Will Trump lose the Senate for the Republicans?

While the race for the White House might be hogging the attention of the media, there is another race quietly shifting back and forth behind the political battle for the presidency: the race for the U.S. Senate. 

Most American voters likely aren’t following along with the election campaigns of the 33 different senate seats scheduled to take place on November 5th, but they really should since the Senate is key for both political parties. 

Among the many reasons why winning the Senate is important for both the Republicans and the Democrats is the legislative body’s power to try presidential impeachments and to confirm presidential appointments. 

The U.S. The Senate is also in charge of confirming other government officials and Supreme Court nominees. In May 2024, CNN’s Harry Enten reported recent history had revealed the importance of down-ballot races, something that was especially true for the Senate. 

Enten also argued in the same article that Republicans were likely to win the Senate in 2024 based on what he called the M problem. The “math” and the “map” of the seats up for grabs favored the Republicans over the Democrats. 

Republicans only need to take one Democratic Senate seat in November if Trump wins the election, which would give his Vice President the tie-breaking vote in the legislative body—and Republicans have a good chance of winning that seat in one particular race. 

The retirement of West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has put his seat up for the taking in a state where Trump beat Biden by 39 points in 2020. This is a worrying sign. But what if Trump loses the presidential election?

The GOP would need to win two seats in order to control the Senate if Trump loses to Kamala Harris in November, but again, the math favors Republicans and they have a lot of different options for capturing another seat from the Democrats. 

At least 8 of the 23 Democratic seats up for grabs in November are in states that Trump won in 2016 or that the former president was leading Biden in back in May when Enten reported on the problems facing Democrats. However, this math has changed a lot since then.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Numberguy6, Own Work, CC BY-SA 4.0

While Democrats are only targeting two contestable Senate seats in Florida and Texas, they are catching a major break from the momentum that Vice President Harris and her campaign have brought to the election since Biden dropped out of the race in July. 

On August 20th, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reported GOP strategist and former Senate aide Ron Bonjean said that Republicans were “running into rougher terrain” because the Democrats had “a much more viable candidate at the presidential level” in Harris. 

Bolton also warned that Republicans needed to concentrate on policy and that Trump’s focus on his showmanship-style of politics could harm the GOP’s chances of capturing the Senate from the Democrats in November. 

“It’s going to be [a] very tight election; the polls are tightening up. If Trump wants to win, he’s going to have to get way more on message and way less showmanship for his crowds, because they don’t matter,” Bonjean explained. 

“It’s the independent voters that count for actually getting over the finish line,” Bonjean added. Whether or not Trump will be able to refocus on fighting Vice President Harris’ policies over attacking her personally for the benefit of his crowds still has yet to be seen. 

The latest election analysis from The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ of recent election forecasts has given Harris a 55% chance of beating Trump in November, and maybe even more importantly, it has given Democrats a better chance of winning the Senate with Harris as their candidate. 

Analysis from the Decision Desk HQ gives Republicans a 67% chance of taking the Senate with Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate versus the 78% chance it gave the GOP when Biden was still at the top of the ticket. But Republicans are still favored to win the Senate. 

There is still some worry among Republicans, however. One anonymous GOP Senate aide told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton that Republicans were starting to feel the shift in the country and some races might be closer than they are hoping. 

“You can start to feel trepidation. Like with Arizona, you get a sense in talking to folks that it’s not going as well as we hoped. In Nevada, it’s not going as well as we hoped,” the GOP aide explained.

The unnamed aide went on to say that there was “a legitimate gripe” that Trump was not “as aggressive [of a] campaigner as he could be.” The aide continued by adding Trump was “going to run the way he’s always run his campaign, and it’s not a great feeling.” 

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