With
the presidential election happening this year, I might as well explain two
other important races that are going on. One is the governor races. The other
is the senate races. Not only are all of the class two seats up this cycle, we
are also having two special elections for two class three seats. I might as
well do a general run through of some of what’s going on in this post and
include a schedule of what dates certain races are. I can’t promise that I will
get into more of the specific ones that I want to as the year goes on, but will
try as things go on.
States
with a senate election this year: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona (special), Arkansas,
Colorado, Delaware, Georgia (regular and special), Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi,
Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico. North Carolina,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The
last time the class two senate seats were up for election was in 2014. That was
a was boon for Republicans as they took the senate by winning a lot of seats
then. The previous time the class two seats were up were in 2008 and that was a
boon for Democrats then. In case you are wondering, the Republicans last made
gains senate elections in 2018. The Democrats last made gains in senate races
in 2016.
What
is the set up for the elections this year? Well, the Republicans are defending
23 seats and that includes the 2 special elections. The Democrats are defending
12 seats. If Democrats win all the elections or all but one of the elections,
they will have at least 67 people in the senate. There are 53 Republicans in
office right now. There are 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the
Democrats. If Republicans will all the seats this cycle, they will have 62
seats. It is highly unlikely that either party gets a filibuster proof majority
after the election. It would be more likely for the Democrats to get it than
Republicans.
The
way polling is going right now, some seats in Republican hands are constantly
ranked as toss-up, meaning it could go either way. The only one of either party
currently ranked as flip is Doug Jones. Current polling suggests that it is
unlikely Democrats retake a majority at the moment. But polling could change
and be wrong entirely.
Now
let’s get to the people in the races. On the Democratic side, Tom Udall of New
Mexico is retiring from office. Every other Democrat is running for reelection.
I realize that I did not keep track of which party has control of each state’s
class two seat. On the Republican side, there are three Republicans are
retiring: Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Pat Roberts
of Kansas. As of yet, the only incumbent that we don’t know whether or not he
is running from either party is Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. He hasn’t decided yet
and another Republican is in the race. The other Republican seats all have the incumbents
running.
I
did a quick check to see who of what party was in these races. A lot of them
have third party candidates in them. What is notable is that there are no
Democrats currently in the Alaska or Arkansas races. Every other race has both
major parties in it. With Alaska’s senate race, there is still time for
Democrats to file for it. With the Arkansas race, the filing deadline has past
and the one Democrat who was in the race dropped out mere hours after the
filing deadline was over. I don’t know if the Democrats can have a candidate in
that race right now. It may still be possible or it may not be. What I do know
is that there are third party candidates in both of these races, although there
is no guarantee that they caucus with the Democrats.
The
senate races are considered very important this year, as they always are. This could
be an issue for a Democratic president if the senate remains in Republican
hands and they continue to thwart his or her efforts like they did with Obama’s
last two years in office. What could be quite good is if somehow Trump wins
reelection and the senate is blue, making many of his efforts impossible to achieve
without executive orders and court wins. The unlikely situation of 67 or 68
seats being in Democrats hands after this election would not happen with Trump
winning again. Also at play, possibly, is the US House of Representatives. But
I won’t be doing a post about that and hope that you can do your own research
about that.
I
will be talking about the schedule of all the senate races this year. Note that
I don’t know if the primary for president will also be for certain states just
because they have senate election at the same time. I know that for at least
two of these states, they have already had their primaries for president. I’ll
leave it up to you to figure out when your state’s primary or primaries are
outside of this schedule. I don’t know what could potentially change with
dates. Also note that all of the states are having primaries of some sort for
all sorts of various offices. I leave it up for you in order to figure out when
you should be voting. Now I’m going to end this post with the schedule of all
the senate elections this year. I’ll go into more detail with some of them if I
can in the future in later months’ posts.
Schedule
(all are Tuesdays unless otherwise noted, in 2020 unless otherwise noted, and
primaries outside of November 3 or where otherwise noted)
March
3- Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Texas
March
10- Mississippi
March
17- Illinois
March
31- Alabama run-off (if needed), Arkansas run-off (if needed), Mississippi
run-off (if needed)
May
12- Nebraska, North Carolina run-off (if needed), West Virginia
May
19- Georgia (regular election for class two seat), Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon
May
26- Texas run-off (if needed)
June
2- Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota
June
9- Maine, South Carolina, Virginia
June
23- South Carolina run-off (if needed)
June
30- Colorado, Oklahoma
July
21- Georgia run-off (if needed for regular class two seat)
August
4- Arizona, Kansas, Michigan
August
6 (Thursday)- Tennessee
August
11- Minnesota, South Dakota run-off (if needed)
August
18- Alaska, Wyoming
August
25- Oklahoma run-off (if needed)
September
1- Massachusetts
September
8- New Hampshire, Rhode Island
September
15- Colorado
November
3- general election, jungle primary for Louisiana senate race and Georgia
special election for class three seat, regular election for Georgia’s class two
seat
December
5 (Saturday)- Louisiana general senate election (if needed)
January
5, 2021- Georgia general special senate election (if needed)
