Difficult Math
No matter how you slice it, the 2024 general election is going to be pivotal, and as close as ever.
Not just at the presidential level, although polling released this morning shows Trump beating Biden in the electoral college but Biden narrowly winning the popular vote, but Biden crushing DeSantis if that’s the match up. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
Today we note that it’s going to be harder for the Democrats to hold on to their coalition majority in the U.S. Senate, now that West Virginia’s Joe Manchin has opted out of running for re-election.
Recall that Republicans have 49 seats in the Senate, Democrats have 48, and the remaining three are independents who caucus with Democrats…that’s what leads to what I’m calling the coalition majority. So Democrats already don’t have an outright majority.
Flip the West Virginia seat, and hold everything else the same, and now it’s Republicans with 50 seats. Then it matters who is in the White House, because the vice president breaks any ties. Under this scenario, a Biden re-election means functional control of the Senate remains the same. But if the GOP retakes the White House, those 50 Republican Senators have the working control of the chamber.
The House already is operating with a four-seat GOP majority, and with all seats up for grabs, it’s way too soon to see how that works out. But even this brief discussion shows that a very few votes here and there can affect the majority in either chamber of Congress, as well as the White House. And the Democrats math to holding the Senate just got more difficult thanks to the Manchin decision.
