- To take back the Senate, Democrats must win two of those four states — all of which Trump won by double digits in 2024 — flip North Carolina and Maine and avoid an upset in Michigan.
- JB Poersch, chairman of the Senate Majority PAC, projected confidence that Democrats will wrest control of the Senate from Republicans during a private briefing with donors this week as he went through the races state by state.
- He also reminded donors that Kansas, where even Republicans are deeply concerned, is a state Trump won by about 16 points in 2024. But it’s in play.
What they say: “This is consistent with what we have been saying publicly and privately for weeks. There are signs of optimism in Texas, but it remains a difficult situation, as do Iowa, Ohio and Alaska,” said Lauren French, a spokesperson for SMP.
- “There is positive movement for Democrats, but it’s critical to remember that every seat on the battleground map voted for Donald Trump by double digits,” she said.
- “These are deep red states and we are working to get them across the finish line so the Senate can work to provide real relief to families who are crushed by the cost of living crisis.”
The big picture: Texas has not elected a Democratic senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
- Democrats thought they would end the drought in 2018 and were seduced by then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who lost to Sen. Ted Cruz by 2.6 percentage points.
- Four years later, O’Rourke tried again to prove that a Democrat could win the entire state of Texas. He lost the gubernatorial race by nearly 11 percentage points.
- This time around, Democrats have state Rep. James Talarico, who has narrowly led recent polls against Republican candidate Ken Paxton.
Zoom: During this unusually sunny week in Washington, private polls and scraps of data are flying from phone to phone on sidewalk cafes as both parties search for a story to tell themselves, their candidates and their donors.
At each table, there are essentially two camps:
- Pessimists find reasons to dismiss any glimmer of hope. Republicans are worried about a “red cry”.
- Optimists ignore inconvenient facts that could kill their winning spirit. Some Democrats are “nauseatingly optimistic.”
In reality, optimists and pessimists – in both parties – fly without instruments.
- Internal polls contradict each other by a point or three, door-to-door data is noisy, and early voting numbers can be manipulated to tell almost any story.
The bottom line: Somehow, big donors know they don’t have the omniscience to read the political landscape with the same clarity they once brought when filing an S-1 IPO.
- But they also believe they deserve better data and analysis than is publicly available.
- At the very least, they want private briefings to give them a clearer picture than is epistemologically possible.
- Hence the proliferation of briefings. The challenge for super PACs is to answer all the calls and give donors hope without making promises they can’t keep.
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