The race for the White House always takes first place in an election year. But presidential elections also decide who will control the House and Senate — an outcome that can determine whether Congress will be able to act or become mired in gridlock. Much like the 2024 presidential race, Democrats and Republicans both have reason to be optimistic and concerned about how the House and Senate elections play out next November.
First, the Senate, which Democrats now control by a margin of 51 to 49. Republicans could hardly hope for a more favorable electoral map in 2024. As things stand, thirty-four Senate seats are up for grabs. . That includes a special election in Nebraska to fill the remainder of the term of Ben Sasse, who resigned to become president of the University of Florida. Twenty-three of these thirty-four seats are occupied by Democrats or independents who caucus with the Democrats. If Republicans hold all eleven seats they are defending, they will only need to win one if the Republican candidate wins the presidency. In this scenario, the vice president would give Republicans control of the Senate, as Kamala Harris did for Democrats in 2021 and 2022. If a Democrat wins the presidency, then Republicans need a net gain of two seats to take control of the Senate. .
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The Republicans appear to be on track to win a seat or two. All eleven Republican seats up for grabs are in red states. Only two of these races, Rick Scott’s in Florida and Ted Cruz’s in Texas, are potentially competitive. Conversely, no less than eleven seats held by Democrats or independents appear to be at stake. Joe Manchin’s decision not to run for re-election means that the Democrats risk losing at least one seat. It would therefore be necessary for Biden to win and for the Democrats to retain one seat in two to maintain their majority. Re-electing Biden might be the easiest hill to climb. Kyrsten Sinema’s independent candidacy in Arizona could split the vote, with likely Democratic challenger Ruben Gallego handing the result to the Republican candidate. Meanwhile, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester are running in red states it cost Trump dearly in 2020 and in which every other statewide elected office is held by a Republican.
Democrats have higher hopes for the House, which Republicans now control by a margin of 222 seats to 213. (That margin could fall to eight seats next week if, as expected, the House votes to expel George Santos.) Unlike the Senate, every House seat is up for re-election next year. Neither party therefore benefits from a favorable electoral map. Democrats have avoided the long-awaited red tsunami in 2022. They hope that Republicans’ well-documented problems running the House, combined with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, will allow them to regain the seats they lost there two years ago. Democrats have been particularly successful in special parliamentary elections in 2022, a trend they hope to continue.
One factor working against this hope is that more incumbent Democrats are currently choosing not to run for office. This is important because vacant seats are harder to keep. Since this week, twenty-one of the thirty-two members of the House those who said they were retiring or running for another office are Democrats. This number will change. It’s worth watching to see by how much.
Campaign update
Joe Biden continues to receive bad news in the polls. A NBC News Poll released this week, its approval rating reached an all-time low of 40 percent. The foreign policy approval rating was even lower: 33 percent. Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas appears to be behind his declining numbers. Just 34 percent approve of his handling of the conflict. Biden is doing particularly poorly among young voters. Seven in ten eighteen to thirty-four year olds disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war. This is one piece of evidence for the argument that 2024 could be the rare election that hinges on foreign policy. However, it should be remembered that it can be dangerous to extrapolate the outcome of a problematic question to how or whether people will vote.
While Biden received some bad news this week, the Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, received some good news. A Colorado judge spoke out against an attempt to remove him from the Colorado ballot next November for having fomented the January 6 insurrection. The judge acknowledged that Trump acted as an insurrectionist, but ruled that there is “little direct evidence” of that fact. section 3 of the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits insurrectionists from holding elected office, applies to the presidency. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a similar trial earlier this month.
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The Commission on Presidential Debates announcement On Monday, he would hold three presidential debates and a vice-presidential debate next fall. The first presidential debate will take place September 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos. The second presidential debate will take place at Virginia State University in Petersburg on October 1, and the third debate will take place at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City eight days later. The vice presidential debate is scheduled for September 25 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Asset said that he wants to debate Biden, who still to say if he feels the same.
The candidates in their own words
Chris Christie challenged Senator Bernie Sanders for saying that the United States should condition its future military aid to Israel. Christie said: “Someone like Senator Sanders has a hard time running Congress. Maybe they shouldn’t spend their time trying to run another government.” The former New Jersey governor added: “It’s wartime and it’s difficult. And I have confidence in the ability of the Israeli Defense Forces to do their job the right way. I am convinced, from what I have seen, that they are doing everything they can to try to minimize the deaths of Palestinian civilians.”
What the experts say
David Freedlander New York Review willing his reasoning for why he thinks Nikki Haley will soon be the last Republican to oppose Trump and why “because of her gender or raw political skills, Haley is also a tougher target for the former president.”
Olivia Nuzzi from New York Review I went hiking with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for his article, “The mind-blowing politics of RFK Jr.’s campaign spoiler..” His conclusion? “Joe Biden says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a conservative. Donald Trump calls himself liberal. They are both right: it could shake up the 2024 presidential election.”
Policy explored how the challenge Dean Phillips what Biden does in New Hampshire could inadvertently blunt Christie’s efforts and Nikki Haley to catch Trump.
Ron Brownstein evaluated how Biden could recover from his dismal poll numbers and win a second term. This strategy “would focus as much on what Trump would do with power if re-elected as on what Biden did while in office.”
The campaign calendar
The fourth Republican debate will take place in twelve days (December 6, 2023).
The Iowa caucuses, the first nominating event of the election calendar, are fifty-two days away (January 15, 2024).
The South Carolina primary, the first Democratic primary, will take place in seventy-one days (February 3, 2024).
The Nevada primary, the first Republican primary, is seventy-four days from now (February 6, 2024).
Election Day is 347 days away.
Aliya Kaisar helped prepare this post.