Now that the Republicans’ opportunity to take control of the Senate has crashed on the shores of an electorate seemingly, if inexplicably, wedded to the status quo, there is an understandable tendency to brush off the importance of the one remaining Senate race next Tuesday in Georgia. Because of an arcane law in that state calling for a runoff if no candidate reaches 50% +1, Raphael Warnock will try to hold off Herschel Walker for a second time – he finished one point and 38,000 votes ahead of him in the regular election – and turn a 50-50 split into a Democratic majority in the upper chamber. But no matter the outcome, the Dems’ control likely won’t last long based not on anything Republicans have achieved, or because people on the left have suddenly turned rightward, but on how favorable the geography of the next round of Senate elections is for the GOP.
Emblematic of how tribal the country has become, how the two sides have retreated deep into their respective corners, is that just five or six states in the new Congress will be represented by senators of the opposite party from the president – down from 30 in 2000. Just a single seat, Pennsylvania, has been flipped in 2022. This means at worst for Democrats another even split for the next two years, and an effective majority with VP Kamala Harris serving as tiebreaker. And while the GOP’s last best hope of taking control finally died with the loss of a seat they expected to win in Nevada, it does not mean the outcome in the Peach State on December 6 holds no significance.
For starters, while the committee chairs will continue to be Democrats, in a 50-50 chamber, committee membership is also evenly split, unlike when a true majority exists. That could be the difference in certain judicial appointments, which represent the grand prize that will keep on giving to the White House in controlling the Senate. Two more years of clear sailing for Biden’s nominees will profoundly impact the federal judiciary, especially since Biden has already appointed more judges at this point in his administration than any president in history except John F. Kennedy.
A Deep Red Senate Ahead?
But beyond the immediate impact of at least maintaining a fully balanced Senate is how that seat in Georgia could affect the composition in 2024. And to say Republicans hold the upper hand in two years would be an understatement. In any given year, one-third of the seats in the upper chamber are up for election. The type of political landscape that creates each election cycle is largely a product of chance and changing political winds. As it turns out, the Democrats will be forced to defend 23 seats in two years, compared to just ten for Republicans. That is an anomaly on which the GOP must capitalize – or lose a golden opportunity that is unlikely to present itself again anytime soon – to not just control but dominate the nation’s highest legislative body.
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Even more promising for the GOP than Democrats having to defend 70% of seats up in two years is that three of them held by Democrats are in deep red territory. In West Virginia, the famously moderate Joe Manchin will seek another term in a state Donald Trump won in 2020 by 39 points. In Montana, another moderate, Jon Tester, will try to flip an electorate that favored Trump by 15 points. And in increasingly red Ohio, liberal Sherrod Brown will stand for re-election after Trump twice won the Buckeye State by eight-point margins. All in all, adding the battleground states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan to the list of competitive races in ‘24, Democrats will be defending eight seats that Biden either lost or won by less than three points. Having the extra margin provided by the seat in Georgia could prove crucial – for both parties.
But perhaps just as auspicious for Republicans is that, in striking contrast to their opponents, they would appear to have no seriously vulnerable incumbents among their ten who will be up for another term in 2024. Thus, in a best-case scenario for the GOP, they could hold up to 58 seats in the Senate once the next election cycle is over if facts on the ground are favorable, Joe Biden continues his low approval, and the GOP fields a winning presidential candidate. While that big a potential margin may seem like pie in the sky, it does drive home the point that circumstances beyond anybody’s control have provided the Republican party with an enormous opportunity lying just ahead. And it is one which they cannot afford to miss, lest they not happen upon a more favorable landscape for controlling Congress until many more years have passed.