Why Can Democrats Win Senate Races in States Donald Trump Won?

Nate Silver says the Senate map opened because the story after 2024 was wrong, not because midterms stopped punishing the president's party. The steadiest pattern in American elections is a backlash against that party, a little larger in a lame-duck term. An average midterm moves the country about seven and a half points against the president's party from the previous presidential year. This year looks closer to an 11-point shift. Donald Trump won Ohio by about 11 points, and he won a run of these states by 10 to 13, so a shift of that size makes Ohio a toss-up.

Candidate quality moves less than the national swing, about five points at most. Roy Cooper is a strong Democratic recruit in North Carolina. Texas was a Trump plus 13 state, so an 11-point swing leaves it only slightly Republican, and Ken Paxton has to be a weak enough nominee to turn that into a Democratic lead. Ezra Klein put Democrats above a 70 percent chance of winning the Senate in the model. That chance is the swing plus those candidate gaps.