“When you have the Senate, when you have the votes, you can sort of do what you want.”
— President Trump, quoted by CNBC, on filling RBG’s seat on the Supreme Court.
I promised to take a look at some House races this week with an eye towards donor recommendations as long as some big news didn’t break. Only a few hours after I published that on Friday, perhaps the biggest news of the election cycle broke: the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bade Ginsburg. I won’t be discussing that directly in this post, but we are going to revisit the Senate races today as that body is now a major focus of interest to activists and voters alike.
There have been some new Senate polls out in the past two days that really don’t look good for the GOP. Some, but not all, were in the field while the news of Ginsburg’s passing hit. This post is intended to help with your donation strategy for Senate campaigns and not be a true polling review post. That said, it is important to look at some new Senate polling today as it suggests a wider landscape for potential Democratic wins than previously thought. For instance, the race in Mississippi appears to be getting close (of course, the new poll could be an outlier). There is almost no chance that Democrat Mike Espy can win outright on November 3rd, but it’s looking more like he might be able to force a run-off.
There are two strange additions to the above table that you can ignore because they are old. One is from 2018 and its inclusion here must be a mistake. I have no other explanation for it. The other one is from March for the Mississippi race, but it is interesting to consider as in comparison with the new Mississippi poll. Both polls were conducted by The Tyson Group (B/C). Today’s poll shows GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith with just a one point lead over Mike Espy while six months ago she had a 26 point advantage. If it is an outlier, it is way off the mark. More likely that race has gotten closer, but perhaps not as close as one point. There are two reason to follow this race now: (1) to see if it tells something of national voting trends that could be disastrous for the GOP and (2) to give some of you potential traveling campaign volunteers another run-off to help with after November 3rd.
The other odd thing from today’s results is the multiple results in the Maine race from Suffolk (A). The pollster has Gideon up by +5 and by +7. The polling memo just has the crosstabs and doesn’t explain the multiple results. My guess is that it is because Maine is the only state that has instant runoff voting (IRV - also known as ranked choice voting) at the state and federal level. This makes the race more complicated to poll, but Suffolk is making the effort to do it correctly by asking respondents for second and third choices on races. Until we learn more, the safe thing is to assume Gideon is up by only five points.
Here are the polls from yesterday (Sunday):
In Texas, the race seems to be tightening as well. YouGov’s five point margin for Sen. John Cornyn (R) seems more likely than the two-point margin The Tyson Group reported today. That said, Cornyn has been struggling to get about 45% in the polls this year. He has consistently lead Democrat MJ Hegar in a state that essentially even at the presidential level this year. Texans just don’t seem to love Cornyn and that leaves an opportunity for Hegar, but she just cannot seem to catch him.
Both Georgia races look the same as Democrat Raphael Warnock is moving comfortably into second place in that race behind Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) as Republican Rep. Doug Collins is dropping in support. Check out Loeffler’s new ad; it is so bad you would think it was satire until the very end when she approves of it. On Saturday Selzer (A+) released an Iowa poll (not shown above) that has Democrat Theresa Greenfield up by 3 points over Sen. Joni Ernst. Siena (A+) has the Montana race nearly even (Daines +1).
Your fundraising strategy
In my previous Senate donor recommendation post in mid-August, I laid out a ranking of Senate races to contribute that was based on polling margins, cash on hand, and some other subjective factors. As we get into Election Season now that voting has started, there are at least three donor strategies that you might undertake. The first is a reaction to Friday’s news. You probably now want to know where you should donate money to have an impact on whether Senators will vote for a Ginsburg replacement before or after the election. The second strategy is to support Senate candidates in battleground states where Biden/Harris ticket is polling even or within a couple of points of Trump. The third strategy is for those of you who want to make the biggest impact you can with one or two contributions. As always, do not let me prevent you from donating to another race if you feel passionate about it. But, here’s how I see the best way you can donate to Democratic Senate candidates based on the three strategies.
1. Putting pressure on incumbents to get them to commit to not voting for a SCOTUS nominee until after January 20, 2021.
Gideon, Maine (incumbent: Collins)
Kelly, Arizona (incumbent: McSally - The Wall Street Journal reports that McSally plans to focus on her right wing base to overcome her deficit to Kelly)
Greenfield, Iowa (incumbent: Ernst)
Hickenlooper, Colorado (incumbent: Gardner)
Harrison, South Carolina (incumbent: Graham)
Cunningham, North Carolina (incumbent: Tillis)
McGrath, Kentucky (incumbent: McConnell)
Gross, Alaska (while Murkowski is not the incumbent in this race, you can send a signal to her about reelection by defeating Sen. Dan Sullivan (R))
2. Helping win close battleground states for Biden/Harris.
Greenfield, Iowa
Kelly, Arizona
Cunningham, North Carolina
Ossoff, Georgia
Hegar, Texas
Bullock, Montana
Gideon, Maine (Biden/Harris seem to have Maine locked up, but the 2nd Congressional District is close. Remember that Maine is one of two states that give each of its CDs an electoral vote.)
3. Wanting to make the biggest impact in just one or two races.
Gideon, Maine
Greenfield, Iowa
Cunningham, North Carolina
Bullock, Montana
Ossoff, Georgia
Harrison, South Carolina
Warnock, Georgia
I hope this is helpful. If I missed someone you think should be on one or several of the lists above, please let me know (UPDATE: hat tip to my pal RJ for pointing out I left Cal Cunningham off the lists). If I agree, I will add the names. Over this weekend, small donors made record contributions to Democratic Senate candidates through ActBlue. Let’s keep it up! Don’t mourn; organize!