Let's Do This: Winning the "Stretch" States
Overcoming the most difficult obstacle to Democrats retaining control of the U.S. Senate
The good news: Democrats are in a pretty good position right now to win 49 Senate seats in the 2024 elections.
Looking at the simple mean from all polls with the majority of their interviews taken in the last month, the Democratic nominee is ahead by at least 5.5% in enough Senate races to reach 47 seats, and by 3.0% in enough states to win 49 seats. Here is a chart with the data:
(Notes on the chart: The source for these polls is fivethirtyeight.com. Minnesota, Nevada and New Mexico are not shown because the current poll margin in these states exceeds the 7% I set as a cutoff to appear in the chart. The "Dem Seats" column indicates the number of Senate seats Democrats would hold if they won that state and all the states listed below it.)
Democrats are doing well financially, too, as they are outspending Republicans in almost every key Senate race, with Pennsylvania and Maryland as the only two exceptions. This will make it difficult for Republicans to close the gap in most of the states where they trail.
The bad news. Unfortunately, the polling chart also has some bad news for Democrats. In order to win the all-important 50th seat needed to keep their Senate majority, they have to win a red (or at least red-ish) state where they currently trail in the polls: Texas, Montana or Florida.
Worse still, if Donald Trump manages to return to the White House, Democrats will actually have to win two of those three seats in order to maintain their Senate majority, as J.D. Vance would cast the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate instead of Tim Walz.
The solution: In order to keep Democrats in control of the U.S. Senate, we are going to have to pour more resources into the three "stretch" states that I listed above: Texas, Montana and Florida. To this end, I have put together an Act Blue page that allows you to donate to the Democratic nominee in all three states at once: Rep. Colin Allred in Texas, Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida.