrats on the state.
• No contest
There is, technically, a Senate election in Arkansas, but don't expect either party to invest much in it. Just 12 years after Republicans did not bother running a candidate against-then Sen. Mark Pryor, Democrats do not have a challenger to Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. They tried, with nonprofit executive Josh Mahoney initially putting together a long-shot candidacy. But Mahoney quit the race hours after the filing deadline, an ongoing source of bitterness for Democrats, who had no legal mechanism for replacing him. Cotton now faces a Libertarian candidate and a left-leaning independent and is so secure that he has used campaign funds to run pro-Trump ads in swing states.
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