Senate Democrats could be locked out of power for a very long time

Things are about to get much more challenging for Senate Democrats.

On Jan. 6 2021, buried under the mountain of headlines on the Capitol riot, came a political shocker: Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their respective runoff elections as U.S. senators from Georgia. This came as a surprise to many in Washington and essentially handed Democrats control of the Senate from 2021 until 2025. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, this development may have been a mirage that only brought about a sense of complacency within the party.

In the 2024 elections, Democrats lost the last three Senate seats they held in solid-Republican States — Jon Tester in Montana (R+11 Cook Partisan Voting Index Score), Sherrod Brown in Ohio (R+6), and Joe Manchin III in West Virginia (R+22). They also lost Bob Casey's seat in swing-state Pennsylvania (R+2).

As much as Democrats lamented the outsized influence that Manchin wielded upon President Biden’s agenda during Biden’s first two years, it was a miracle that they even had a Democrat representing such a state.

Now, with a minority of 47 out of 100 seats, the Senate's Democratic caucus faces near-insurmountable odds to retake the chamber anytime soon.

One one-third of total seats are up for grabs every two years, each cycle presents a different opportunity for each party. The next election does not look promising for Democrats to take back the chamber.

In the 2026 midterms, Democrats would need to win four seats to win outright control of the chamber, since JD Vance could cast tiebreaking votes in the event of a 50 to 50 tie. Their only obvious pickup opportunities — seats in states with a partisan lean towards Republicans of less than R+5 — are in Maine and North Carolina.

On the other side, Democrats will have to defend seats in several swing states. Two-term Democratic Sen. Gary Peters recently announced his retirement, providing a Republican pickup opportunity in Michigan (R+1). Republicans are also eagerly eyeing seats in New Hampshire (D+1) and Georgia (R+3).

Although Republican prospects in Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico and New Jersey are more remote, and each has political dynamics advantageous to their Democratic incumbents, these may also be in play given their shrinking Democratic margins in recent years.

Some political gurus such as Charlie Cook, have suggested that midterm dynamics might give Democrats a boost, since they usually favor the party out of power. Nevertheless, the most realistic positive scenario for Democrats would be a two-seat gain in Maine and North Carolina, and no losses elsewhere. This would make them a 49-seat Senate minority.

However, political insiders should remember well that Sen. Susan Collins of (R-Maine) outperformed Donald Trump in the state’s 2020 election by more than 7 points, winning by an unexpectedly-large 8.6-point margin. Collins’s victory came after Democrats outspent her two-to-one with around $100 million invested in the race and nearly every major poll had her trailing her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon. Democrats should be wary as they eye this seat.

Many Democrats will look toward 2028, a presidential year, for additional Senate pickup opportunities in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and maybe even Iowa or Ohio (neither of which have voted for a Democratic president since 2012). At the same time, Democrats will be defending vulnerable seats in the perennial swing states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Indeed, Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) only won reelection in 2022 by roughly 8,000 votes, or 0.77 percent.

Given the inherent inertia in Senate control, it is a major accomplishment for Republicans to have flipped four seats last November. Unless new states suddenly come into play for Democrats, they would need a near-clean sweep of all toss-up races in both 2026 and 2028 to win an outright Senate majority. Relying on a lucky hand to eke out a threadbare majority is not a viable long-term strategy.

A win in the House of Representatives in 2026 for Democrats, which seems much more likely, may mask the party’s woes in the upper chamber. It may be easy to forget that Senate margins were not always so thin. It was not long ago that Barack Obama won an and very briefly had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Indeed, he even came within 3,000 votes of winning the now solid-Republican state of Missouri.

That rural states with low populations have two senators tends to shift the balance of power in the chamber towards Republicans. Times have shifted and the country has become more polarized. But the Democratic Party cannot keep trying to win the Senate back with one hand tied behind its back. The party needs to shake up the current political dynamics that rule Senate races across the country. They need to put states that have drifted towards Republicans back into play.

As little as 10 years ago, Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, Florida and even Alaska were considered competitive. Today, they are not. Unless Democrats change their game, they risk being shut out of power in the upper chamber for a very long time.

Noah Mihan is a Climate Economics Researcher at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.

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