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Why Georgia’s seat matters for 2024: Democrats face a tough map

Two years from now Democrats will be defending a lot more turf than Republicans, and some states look like they could be particularly difficult terrain.
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The immediate stakes for Tuesday’s Senate runoff in Georgia are not especially huge. The Democrats already know they will control the upper chamber of Congress since they flipped Pennsylvania’s Senate seat with John Fetterman’s win.

But looking ahead to 2024, Georgia’s seat looks a lot more important as a way for Democrats to bank an advantage with a potentially daunting road ahead.

Two years from now the Democrats will be defending a lot more turf than Republicans, and some states look like they could be particularly difficult terrain.

Let’s start with the most basic figures. Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents hold 23 of the 33 Senate seats with elections in 2024.

 

 

Democrats currently hold 21 of those seats and two other seats, from Vermont and Maine, are home to independent senators who caucus with the party. Republicans, meanwhile, will be defending just 10 seats.

Yes, those Democratic and independent incumbents will have the advantage that goes with being an office holder, but that’s a big disparity in seats — especially if the electorate is in a surly mood as it has been in recent election years.

And beyond having to defend more territory, the Democrats are looking at seats that could be difficult to hold. Three of their incumbents — Sens. Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown — come from states that former President Donald Trump carried comfortably in 2020. (Republicans, meanwhile, will have no senate incumbents from states President Joe Biden carried in in 2020.)

 

 

Trump won Machin’s West Virginia by nearly 40 points in 2020. Trump won Montana, Tester’s home state, by more than 16 points. And Ohio, home of Brown, went to Trump by 8 points in 2020.

Those presidential results suggest a heavy Republican lean to the electorates in those states. To win, those Democratic incumbents are probably going to have to run pretty far ahead of the Democratic presidential nominee, whoever he or she turns out to be.

To be fair, two of those senators have done that before. In 2012, the last presidential election when they were on a presidential ballot, Manchin and Tester ran ahead of then-incumbent President Barack Obama. Manchin did so by 25 points in West Virginia. Tester ran off Obama by 7 points in Montana. Brown was roughly even with Obama in Ohio, running ahead by just .2 points.

But that was before Trump’s appearance on the political scene. Since then, all those states have shifted to be more Republican and become more difficult for Democrats.

And beyond those three states, Democrats will have to defend five Senate seats in states that were real battlegrounds in 2020, states Joe Biden won by less than 4 points.

 

 

In Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is representing a state Biden won by just .3 percentage points. In Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin is in a state Biden also won by just a bit more, .6 points. Sen. Bob Casey represents Pennsylvania, which Biden won by just 1.2 points. Nevada’s Sen. Jacky Rosen serves a state that voted for Biden by 2.4 points. And Sen. Debbie Stabenow represents Michigan, a state Biden won by just a bit more in 2020, 2.8 points.

The tight presidential numbers suggest that in 2024 those states will likely be looking at close Senate races — and that likely means expensive Senate races. Any election cycle is likely to have a few costly contests sapping resources, but this many close races at once means Democrats are going to have a raise a lot of money or make decisions about which races get money or, most likely, both.

Republicans, on the other hand, have a much easier road. They have only one senate seat to defend in a state where the 2020 presidential margin was less than 4 points, Florida.

 

 

Sen. Rick Scott’s seat will be up in 2024 in the state that Trump won by a little more than 3 points in 2020. That’s a pretty tight race, but Florida has been trending Republican in the last few presidential races. In 2012, Obama won by less than 1 point. In 2016, Trump won it by a little more than 1 point. And in 2020, Trump won it by 3.4 points.

In other words, that’s probably going to be an expensive race for the Republicans, but it’s also a race where they likely feel like the wind is at their backs.

To be clear, none of this means that the Democrats won’t be able to hold all these Senate seats in two years. The individual candidates will matter, as will the economy and the top of the ticket — and maybe a set of issues we aren’t even thinking about now.

But that’s kind of the point. The only thing really certain about 2024 is uncertainty — and a not-so-friendly map for the Democrats.

One thing everyone knows for sure is that Georgia will be electing a senator on Tuesday. And that seat isn’t up again for another six years.