We have already examined the outlook for 2026 in the aftermath of the 2025 elections. Most of that commentary focused on the U.S. House and how the results from the last disastrous midterm election (2018) might foreshadow the upcoming potentially disastrous midterm election. We spent little time on the Senate, but noted that although 2018 was a train wreck for Republicans over almost the entire ballot, there was one minor exception: Republicans actually gained 2 Senate seats in 2018 and with some luck it could have been as many as 6. Because it was only a net +2, most observers on the right were extremely disappointed. Yet holding onto the Senate at all in 2018 was an important accomplishment and an impressive one under the circumstances. It kept rabid Democrats at least partially at bay. Recall what Democrats did with their total control of the House, and imagine what would have occurred with them in charge of the Senate during the final two years of Trump's first term in the White House.

The 2018 Senate elections provide a history lesson: that it is possible to hold steady (or even improve) at the Senate level even while being decimated up and down the remainder of the election ballot, as happened to the GOP that year.

However the individual Senate skirmishes from 2018 -- unlike the ones from the House -- are not germane as far as predicting what will happen in 2026. All 435 House seats are up for election every two years, which makes recent past midterms at least somewhat comparable to future ones. Many of the House members from 2018 are still in office, even though the configuration of their districts may have changed, and most of those members will be running again next year.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

The current Senate terrain is not as favorable as it was in 2018, when Democrats had to play defense in most of the contested states. In 2026 Republicans have 22 seats to defend (including special elections in Florida and Ohio) while Democrats are up in only 13 states. Of those 13, just 3 present any real opportunity for a GOP gain while there are a minimum of 5 juicy targets for Democrats this time around. All things considered, the playing field is clearly tilted towards the left here.

The top (really the only) probabilities for Republican pickups are in Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire. Democrats have a fighting chance in Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas and perhaps a couple of others, or so they claim.

Any eventual morsel of good news for Republicans, no matter how meager that morsel is ("Generic polls favor Democrats only by 5 points now instead of 6!") will cause hopium addicts on the right to begin fantasizing about Senate pickups in states such as Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia, which they believe are purple but are in fact completely safe for leftists absent some "red" tsunami. In Louisiana, much like in Alaska in 2022, a RINO (Bill Cassidy) currently holds the seat but might be ejected by a true Republican in the primary. That wouldn't count as a pickup, but it would amount to the same thing and would bolster actual conservative representation in the Senate. It didn't happen in Alaska and probably won't in Louisiana either, but there is a chance.


Here are the 2026 Senate battleground states:
(in order of likelihood to flip, as things stand in November of 2025)

North Carolina Senate results from 2020

1. North Carolina:

Anti-Trump squish Thom Tillis announced months ago that he would not seek re-election to the Senate in 2026, beating GOP primary voters to the punch; Tillis decided to quit rather than being dumped in the primary. Not much more about Tillis needs to be written; we already did that here, describing Tillis' career and his increasingly RINO-ish behavior in 2025.

At the time Tillis made his retirement proclamation, Lara Trump was considered to be the best candidate to hold the NC Senate seat for the GOP. She probably still is the best candidate, but won't be running.

Numerous North Carolina congressmen were in position to be the fallback in the event that Trump opted out of the race. In what is likely to be a regrettable move (we'll find out in about a year), Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Whatley entered the NC Senate race shortly after Lara Trump passed. Whatley, despite his general ineffectiveness as head of the RNC, quickly received Donald Trump's imperial blessing, which meant that all other viable candidates might as well step aside.

Maine Senate results from 2020

2. Maine:

The Maine Senate seat is the second most likely one to flip from being occupied by a Republican (such as she is) to one filled by a Democrat. Mega-RINO Susan Collins is currently in her fifth Senate term, and she is looking to make it 6 in 2026. Since Collins' last election in 2020, she has voted more often with Democrats than Republicans; she wasn't exactly a bargain before 2020 either. Collins is normally excused for her behavior because she represents Maine, and the GOP is hardly likely to do any better there.

Maine Republicans have little choice but to pin their hopes on Collins, because nobody who is more conservative would stand a chance in a statewide election, Paul LePage's fluke wins for Governor in 2010 and 2014 notwithstanding; the outcome of his 2022 quest for a non-consecutive third term (he got 42%) is more in line with Maine's preferences these days. It's possible that Collins won't do significantly better than 42% in 2026, but she's been counted out before. Notably in 2020 when Collins squeaked by with 51% against an ultra-liberal Democrat who raised over $75 million for the challenge (Collins barely got to $30 million). Collins received about 57,000 more votes in Maine in 2020 than Donald Trump did.

There will apparently be a two-way battle for the Democrat nomination between current term-limited Governor Janet "Butch" Mills and some guy who wants to be Maine's version of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (before Fetterman began acting more sensibly and enraged the radical left): that guy would be alleged "working class hero" Graham Platner, who has described himself as a "communist" and "ANTIFA supersoldier" but denies being a "secret Nazi". We believe him. Whoever said it was a secret?

Mills ought to be the favorite in the Rat primary, but if she is it's not by much. One ludicrous poll had her down to Platner by 34 points; that poll must have been taken either on a college campus or in a media newsroom. The geriatric Mills (age 77) started her campaign by refusing to release her medical records, while Platner is suddenly raising millions of dollars from the type of people who think that the 2025 election results are a referendum in favor of killing Republicans. It's going to be quite a battle unless Mills bows out or Platner is dragged down by his past (and present). Democrat voters forgave the murderous racist in Virginia two weeks ago; Maine Democrats aren't likely to abandon any candidate no matter how much of a lunatic he may be -- as long as they think he can win next November.

Keep in mind that Maine uses Rigged Choice Voting (RCV), just like Alaska does. Imagine a 3-way race with Collins, Platner and some other leftist candidate who isn't violently nutzoid. Nobody gets to 50% initially so RCV kicks in and the comparatively moderate independent who finishes third is eliminated. Who gets his votes then?

We might not like the answer.

Georgia Senate results from 2020 runoff

3. Georgia:

The incumbent Democrat, Hollywood Jon Ossoff, will once again be backed by enormous amounts of out-of-state money, just as he was in 2017 (when running for a House seat) and in 2020 when he spent over $150 million to defeat GOP Senator David Perdue. Ossoff lost in November of 2020, but won the January, 2021 runoff which was required because Perdue came up 0.3% short of 50% in the initial election. In the wake of the "questionable" (to put it mildly) presidential election results in 2020, you may recall that some GOP folks in high places were spitefully calling for Republican voters to boycott the January runoff. We've never really been sure what that was meant to accomplish, but you have to admit it worked. Hello, Senator Ossoff.

Ossoff will not have to face a primary opponent in 2026. Democrats nearly always do that -- clearing the field in situations like this, which helps their candidate and frees up Democrat voters to pollute Republican primaries in states (like Georgia) where that is permitted. In the general election Ossoff will take on one of the three current GOP frontrunners: congressman Buddy Carter (85% lifetime conservative rating), congressman Mike Collins (96% conservative) or football coach Derek Dooley; Dooley is running well behind the two congressmen. As of September 30, Ossoff (3% conservative) already had raised over $50 million with much more to come. Georgia deserves better than a couple of liberal stooges in the Senate. Republican-leaning pollsters indicate a close race, but Ossoff maintains a small lead across the board -- so far.

Michigan Senate results from 2020

4. Michigan:

Michigan occasionally votes Republican for President lately (albeit by very small amounts), as it did in 2016 and 2024. It wasn't too long ago (2010 and 2014) that Michigan elected a GOP Governor; OK, Biden-supporter/Trump-hater Rick Snyder was basically a Democrat regardless of the letter after his name, but he did get elected twice as a Republican. Now here's a trivia question: when was the last time Michigan elected a Republican U.S. Senator?

The answer is. . . 1994. The have been 9 Senate elections in Michigan over the subsequent 30+ years, and the GOP is 0-for-9. The most recent two have been close; the other 7 weren't. In 2026 ex-congressman Mike Rogers is going to make a second run at the Senate on the Republican side. We covered Rogers a year ago as he was making his first run, which turned out to be unsuccessful but could hardly have been closer. Rogers lost by less than half a percent in 2024 while running 1.3% behind Donald Trump. Rogers needed to hang onto those coattails a little bit tighter, but apparently he couldn't.

Rogers' Democrat opponent, as in 2024, will be a congresswoman. Last time it was Elissa Slotkin; this time it's Haley Stevens, a far-left Democrat who once worked for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Since 2019 Stevens has represented a deteriorating congressional district in suburban Oakland County, near Detroit. Stevens was first elected in the anti-Trump landslide of 2018, when the 11th district was still politically borderline. After 2020 the district was pushed farther to the left, aided by continuing demographic degradation in Oakland County. The district is now very safe (about D+11) for whatever Democrat runs there.

When Rogers lost in 2024 his Democrat opponent had a massive financial advantage, outspending him $51 million to $13 million. That chapter of the story will be the same in 2026, though as of the end of September Rogers was very close to Stevens in $$$; but the major part of fundraising season is not yet underway. Stevens will also have her hands full before (probably) moving on to face Rogers, because she has two primary opponents who are as well-funded as she is. Democrats were able to bypass a contentious Senate primary in 2024 (Slotkin had only token opposition), but that won't be the case next year. Perhaps some Democrat divisiveness will give Rogers the little extra boost he needs to become Michigan's next Senator. We wouldn't rely on it.

Photo credit: John H. Sununu

Chris and his father are RINOs, if not outright Democrats; John E. Sununu is the conservative in the family. By "Sununu" standards, anyway. He's one of those oxymoronic "fiscal conservatives" now (i.e. anti-conservative on every other issue). There's no such thing as a fiscal conservative/social liberal. Because "social liberalism" is clearly anything but fiscally conservative when you look at how much those social programs cost.

Ohio Senate results from 2024

6. Ohio:

Ohio's 2026 Senate contest is a special election to fill the seat for the remaining two years of J.D. Vance's term. When Vance advanced to the Vice Presidency, Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted was promoted to the Senate via an appointment from Governor Mike DeWine. Husted entered politics at an early age (25), losing a bid for state House in 1992. He eventually served in the state House for 4 terms (becoming Speaker in 2005), had one state Senate term, was elected Secretary of State for 8 years beginning in 2011 and was DeWine's Lieutenant from 2019 until joining the U.S. Senate. Husted, now 58, is still quite young by Senate standards. During his short time in D.C., Husted has been a reliable albeit low-profile GOP vote on every issue.

Husted's Democrat opponent next November will be 73-year-old ex-Senator Sherrod Brown, who will be making his third appearance on a ballot in the past 8 years. Brown, a career politician, took a path which was somewhat similar to that of Husted, with Brown initially being elected to the Ohio state House in 1974 at the age of 21. Also like Husted, Brown was Ohio Secretary of State for several years (1983-1992). Brown won an open U.S. House seat in the Cleveland suburbs in 1992, the seat being open because incumbent Democrat Edward Feighan was implicated in the House Bank scandal which enveloped several Democrats that year, and Feighan chose to exit politics as a result.

Brown was a solidly liberal vote (lifetime ACU rating: 6% conservative) but began faking to the center in 2006 in preparation for his first Senate race. Brown defeated incumbent Senator Mike DeWine in that anti-Republican year, immediately resumed his ultra-liberal positions upon taking office in 2007, and was easily re-elected in 2012. Brown's past history of domestic (and other) violence was used against him as Brown was seeking a third Senate term in 2018. However Brown, with the assistance of his allies in the liberal media -- and a massive advantage in fundraising -- was able to shrug that off and score another relatively easy win. Those on the right expected a better outcome since Ohio had suddenly become (or so they thought) a "solid red" state now that it had voted convincingly for Donald Trump in 2016.

Texas Senate results from 2020

7. Texas:

The 2026 Senate race in Texas will feature spirited primaries on both sides, which is not a common thing in recent years. While it's true that Republicans often conduct a no-holds-barred donnybrook on their side (costing a considerable amount in money, and in hard feelings afterwards), Democrats regularly attempt to whittle down the number of candidates in any statewide election, whether for the benefit of a Democrat incumbent -- especially a vulnerable one -- or to anoint a "chosen one" to be their standard-bearer without interference from pesky voters. They even take that approach for presidential elections sometimes. There are several smart reasons why Democrats do this:

1. It avoids a bloody primary fight in which even the winner suffers potentially mortal wounds, and is therefore less effective in the general election because of those wounds.

2. It saves money (not that Democrat campaign funds are ever scarce) which can be used to greater effect in the general election.

3. With diminished reason to vote on the Democrat side in the primary, this tactic frees up Democrat voters to sabotage Republican primaries by participating in those, in order to try to select the weakest possible GOP opponent. Even so-called closed primary states are not immune to this.

Photo credit: splinter.com

Talarico describes himself as a deeply religious Christian, but is a phony who spouts that "Jesus-was-a-liberal" bullshit a la the self-righteous "He Gets Us" television ad campaign, which you may have seen. Picture Talarico as a combination of Bernie Sanders and Jimmy Swaggart (apologies to Swaggart). Talarico the "True Christian" adamantly opposed displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas schools, preferring that those institutions remain atheistic and free from anything which might accidentally encourage good moral values. He represents an ultra-liberal (D+26) Austin district in the state House, so Talarico's views are surely considered to be mainstream by his constituents but most of the rest of the state of Texas would disagree. Talarico is a one-trick pony, wearing his version of far-left Christianity on his sleeve at all times and using it to explain all of his immoral, pro-abortion, pro-crime and other radical votes in the legislature. He surely believes he can "out-liberal" and "out-hate" Crockett and Allred, but he's got his work cut out for him in those departments.

Colin Allred we already know about (click here for more info) from his 2024 Senate attempt. He is a former Dallas-area congressman who was first elected in Congressional District 32 in 2018 when Dallas County swung hard-left in elections that year. The Texas GOP did him a "solid" in 2022 by extending his district up into left-trending Plano (there is an ongoing massive influx of Muslims and Hindus into southern Collin County) and down into ghetto Balch Springs. Previously CD-32 was a D+1 district but became safely D+13 after the new leftist areas were added. Republican redistricters did this favor not so much for Allred but for themselves, sacrificing that district so that adjacent ones like CD-3, CD-5 and CD-24 would be safer for Republicans. When Allred left the House in 2024 to run for the Senate against Ted Cruz, the GOP didn't waste any resources trying to reclaim CD-32. But Allred wasted $94 million in his attempt to acquire a seat in the Senate.

This is nothing new for Ken Paxton. The former state legislator was first elected as Texas Attorney General in 2014, succeeding Greg Abbott in that office as Abbott stepped up to become Governor. The solidly-conservative Paxton quickly showed that he was (and still is) one of the most effective A.G.'s in the entire country. However he is much too effective to suit the RINOs who perpetually have control of the Texas GOP and the Texas state House; Democrats loathe him even more than RINOs do.

The GOP establishment failed to stop Paxton from being elected to a third term in 2022 although they recruited a clueless geriatric congressman (Louie Gohmert) along with Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who is the son of former Florida Governor and momentary (2016) presidential candidate Jeb! Bush. The plan in 2022 was that RINO Bush and Clueless Gohmert and one other hopeless candidate would combine to steal enough primary votes to force Paxton into a runoff where he would either be defeated or severely damaged. The establishment strategy worked, up to a point.

Paxton dominated the runoff against Georgie P. and then won by nearly 10 points in November against the Democrat; all Texas statewide Republican candidates did better than expected in 2022, with Paxton having the closest race of any of them and it still wasn't very close. Maybe it was the "Beto Effect", with Beto the Bozo (D) helpfully running statewide again, and this time being demolished by Abbott, 55%-44%.

Having failed in their 2022 assignment, Texas RINOs led by state House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Andrew Murr impeached Paxton in 2023. Other RINOs joined the Phelan-Murr witch hunt, and Paxton ended up on the wrong end of a 121-23 vote in the House; 60 of those 121 votes for impeachment came from "Republicans". However the Texas state Senate, which is not RINO-controlled, was tasked with completing the impeachment process. During the Senate hearings, one witness who accused Paxton admitted he actually had "no evidence" whatsoever of wrongdoing. Another witness conceded that the claims of malfeasance he made against Paxton were about things he "didn't know whether [they] were true or not", but he regurgitated them anyway. No credible evidence was presented at all. Mere accusations against a Republican are normally sufficient for conviction, but the Senate wasn't buying it this time. In September of 2023 Paxton was acquitted of all charges.

With his enemies living in mortal terror of Paxton becoming a U.S. Senator, the smear campaign against him has ramped up again in 2025 since he announced his run against Cornyn in April. The smear campaign seems to be having an effect, judging from the polls. Paxton has only a slight lead over the unpopular GOP incumbent, Cornyn, and is only neck-and-neck with Allred in hypothetical general election polls. Our opinion is that Paxton is so good at what he is currently doing (you can tell by the amount of hate he receives), that we'd be much better off with him in a fourth term as Texas Attorney General rather than a first term as a U.S. Senator.

Photo credit: Texas Scorecard

As noted above, the GOP primary is not just a 2-way race anymore. In October, congressman Wesley Hunt announced that he would abandon his safe (R+10) district in the suburban Houston area and join the Senate race. The 44-year-old Hunt has a fine military background, graduating from West Point in 2004, serving 8 years in the U.S. Army before earning 3 Masters' Degrees, and then entering politics. Hunt's first bid for Congress came in 2020 in the deteriorating 7th District and was unsuccessful though he made a solid showing (47.5%) under difficult circumstances. When the new 38th District was created in 2022 in approximately the same area, Hunt won a majority in a crowded 10-way Republican primary and then easily sealed the deal in November. Hunt was re-elected in 2024 with only token opposition, and has been a reliable conservative vote in the House. He currently trails his primary opponents in fundraising (and is way behind the wealthy Democrats) but he's only been in the race for about 6 weeks.

Although Texas remains a relentlessly "purpling" state due to demographic changes caused by invaders both domestic and foreign, most forecasters agree that -- as things stand now -- Republicans should be able to hold this Senate seat in 2026. We concur, although the GOP winning percentages are more likely to be in the same range as they were in Texas from 2016-2020 (~50-55%) than their slightly higher levels (sometimes 55-60%) from 2022-2024.

Iowa Senate results from 2020

8. Iowa:

Moderate GOP incumbent Joni Ernst is calling it quits in the Hawkeye State after two Senate terms during which she moved gradually but perceptibly to the left. President Trump attempted to prevail upon Ernst to run one more time, but she declined and decided to proceed with her retirement (shades of 2018, egad!). Ernst, who is probably the only pig castrator currently serving in Congress, has been described as a "fiscal conservative". That's far more letters than are necessary to spell "RINO".

The supposed Democrat heavyweight in Iowa -- i.e. a Democrat who can actually get elected -- is state auditor Rob Sand. But he's running for Governor in 2026, not for the Senate, and he's not some electoral wizard anyway. Sand won in the hyper-Democrat year of 2018 with 51% of the vote and held on by his fingernails (50.1%) in 2022 after outspending his Republican opponent by a mere 40:1 ratio.

Ernst's withdrawal is a golden opportunity for the GOP to find a true conservative as a replacement. Or at least it would be, if they cared to try. Instead, squishy congresswoman Ashley Hinson is the clear favorite among Republicans. Not only would the Senate be an obvious step up for Hinson, but she may be figuring that getting elected statewide in Iowa could be less difficult than being re-elected in her marginal congressional district. There's a possibility that Hinson will have primary opposition from Iowa state House Speaker Pat Grassley. That last name may sound familiar. Patrick may choose to try to join his 92-year-old father in the Senate, but for now he is not running. Several low-level Democrat candidates are amassing funds to take on Hinson, and although they may be low-profile their campaign accounts are growing daily. This race is not likely to be the slam-dunk that some might anticipate, but Hinson is favored at this time.

Tags:

2026 Senate North Carolina Maine Georgia Michigan New Hampshire Ohio Texas Iowa

Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The caption at rollcall.com which accompanies the above photo describes Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) and his wife as they "celebrate on the final night of the Democratic National Convention". That's one grim-looking "celebration". It seems they aren't feeling the "joy" which, as you surely know by now, is one of the laughable emotional buzzwords that has been assigned to Queen Kamala's campaign by the gaslighting liberal media. It looks more like the Caseys are feeling a bit of constipation, and there's some chance they may get that sensation again in November, whenever Pennsylvania finally decides to stop vote-counting.

The article linked above was published on Thursday and ranges from the mundane to the ludicrous. It's mostly good news for Republicans, with (on the mundane side) the five Senate seats most likely to flip being ones currently held by Democrats. On the ludicrous side, they dredge up the highly unlikely possibility of upsets in dead-red (proper color usage) New Mexico and true-blue Nebraska.

We'll give our detailed analysis below, which provides much more depth than the cursory evaluations published by left-leaning Roll Call. What follows are the Senate races, in order of their likelihood to move from R to D based on the outcome of the 2024 elections. The current partisan breakdown of the Senate is 51-49, with Democrats in control. There are only 47 actual Democrats, but there are four so-called "independents" and every one of those four are highly dependent on the Democrat party. Even the ones who are retiring after 2024 (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema) are still showing their true colors and voting with the Democrats as often as ever.

Photo credit: CNN

1. West Virginia

West Virginia is going to be a Republican pickup, period, and at this point there's nothing pertinent left to say about the Mountain State's Senate race. Incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin ran away rather than see his perfect record of election victories shattered into pieces, and doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice will be the new senator from West Virginia in 2025. His voting record may not differ much from Manchin's, and Justice will be a reliable tool for Mitch McConnell or whichever one of his sock puppets becomes the party leader in the Senate next year.

West Virginia will finally have two elected GOP senators for the first time in nearly a century. It's a shame that this now heavily-Republican state still won't have any conservative senators.

Photo credit: Fox News

2. Montana

The Senate race in Montana is looking OK for now, but don't count those chickens yet; the Biden-Harris administration may quietly transport some Haitian "refugees" into Montana, and those chickens (and geese, cats, dogs, etc.) would become greatly endangered.

A few months ago the GOP establishment, or those who work on its behalf, used threats of violence against conservative Rep. Matt Rosendale and his family in order to intimidate him out of the Montana GOP Senate primary (and out of Congress altogether) just moments after he entered that race.

Moderate businessman Tim Sheehy thus was effectively unopposed for the Republican nomination to take on three-term liberal Democrat Jon Tester. Tester has never been truly popular with the Montana electorate -- he's cleared 50% just once in three tries, and even that one was by a mere 0.3% -- but he is adept at campaigning as something other than the ultra-liberal that he is, he has the state's major media outlets thoroughly on his side, and he has benefited in the past by the presence of Libertarian candidates who suck votes away from the Republican. The last time Tester ran (2018) the Libertarian saw that he was being used as a pawn for Democrat dirty tricks, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But since he exited only one week before the election, it had little effect aside from highlighting the dirtiness of the Democrats.

Montana is far from the monolithically-Republican state that some may think it is. It almost never votes Democrat for President (just once since 1968, and that was only because of the Perot Factor in 1992), but Democrats have won 9 of the last 12 elections for Senator or Governor. One of Montana's two House districts is somewhat marginal; the other is solid GOP.

Photo credit: AP News

At long last it appears that Tester's appeal has diminished to the point where he is in serious trouble. He may be in trouble in the polls, where surveys lately show Sheehy ahead by about 5 points, but if money alone determined the election outcome Tester would be winning in a landslide. As of the latest FEC filings, Tester has spent over $33 million as opposed to just over $10 million for Sheehy. As we have mentioned here on numerous occasions, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. This will be proven to be true in almost every single hotly-contested Senate and House race in 2024.

This race is not nearly over yet, and Sheehy's lead is hardly insurmountable. Even months-old data shows Tester with nearly $11 million still in the bank, and those funds will be used to saturate the airwaves and mailboxes of Montana with typical Democrat ads full of hate and lies about Sheehy (and lies about what a great senator Tester has been). Sheehy may not yet comprehend what's going to hit him between now and November, but he will find out shortly and he'd better be prepared. His lead could evaporate as quickly as it materialized.

Photo credit: 10TV

3. Ohio

The current Senate campaign in Ohio bears a strong resemblance to the one which took place in that state two years ago. The only substantial difference is that there was no incumbent seeking re-election in 2022 however there is one running in 2024. Incumbency is normally a distinct advantage, and this race is no exception even though the incumbent is a Democrat and Ohio (like Montana) is thought to be unfriendly territory for those on the far left of the political spectrum.

In 2022, Republican senatorial squish Rob Portman retired and there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat challenger Tim Ryan faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

In 2024 there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

Photo credit: WCPO

The 2022 Republican nominee, J.D. Vance, was (and still is) unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Ryan was on the attack 24/7. Smelling blood in the water and sensing an unexpected pickup opportunity, Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Ryan was able to outspend Vance by the margin of $57 million to $15 million. After trailing most of the time, finally in October Vance consistently pulled ahead in the polls and then won in November, but it was uncomfortably close in supposedly "dark red" Ohio.

Photo credit: Ohio Star

The 2024 Republican nominee, Bernie Moreno, is unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he has had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Brown was on the attack 24/7. Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Brown has so far been able to outspend Moreno by the margin of $43 million to $11 million. After trailing the entire time, finally in September Moreno appears to be closing the gap in the polls, but has yet to be shown in the lead in any poll. Will "dark red" Ohio come through for Moreno, with Trump dragging him across the finish line?

We'll see.

Trump may have difficulty attaining the 8-point margin he received in Ohio in 2020, which means his coattails aren't going to be as long as might be hoped.

Photo credit: Market Realist

4. Michigan

Retiring liberal Democrat incumbent Debbie Stabenow was first elected to Congress in 1996 when she unseated conservative freshman Republican Dick Chrysler in Michigan's 8th congressional district. At the time that district was rated as "even" although it included all of Ingham County (Lansing) and a heavily-Democrat suburban portion of Genesee County (Flint). The presence of suburban Livingston County helped balance out the bad areas of the district, and Chrysler had won in the glorious year of 1994 because of Livingston alone (he very narrowly lost the rest of the district).

As you will see, there has been a cozy relationship between this Senate seat and that particular congressional district ever since.

Stabenow moved up to the Senate in 2000, failing to win a majority of the vote but still defeating incumbent one-termer Spencer Abraham. Abraham's win in 1994 was the last time a Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Michigan, and Stabenow was re-elected with relative ease in 2006, 2012 and 2018, all of which were anti-GOP years. Like nearly all Democrats in elections which are even slightly contested by Republicans, Stabenow was able to outspend her GOP opponents each time by considerable margins.

Photo credit: Rogers for Senate

Stabenow's replacement in the 8th congressional district in 2000 was Republican Mike Rogers -- the same guy who is now trying to replace her in the Senate in 2024. Rogers, who was at the time a Michigan state senator, defeated fellow state senator Dianne Byrum in 2000 by just 160 votes out of nearly 300,000. Rogers campaigned as a moderate and was even able to obtain some endorsements from Democrat politicians.

Rogers' voting record in the House was a shade to the right of "moderate" for most of his 14-year career, which ended when he chose not to run for re-election to an 8th term in 2014. The 8th district was moved to the right in the 2001 redistricting, perhaps emboldening Rogers to show a little more backbone in his congressional voting. Or maybe it forced him to move a little to the right, lest he be vulnerable to a conservative challenge in a primary election.

The district's partisan composition notwithstanding, Rogers anticipated that he would never face the voters again and therefore he dropped the charade and lurched to the left in his final term. He announced his retirement in March of 2014, and pointedly declined to endorse a conservative Republican state legislator as his successor (claiming that the guy might "embarrass" the district) and opted instead to back the more moderate Mike Bishop.

After two terms in the House, Bishop was sent packing in the anti-Trump referendum election of 2018. Bishop's ultra-liberal Democrat opponent and her party were able to spend a whopping $7.5 million to purchase that House seat -- and that doesn't even include the $5.5 million which was accumulated on her behalf by "independent" groups.

Who was that extremely well-funded Democrat?

Photo credit: CNN

It was Elissa Slotkin -- the "former" Deep State operative who is now the Democrat nominee for the 2024 Senate race against Mike Rogers.

Financially, it's the same story as in all other swing states this year: the Democrat has raised and spent far more money than the Republican. As of two months ago, which is the latest available data at this time, Slotkin has raised $24 million to $5 million for Rogers; she has spent $15 million while Rogers has forked out less than $3 million.

You don't have to be in some Michigan media market to understand that voters are being influenced by non-stop Democrat ads, while Rogers probably has his hands full just playing defense and trying to fight off the attacks. Rogers has done well to stay within the margin of error (but always on the losing side) in the polls. A poll which was released on September 13 showed him down by 3 points, which is his high-water mark over the last several months.

Can Rogers break the 30-year iron grip which liberal Democrats have had on Michigan's pair of Senate seats? The probability of that happening is still less than 50%, but his chances seem to be improving at this time.

Photo credit: Lancaster Online

5. Pennsylvania

Current senator Bob Casey, Jr. is dumber than a chimp (or even Kamala Harris). But unfortunately so are a slim majority of PA voters, as has been consistently demonstrated in recent years with the exception of the 2016 presidential election, when Democrat overconfidence led to a (relative) lack of fraud on their part, and Trump was able to win the Keystone State by a fraction of a percent.

Part of that slim majority of ignorant PA voters consists of Gullible Geezers who tend to believe whatever lies ("Republicans are going to ELIMINATE your Social Security and Medicare! For real this time!") the liberal media continually spouts on behalf of their party.

PA is a fairly elderly state, with a percentage of over-65s (18.8%) that is nearly as high as Florida's (20.3%). When they see the name "Casey" on a ballot, some portion of Pennsylvania geezer-dom undoubtedly believes that it is Bob Casey SENIOR they are voting for. Senior was a much-beloved Governor in the 1980s and 90s who became famous nationally when he was prohibited from speaking at the 1992 Democrat National Convention due to his outspoken anti-abortionist position. Senior was totally in line with liberal Democrat orthodoxy on every other issue, however.

Photo credit: Dave McCormick PA

Casey's (the Junior one) challenger this year is Dave McCormick. McCormick spent lavishly of his own money in the 2022 Republican primary vs. "Electable" Dr. Oz, but lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 1.34 million which were cast. McCormick graciously conceded and now has returned for another shot at the Senate -- this time with the GOP field cleared for him; no more dealing with pesky moderate dilettantes like Oz or staunch conservatives like Kathy Barnette. McCormick is again funding a large part ($4 million as of late June) of his own campaign and, aside from a recent left-biased outlier poll from CBS, appears to be inching closer to a possible -- but still unlikely -- upset.

Casey is now in his 18th Senate year, and has voted the liberal position 94% of the time during his tenure. He has been a reliable supporter of the Biden-Harris agenda and marches out of lockup on only the rarest and most unimportant of occasions. McCormick is a wealthy moderate businessman -- the kind of candidate the GOP establishment absolutely adores. Wealthy businessguys often lack icky conservatism and they have the ability to waste spend lots of money on their own behalf. It could be argued that a true conservative would have little chance of being elected statewide in Pennsylvania, and a nominal conservative like Pat Toomey or Rick Santorum is the best we can do.

Should McCormick somehow pull off the upset, his voting record in the Senate would likely be a little to the left of Toomey-Santorum though nowhere near (hopefully) as lunatic leftist as ex-Republican Senator Arlen "Judas" Specter, who went out in a blaze of bitterness back in 2010. Anything even close to Toomey-Santorum territory would be a tremendous improvement over the Casey pup in the empty suit.

PA may be 51% Democrat at the ballot box, but it deserves better than a pair of 100% liberal Senators; one is quite enough.

• Democrats are desperately wishing for major upsets of Republican Senate incumbents in Florida and Texas; there are no other GOP-held Senate seats which are even close to being in play. Republicans are desperately hoping for major upsets in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Maryland. The probability is that none of the above will happen, although the loss of Florida or Texas for the GOP has a greater chance of occurring than pickups elsewhere.
• GOP candidates are particularly floundering in the southwest (AZ, NV) and Ted Cruz is underperforming in Texas. We've already written in great detail about how Texas is absolutely not the solid "red" state that it might have been a few years ago, and people have quickly forgotten how marginal Florida is capable of being; 2018 wasn't all that long ago.
• Even after Governor Ron DeSantis' successful election integrity measures which targeted shady Democrat election officials in places such as Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida can still be finicky and Rick Scott may not be taking this Senate race as seriously as he should. Scott has raised a handsome sum of money, but he may have shot his wad too early -- the femiNazi running against Scott actually has more cash on hand as of the end of July. She is also a lot closer to Scott in the polls than she should be.
  
  Debbie Mucarsel Hyphen Powell isn't right on Scott's tail because of anything desirable or positive on her end; she may as well be listed on the ballot simply as "Not Rick Scott". Scott is the "Jon Tester" of Florida -- he has won three elections and only once has he cleared 50% (he received 50.1% in 2018). He is not popular and never has been; he has been just barely popular enough in the past.
• Only one outlier poll has showed the Republican within true striking distance in Wisconsin. In Maryland, although Larry Hogan is keeping it somewhat close against his affirmative-action opponent, Hogan seems less interested in winning a Senate seat than he does in using his campaign as a vehicle for virtue-signaling and Trump-hating.
  
  Perhaps Maryland's version of Chris Christie is trying to position himself as a GOP presidential candidate for 2028? Or maybe he's looking to be the Democrat nominee? Either way, Hogan's not winning anything in 2024 absent divine intervention. He's going to get beat down hard in the Baltimore-D.C. corridor.

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2024 Senate Montana Ohio Michigan Pennsylvania

Photo credit: WFMJ

Although Republican Michael Rulli easily won (54.6% to 45.3%) Tuesday's special election in Ohio's 6th congressional district over Democrat Michael Kripchak, media liberals are gloating about the Democrat's "moral victory", which is something they do in every special election where their candidate isn't completely blown out of the water by the voters.

In this case, they have a minor point. This R+16 district routinely elects Republicans by 30-point margins, not mere 9-point margins. In extremely low-turnout special elections like this one, normal patterns do not always hold but they typically resume when more voters participate, as they will in November when these two Michaels will face off again. Customary GOP complacency and Democrat wishful thinking aside, there was no discernable reason for the closeness of the outcome in Ohio. Back in March, Rulli was engaged in a hotly-contested primary with fellow Republican Reggie Stoltzfus and one other candidate, however it was conducted in a generally amicable way with very little mud being tossed around; there should have been no lingering animosities from that contest.

Furthermore, while Rulli and Stoltzfus combined to raise and spend over $1.2 million in trying to win this seat, the hapless Democrat challenger raised only $22,000. National Democrats didn't invest anything here for the special election, and they won't do so for November either because they know they are not flipping any R+16 district. It would be the equivalent of the GOP winning a typical district in Massachusetts. And that ain't happening, at any price.

Photo credit: Nancy Mace/Youtube, Getty Images

Nancy Mace 1, Kevin McCarthy 0: In South Carolina, embattled Nancy Mace had an easier than expected time defeating Catherine Templeton, who was a sock puppet for disgraced ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace received approximately 57% of the Republican primary vote and thus easily avoided the runoff election which would have been necessary if she had failed to achieve 50%.

McCarthy and his well-funded allies created a political action committee (PAC) and spent over $2 million through that PAC for the sole purpose of exacting some revenge on Mace for her 2023 vote to topple the ineffective McCarthy from the Speakership. Tuesday's outcome does not necessarily mean that McCarthy and his minions are accepting defeat; it may just be round one.

As we noted previously, the liberal GOP establishment in this district (and nationally) are by no means averse to sabotaging primary-winning Republicans whom they loathe. Recall 2018 in this district, when Republican nominee Katie Arrington was repeatedly backstabbed by her own party, which caused her to lose the general election to a Democrat that November. The GOPe may repeat that tactic here in 2024, perhaps quietly working on behalf of liberal corporate DEI (Didn't Earn It) stooge Michael Moore -- or perhaps taking a more in-your-face approach and daring the good voters of South Carolina's 1st congressional district to do something about it. Moore spent a large sum to buy his win in the Democrat primary, and -- with some help from anti-Mace moderate/liberal Republicans -- is surely counting on raising a lot more. The anti-Mace PAC which was heavily involved in Mace's primary has at least $1 million remaining in the bank.

But it's still an R+7 district and Mace, though not exactly dominating on Tuesday, received more votes than both Democrat candidates combined. She's not perfectly safe for November, but Mace is certainly favored to win. She just needs to watch her back at all times.

Photo credit: Alchetron

The focus in Maine was on the winnable second congressional district which has been held by Democrat Jared Golden since his surprising "Rigged Choice Voting" victory in 2018. Maine voters (mostly Democrats) had just approved a ballot initiative implementing the RCV scheme which took effect in 2018, and those Democrats were delighted when Golden defeated incumbent moderate Republican Bruce Poliquin thanks solely to the provisions of Rigged Choice Voting; without that, Poliquin was the winner.

Golden is extremely well-funded by left-wing labor unions and the "Israel Lobby", and in the past he has done a good job of fooling the voters of CD-2 by faking to the center whenever necessary. The district is rated as R+6 -- that's not even particularly "marginal"; it's an outright Republican district. Trump won CD-2 in both 2016 and 2020, taking the electoral vote which goes with that victory. Alterations to CD-2 in the most recent redistricting were not significant.

As mentioned, Golden has become adept at fooling the voters; yes, he is in fact one of the more "moderate" Democrats in the House, which only means that instead of being 98% liberal he is normally merely 88% liberal. However this year Golden is running scared to an extent which he never has before. In 2024, Golden has broken with his party over 40% of the time on Party Unity votes and on "key" votes he has actually voted with the GOP a whopping 60% of the time. Golden has suddenly become a true moderate; of course the liberal media now considers him a "conservative", which like most everything in the liberal media, is gaslighting propaganda.

Golden was unopposed in this week's primary. His Republican challenger (pictured above) in November will be former NASCAR driver and racing champion Austin Theriault. Theriault, a freshman member of the Maine House, defeated fellow freshman legislator Michael Soboleski in what was apparently a real bloodbath of a primary. Theriault was endorsed by Donald Trump back in March, and he was in part financially supported by NASCAR team owners such as Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress and Bill McAnally.

Theriault also received contributions from some of his prospective colleagues in the House, including Austin Scott, Mike Turner, Gus Bilirakis, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Lisa McClain, Bob Latta, Nathaniel Moran and Tom Emmer. That's pretty much an All-Squish All-Star team. Or, more accurately, the Squish Team's triple-A minor league affiliate.

Anyone who can knock off the Golden Boy in November is OK with us now, but Soboleski was the true conservative in the race. He had comparatively little money and probably lesser name recognition, and Theriault thrashed him by 32 points (66.1% to 33.9%). We referenced the likelihood of that outcome at the end of a commentary which was posted three months ago.

One day after Theriault's resounding win, John Andrews (a member of the Maine House who served as Soboleski's campaign manager) blew a gasket, declaring:

"I've just resigned my seat in the Maine State House of Representatives. I can't be a part of anything that supports Austin Theriault. Paris [Andrews' home town in Maine] voted for Theriault. That made up my mind. I'm sorry, but I'm done standing up for anything in this community. I'm officially retired from politics. This absolutely disgusts me."

Photo credit: New York Times

In the Senate primary in Nevada, Trump-anointed Sam Brown, a moderate Republican, breezed past conservative challenger Jeff Gunter. Gunter was appointed as Ambassador to Iceland by Trump, but the ex-President typically opted for the "electable" moderate in this race instead of the true conservative. Pre-primary polls had indicated a potentially close finish between Brown and Gunter, but the current figures show 59.8% for Brown and only 15.1% for runner-up Gunter.

This is Brown's second Senate run in two years; he finished second (by over 20 points) to Adam Laxalt in his 2022 bid to go to Washington. Laxalt went on to lose by less than 1% to incumbent liberal Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto in the general election. Although the GOPe now demands complete unity behind Brown -- which is essential if he is to have any chance of defeating ultra-liberal Democrat Jacky Rosen in November -- Gunter for the time being is not willing to forgive and forget the nasty campaign waged by Brown and his establishment supporters.

Brown is absolutely a squish, which sadly may be the best we can do as far as a supposedly electable Republican in Nevada. He has a lot of money (but Rosen has all the money in the world) and all the right squishy endorsements, while his other primary opponents (Gunter and Jim Marchant) were backed by conservatives.

Brown's cabal cites Gunter's excessive conservatism and lack of name recognition as factors which would cause him to be defeated in November if he were the nominee. However the last poll taken in this race showed Rosen beating Brown by 14 points, "name recognition" and all; the last poll in which Gunter was included showed Rosen beating him by exactly the same amount, even though few people knew who he was. Winning the primary would have solved that little problem and helped him close the gap, while Brown will have to find some other excuse for his polling deficit.

This whole scenario, Trump endorsement and all, seems very similar to what happened in the PA Senate election in 2022 with "Electable Dr. Oz". There's no way that Eyepatch McCain 2.0 (Brown) can be as bad a candidate as Oz was, and Rosen couldn't beat a ham sandwich by 14 points in a general election, but....

Even if the GOP does close ranks behind Brown, this is still Nevada. As with Oz in PA, the likely upshot of all of this is that Brown's supporters will be able to console themselves on election night in November by claiming (obviously without proof) that Gunter would have lost to Rosen by even more. It should be close -- nowhere near a 14-point gap -- but the GOP's record in close elections in Nevada, where Democrats count the vast majority of the votes, isn't impressive.

Republican Joe Lombardo was allowed to win a close contest in 2022 because a Governor isn't nearly as important as a U.S. Senator and because Lombardo is a pliable squish presiding over a state with a nearly veto-proof Democrat legislature. Jim Marchant was not allowed to win a close election in 2022 because a Secretary of State is also more important than a Governor (Don't believe us? Then go ask George Soros.), and Marchant scares the hell out of the left with his vow to clean up vote fraud in one of the most corrupt states in the country.

We'll never know whether giving the voters "a choice (Gunter), not an echo (Brown)" would have won the Nevada Senate race in 2024, we'll only know that, barring a somewhat major upset, the "echo" did not do so. All good Nevadans -- including Gunter -- need to rally to Brown now (just like folks in PA held their noses and voted for Oz), regardless of how much of a squish he is, and see if what appears to be inevitable in November might be able to be altered. Standing on principle is nice, when possible, but Brown is the only option we have now.

Photo credit: Gateway Pundit

Speaking of squishy (or far worse) Senators: Lately we have been subjected to numerous articles in the "right-wing" media which have awarded Strange New Respect to drooling Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is the combination of the characters of Lurch and Uncle Fester from the old Addams Family television show, and this cartoon character has been a U.S. Senator since defeating Electable Dr. Oz in 2022.

There's this from Townhall.com:

Red Pilled John Fetterman?, which starts out by comparing Fetterman to -- yes, really -- Ronald Reagan. It goes on, like all of these delusional screeds do, to echo Fetterman's claims that he is not a liberal, he is not woke, he's just a regular guy in a hoodie, etc.

Here's one from Breitbart:

Fetterman Rejects Progressive Label While Addressing Left-Wing Attacks

Golly, now he's under "attack" from the radicals in his party. A stroke, and now this? Poor guy.

Fetterman does concede that "eight years ago" he was in fact a "progressive", a label which he now rejects. He's not up for re-election until 2028, but apparently it's never too early to begin campaigning. One of the basic tenets of Democrat campaigns is trying to get ignorant voters to swallow whatever lies they are fed. That becomes easier with every repetition of the lie, and there's no reason for the non-liberal media to help the Democrats with their task.

The liberal puppetmasters, who send Lurch/Fester out there to parrot whatever script they've prepared for him, are rolling with laughter that people are buying this crap. Granted it is impressive that Fetterman can memorize even a simple script, what with his brain damage, and he wasn't any Mensa candidate even before the stroke.

He is all talk, and only talk.

It serves a purpose to have a "last sane Democrat" puppet to put on public display once in a while. The tactic goes back at least to Zig-Zag Zell Miller, through Joe Lieberman (on rare occasions) and then to grandstanding showboat Joe Manchin. Manchin is down to his last few months in office so they need a new one, preferably from a swing state. Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin had no remotely believable (as "sane") Democrat Senate options, so the job fell to Fetterman.

Fetterman is a total fraud with his "I ain't woke no mo'" garbage. The next Senate vote he casts which defies liberal orthodoxy in any way will be his first one and that's no exaggeration. Talk is cheap. Get back to us when he shows up Chuckie Schumer even once by casting a critical non-liberal vote on an important issue. In the meantime, Republican voters (and authors) need to stop being so gullible.

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2024 U.S. House Senate Ohio South Carolina Nevada Maine Lurch / Uncle Fester

Photo credit: WCMH-TV

The photo shows the three GOP Senate candidates, Larry, Moe(reno) and Curly, during a recent debate. Leftist Matt Dolan is the stooge who is positioned on the right. Moreno isn't really a stooge of course, but he's certainly surrounded by them here. Speaking of being positioned on the right, the gaslighting article which accompanies that photo was written by an ultra-liberal NPR media twerp and therefore reads like a Dolan campaign commercial.


The past: In 2022 in many important statewide elections, there was nothing to vote for in the Democrat primaries because their nominee had already been anointed. The same is true in 2024. That means Democrat party puppetmasters and Democrat voters are free to spend time and money influencing the outcome of Republican primary elections for their own benefit.

Like Nimrod Haley did during the brief time when she was supposedly a viable presidential candidate, other liberal Republicans like Matt Dolan are desperately seeking Democrat votes in their primary battles against actual Republicans. This is nothing new for Dolan, a left-wing state legislator who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 and is running again this year. In 2022 he begged Democrats to vote for him in the GOP primary, because otherwise he stood zero chance against Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

That tactic came closer to succeeding than it should have. In polls taken only a few weeks before the 2022 Ohio primary, Dolan was barely cracking double-digits in what was essentially a three-way race with Vance and Josh Mandel. Mandel, the former state Treasurer, had been a milquetoast candidate against Sherrod Brown in 2012 and Brown mopped the floor with him. That happened despite the fact that the Republicans actually competed on nearly equal financial footing with the Democrat, which has become quite an uncommon occurrence in contested states since that time.

With the help of thousands of Democrat voters and the endorsements of other liberal Republicans, Dolan surged in the final voting to over 23%, just a fraction of a percentage point behind Mandel. Vance of course won that primary, but with barely 30% of the overall vote. Vance didn't break the one-third mark even though he had the endorsement of Donald Trump and the endorsement of former primary opponent Bernie Moreno. Moreno had dropped out of the race in February of 2022, heroically sacrificing his campaign in order to avoid a damaging split of the conservative primary vote.

• Pro-abortionist
• Anti-gun
• Supported "contact tracing" and dictatorial powers for "health" officials during the plandemic
• Opposed arming teachers (or any armed security) in dangerous urban schools or ghetto-ized suburban schools
• Supports the Democrat vote-buying tactic of student loan "forgiveness"
• Supports "green" energy mandates
• Favors higher property taxes
• Favors taxpayer-financed handouts in corrupt ghetto areas under the guise of "neighborhood development"

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2024 Senate Ohio Moreno & the Two Stooges Win-win for Democrats

The headline is premature since no polls (yet) show what the title claims. But it's never too early for the liberal media to begin focusing their attacks on a Republican candidate, and tying one to Trump is -- they think -- a winning strategy. It usually is, but not always. Like just two years ago in Ohio, for example.

Dysfunctional Republicans have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot via divisive primaries in critical statewide elections -- mainly because the liberal wing of the party will never back a conservative in the general election and will often actually work against one; lukewarm support like J.D. Vance got here in 2022 is pretty much all that a non-liberal GOP candidate can expect. The establishment, which controls the all-important purse strings, much prefers a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican, and in '22 they got their way in critical Senate races in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Alaska, came close in Wisconsin and North Carolina, and only grudgingly made a token effort to help in Ohio.

This sort of fracturing and backstabbing is something Democrats never go for. First of all, they make certain that the field is clear for their chosen candidate in a Senate primary in any winnable state, thus avoiding the divisiveness. Then they support their nominees with the vast resources of their campaign finance money laundries. Deliberately sabotaging one's own nominees is idiotic, which is why only Republicans do that and not Democrats.

In a state which is not winnable for Democrats, like Missouri in 2022, they let the losers battle it out with their own money in the primary to see which one gets the honor of being stomped in the general election. They don't waste time or money on lost causes, while the Republican party, with its comparatively limited resources, starves winnable candidates in order to waste cash on ludicrously unlikely pipe dreams in places like Colorado and Washington (both of which were lost by two touchdowns), as they did in '22.

Also, the Rats do not care how outrageously liberal a candidate is and they quite obviously do not demand that only the most squishy centrist be their party's choice. If a supposedly moderate candidate can't beat a drooling liberal (see the 2022 Senate Democrat primary in Pennsylvania, for example) then the drooler is the nominee and the entire party apparatus immediately gets in line behind him.

Need proof? We've published this data before, but here again are the campaign spending figures for the swing-state Senate races in 2022. All figures shown are in millions of dollars:

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2024 Senate Ohio Bernie Moreno for the win!

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Dennis Kucinich, now 78 years old, is running for Congress again -- this time as an independent (he missed the major-party filing deadline which was a month ago). The liberal Democrat and former Boy Wonder, who was the youngest mayor in the country when he was elected to preside over the city of Cleveland in 1977, will be taking on Republican Max Miller in Ohio's 7th Congressional District.

After failing on four occasions from 1972 through 1992, Kucinich was finally elected to Congress in 1996 when he defeated moderate Republican incumbent Martin Hoke in the "White" Cleveland congressional district. Hoke's campaign was doomed when, as you may recall, he said the word "breasts" on the air when the media set him up with a microphone which he did not know was open at the time. That may not rank up there with Chappaquiddick as political scandals go, but Hoke is a Republican and his words were enough to mark him as a goner.

That started Kucinich on a House career which lasted 8 terms. He compiled an ever-so-slightly moderate voting record in Congress at first. He subsequently moved to the far left during the G.W. Bush administration, and stayed there throughout the remainder of his tenure in Congress. That tenure came to a close in 2012 when he was tossed in with fellow Democrat incumbent Marcy Kaptur in a district which spanned Lake Erie from Toledo to Cleveland. Ha ha.

That was the end -- until now -- of the Boy Wonder's political career aside from a 40-point loss to liberal Democrat Richard Cordray in the 2018 Ohio gubernatorial primary and a 3rd place finish in the Democrat primary for Cleveland Mayor in 2021.

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U.S. House 2024 Ohio Boy Wonder 7th District Max Miller

Photo credit: AP

In 2024, mainly early in the year, a quartet of special elections will be held to fill four U.S. House vacancies which have already occurred or are upcoming. Cowardly Republicans expelled their conservative colleague George Santos (R-NY) on December 1, and three other Representatives have announced their pending retirements: Brian Higgins (D-NY), Bill Johnson (R-OH) and Kevin McCarthy (Squish-CA).

The special election to replace Santos was hastily called -- it will take place on February 13 -- by Democrats who rightfully anticipate an easy pickup of a House seat that will reduce the margin of GOP control to 7 seats (221-214). The remaining three special elections, as yet unscheduled, are unlikely to alter the balance of power any further.

Santos' election in 2022, like those of most other NY freshmen that year, was a fluke. Santos' district (NY-3) is a Democrat district and not even particularly marginal; Rats outnumber Republicans by over 10% and that fact will be apparent both in the special election and in November, 2024. Republicans normally come closer than 10% in most elections in NY-3, which means that more Democrats than Republicans cross party lines and/or "independents" break slightly more to the right than the left, however all indications point in the direction of an uphill climb for the GOP to win anything here.

Particularly the February special election, where Rat voters and the Rat party organization will be highly motivated while the RNC as usual will likely sit on its hands and blame Santos for ruining the district -- when it simply reverts to what it has always been in recent years. In special elections, low voter turnout is the norm and motivation/organization is everything.

Some have suggested that the series of fluke GOP House wins in New York in 2022 was a coattail effect from having a popular GOP nominee for Governor (Lee Zeldin was not quite popular enough, unfortunately) at the top of the ticket. Nothing like that is going to happen again in NY in 2024, and after the Democrats take the NY-3 special election barring a major upset, they will be significantly favored to hold it next November.

Anthony D'Esposito, the liberal "Republican" Santos-backstabber from the next-door 4th district in New York will (along wth some other GOP House members from New York) probably be ousted in 2024 too, but count on him running hysterically to the left even more so than he already is over the next several months in his frantic effort to keep his cushy job.

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2024 Special election George Santos Kevin McCarthy Bill Johnson New York California Ohio

Yesterday's outcomes were almost entirely predictable yet were considered disappointing by the good people of America -- the same phenomenon as occurred in 2022 when the mis-named "Red Wave" never materialized and even positive developments were considered to be crushing defeats because those positive outcomes did not occur on the massive scale which many people ridiculously expected.

Of course there were lots of adverse outcomes yesterday to be gloomy about:

In Kentucky, GOP gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron was heavily outspent and allowed his opponents (Governor Andy Beshear and the liberal-Democrat media) to define him, primarily in a manner which made Cameron unpalatable to the rabid single-issue pro-abortionists of the suburbs. Being outspent and being ceaselessly under attack by the media have always been twin burdens for Republican campaigns, which normally leaves the GOP candidate two options:

1. Spend all of the time (and money) reacting and playing defense instead of attacking and playing offense, or

2. Lay down and give up entirely.

Cameron's 2023 campaign seems to have selected the latter option. The Kentucky election outcomes exactly mirrored 2019 as anticipated, with the Republicans sweeping every one of the other statewide elections including the important Attorney General office.

Back to the bad news, though there's really nothing here which should be considered surprising:

Some disgusting Democrats including one in-your-face transvestite won spots in the Virginia legislature as the Rats expanded their hold on the Senate (as expected) while also seizing control of the House (that was thought to be a tossup). Your political career was nice while it lasted, Governor Youngkin. Actually, Youngkin may have a chance (a small chance) of ousting radical leftist Timmy Kaine from the Senate in 2024 if Youngkin chooses to enter that race. Some Republican should.

New Jersey was another disappointment with the GOP expecting gains but getting zilch in the state Senate, and actually losing seats in the state Assembly. They're still counting votes, so the Republicans may not be done losing yet.

An abortioNazi won the Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, keeping the PA Democrat Supreme Court at a 5-2 partisan breakdown.

Finally, the solid "red" state of Ohio was bamboozled into voting for unlimited abortion. Whether most voters knew it or not, they simultaneously opted to bypass parental consent for their underage daughters to receive abortions. The new law also bypasses parents when young children are brainwashed by adult perverts (such as schoolteacher-groomers and the liberal media) regarding how wonderful it would be for the children to mutilate themselves via sex change operations. Read the fine print next time, Ohioans.

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Good news (presumably) out of the Buckeye State as regards the U.S. House districts which will be used in 2024, though by a Democrat-friendly state law they will still be invalidated before the 2026 elections. The 2024 districts will be the same ones which were used in 2022, which may cause one to wonder why this is considered to be good news seeing as how Democrats were the ones who benefited in '22. More on that below, but first, some history:

Years ago, redistricting was almost exclusively a once-a-decade thing which took place after each decennial Census. District lines were redrawn to take effect in years ending in '2' and those lines normally remained unaltered until the next Census.

Those days are long gone.

Following the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994, in which Republicans not only regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, the party also began making significant inroads at the state legislative level (especially in the South), which by 2000 meant that the GOP had control of the redistricting process in many states which Democrats had controlled forever.

Democrat gerrymanders had played a huge role in their eternal command of the U.S. House (and many state legislatures) and they were not about to let that go without a fight. When Democrats were suddenly no longer winning the game they had worked so hard to rig in the past, they simply changed the rules to try to rig things again in their favor.

As a result, legislatures (which may now be controlled by eeevil Republicans) are bypassed whenever possible, and the process of redrawing the lines is shunted off to liberal judges or "non-partisan" commissions. Furthermore, the process is no longer limited to taking place once per decade; it ends only when Democrats say it ends. Therefore "re-redistricting" has become an increasingly common event.

Just since 2022, Democrats have sued or otherwise conspired to alter legal GOP-held House districts in several states including, but possibly not limited to: Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, New York and Wisconsin. Ohio, until a couple of weeks ago, was also on the list.

According to the linked article, Ohio Democrats have withdrawn their lawsuit. The author hypothesizes that the reason for the sudden change of heart was that liberals feared the GOP legislature creating an even better map for their party. Often, when a court invalidates a map, it has some liberal group draw the map (e.g. in Pennsylvania) and doesn't give the Republicans another chance at it.

It's hard to tell what all the fear would be about in this case. When a court threw out a partisan Democrat gerrymander in Maryland prior to the 2022 elections (the first time a Democrat plan had been quashed in many years, maybe ever) it allowed the leftist legislature to redraw the map -- which it did, resulting in only a slight change in one district, which the Democrats then won anyway.

The same thing happened in Ohio too, when the allegedly "Republican" state Supreme Court tossed the original 2022 map and gave the Republicans another chance. At which point the Republicans proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot; they aren't called the Stupid Party for nothing. They deliberately sacrificed Republican Congressman Steve Chabot by creating a Cincinnati ghetto district for him, which naturally he lost to a liberal Democrat. The GOP was supposed to offset this with a pickup or two elsewhere in the state, but they blew it.

The Cincy district (CD-1) is rated as D+1 or D+2 -- it contains the good area of Warren County in addition to the bad parts of the city. So it's winnable but not a likely pickup.

CD-9 (Toledo area) is an R+ district, but the Democrats ran a typically dirty campaign against the Republican candidate on behalf of sweet, old grandmotherly (LOL) incumbent Marcy Kaptur, a liberal who has been in office since approximately the Truman Administration. Nevermind merely supporting Kaptur, the Democrats spent more against J.R. Majewski than he was able to raise himself; being a conservative, the GOPe was not anxious to help him and so they didn't.

In the very marginal CD-13 (Akron) open seat, the GOP was split, with Trump endorsing former beauty queen Madison Gesiotto, who narrowly won the primary but then was defeated by Democrat Emilia Sykes (definitely not a beauty queen) in a relentlessly negative campaign from which the fractured GOP never recovered and the seat was lost.

Democrats are clearly confident of holding all 3 of these seats in 2024, hence their acceptance of the current "Republican" map and their reluctance to take a chance on changing it.

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Ohio U.S. House Redistricting Backfire

First Kansas, then Kentucky, and now we can add Ohio to the list of allegedly solid "red" states which surprised Republicans by thwarting ballot measures which would do anything to even slightly reduce the prevelance of that Blessed Holy Liberal Sacrament of Abortion.

Once again, Democrats effectively motivated their voters while Republicans were complacent and took this off-year election lightly -- as they also did in April's Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, where the GOP's resounding defeat in that race has effectively handed Democrats total control of the Badger State's government.

That's a fact which will be demonstrated perhaps just a few weeks from now, when the Democrat Court reconvenes and begins trashing all current election district maps in Wisconsin and replacing them with hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders at the state legislative and congressional levels, to be used for 2024 and for the remainder of this decade. The plan is to cost the Republicans at least two seats in the U.S. House in 2025 and quite possibly flip both houses of the Wisconsin legislature to Democrat control.

Just as the shocking pro-abortionist victory in supposedly deep red Kansas in August of 2022 served as an indicator that there would be nothing resembling a "red wave" in November (in Kansas or just about anywhere else) despite the fever dreams of the hopium addicts which lasted all the way until election night, yesterday's result in supposedly deep red Ohio can be taken as a similar canary-in-the-coal-mine for November of 2024, when Democrat Sherrod Brown will likely cruise to another Senate win in Ohio and Republicans will have their hands full trying to get that state's 17 critical electoral votes. Ohio is not a mortal lock to go in the GOP column, and yesterday's vote highlights that fact.

In Kentucky, the same suburban soccer mommies and other whores whose pro-abortionist votes carried the day in 2022 will be instrumental in the upcoming easy re-election of pretty-boy Democrat Andy Beshear as Governor. This liberal empty suit is heavily favored as of now to prevail over a good conservative Republican opponent in three months. Hopefully the GOP will be able to retain the state row offices, which they surprisingly swept back in 2019 even as another good conservative (Matt Bevin) was being ousted from the governorship.

Back to Ohio....

Wouldn't yesterday's important election have been a nice opportunity for Republicans to implement their new favorite election tactic -- ballot harvesting -- instead of merely giving it lip service? The GOP leadership (Trump and occasionally Ronna McRomney) throws those words around because they know that GOP voters want to hear that the party is going to do something to try to compete on more equal footing against Democrat fraud efforts. Unfortunately the term "ballot harvesting" is just a handy buzzword to them and nothing more. The amount of money and level of organization required to change those words into actions are not forthcoming and will not be in place in any widespread systematic manner on the Republican side for 2024.

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Ohio Abortionist

Photo credit: Bloomberg Government

The first paragraph of the article, mainly telling us what we already knew:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have been working for months to recruit the most electable candidates in must-win swing states to retake the majority next year.

"Electable" of course means "someone who is a moderate/liberal toady for Mitch McConnell, like Steve Daines is". The liberal Republican establishment is sticking to the lie that the only reason why the GOP isn't in control of the Senate today is because of all the supposedly flawed candidates who lost in states like Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania during the failed "red wave" of 2022. Add in other states such as Nevada which were ripe for a pickup and a couple more ridiculous pipe dreams (Colorado, Washington) and some lunatics seriously expected a GOP majority of something like 10 seats right now, 55-45 or so.

The party seeks to make sure that only approved Mitch Bitches get on the ticket for 2024, and no more "flawed" conservatives. When that strategy fails next November, the GOPe excuse will be that conservative voters didn't do their job and let the party down.

Here's a howler from the article, regarding Montana:

The establishment has "coalesced around former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy's candidacy while privately dissuading Rep. Matt Rosendale from throwing his hat in the ring. Sheehy has the backing of Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-MT), while Rosendale has the backing of the well-funded Club for Growth despite not being in the race yet. Party establishment has said that Rosendale's 2018 loss to Tester proves he cannot win statewide."

Then the party establishment consists of idiots, liars, or both. You see, Rosendale, who is a far more conservative option than Squish Sheehy, in fact DID WIN STATEWIDE in Montana in 2020, by nearly 14 points against a very well-funded liberal Democrat to boot.

The article goes on to note that the GOPe is "staying out" of the primary in Ohio -- because they can easily see that the right-ish primary vote will be split between Secretary of State Frank LaRose and MAGA conservative Bernie Moreno, allowing liberal state Senator Matt Dolan to prevail by getting the primary votes of many Democrat infiltrators who will never vote for him in the general. Why should the GOPe interfere when things are going so well for them? You should already be well aware of the liberal machinations in West Virginia, with the GOP backstabbing conservative Rep. Alex Mooney in favor of doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice.

Now back to the "bad candidate" lie of 2022. True that the quality of some of the GOP candidates was less than great (Oz leaps to mind), but it's also been true for a long time that the GOPe will ensure that candidates it doesn't approve of (conservatives) will not succeed in general elections, and the best way to do that is to fail to support those candidates with $$$$ and thereby concede massive financial advantages to the Democrats.

Check this out from the key swing state Senate races in 2022:

Arizona: D spending, $192 million; R spending, $15 million

Georgia: D: $326 million; R: $69 million

Nevada: D: $64 million; R: $18 million

New Hampshire: D: $42 million; R: $4 million

Pennsylvania: D: $76 million; R: $49 million

Even in states the GOP won (barely) in 2022, Democrats still had massive spending margins over their Republican opponents; the Rats made sure that their ultra-liberal Senate candidates in Wisconsin and North Carolina didn't have to rely solely on their melanin advantages, and therefore they also had far more resources to work with than Ron Johnson or Ted Budd. In Ohio, J.D. Vance was outspent by close to 300% (!), but then Ohio isn't supposed to be a swing state so the Democrats theoretically needed to pump in tremendous cash just to have a fighting chance. Ohio will obviously be a lot tighter in 2024 than it was in 2022, and this time all that Democrat cash will be critical.

Looking at the financial picture as it is developing for the 2024 Senate races, in every state where the GOP can even dream of making a pickup -- including West Virginia -- the incumbent Democrat is starting out far ahead in the money race. Even where there isn't a Democrat incumbent who is running again (Michigan) the liberals are still miles ahead in geld. With it still being so early in the campaign season, perhaps that's not the most meaningful way to evaluate electoral chances because incumbents always start out far ahead.

Oh yeah?

The loony left has at most only two semi-realistic possibilities of taking a Senate seat from the Republicans in 2024 and in one of those -- Texas -- GOP incumbent Ted Cruz is already trailing his dumb-as-dirt opponent in fundraising, and that trend is likely to continue through 2024. The Democrats are laser-beam focused on taking Texas because once it finally flips from true blue to commie pinko red, any Republican has a 0.0% chance of ever winning another presidential election. Since the Rats can't make their presidential candidate (presumably Biden, for now) attractive to Texans, they are sinking tons of cash into the Senate race in the hopes that the coattail effect will work up the ticket as well as down.

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Senate 2024 Montana Ohio West Virginia Democrat mega-$$$$ advantage

Photo credit: Matt York, Associated Press

"The Hill", of all sources, contends that every one of the five most allegedly endangered Senate seats up in 2024 are currently held by Democrats! The five are: West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona and Wisconsin. We know that's hardly wishful thinking on the part of that leftist site, but are these pickups actually realistic or is this just a lot of crocodile tears to go with the veiled warning to Democrats to get busy doing whatever is necessary (wink, wink) to keep those seats, especially with Senate control at risk?

West Virginia: is supposed to be a slam-dunk pickup, perhaps with Joe "I've never lost an election in my life" Manchin deciding to keep his record intact by failing to run again and making the pickup a 100% certainty. The GOPe firmly supports moderate Governor Jim Justice and will do whatever it takes to prevent conservative Alex Mooney from getting the nomination. If Manchin really is as much of a "centrist" as some folks claim, the transition from Manchin to Justice in the Senate probably won't be very noticeable when it comes to their voting records.

Montana: The GOPe is rallying behind businessman Tim Sheehy, which probably tells you everything you need to know about this newcomer's politics. The question remains as to whether 2018 candidate and current congressman Matt Rosendale will enter the race. The Republicans lost Montana in 2018 for the same reason they lost West Virginia -- their candidate was attacked for the crime of not being born in the state (that plus some other Dirty Democrat Tricks, particularly in Montana). If Rosendale tries again in 2024 he'll do better than 2018, but he might be too conservative for his party's establishment.

Ohio: The GOP doesn't even appear to have a viable candidate. State Senator Matt Dolan is a liberal who got barely 20% of the vote in the 2022 Republican Senate primary, most of those votes coming from Democrats; Bernie Moreno is trying to paint himself as the MAGA candidate a la J.D. Vance, and will probably get a Trump endorsement if he can demonstrate a substantial lead in the polls. Ohio is not the solidly Republican state that the hopium addicts wish it was. For proof of that statement look no further than Sherrod Brown's past electoral successes, including 2018 when we were assured that Brown was toast because Trump won Ohio in 2016. Oops.

Arizona: Republicans can always count on a fair election in Arizona of course (LOL) but even if that really was the case their only hope here is for a 3-way race between the slimy "independent" incumbent (Sinema) a really slimy Democrat congressman (Gallego) and whoever the GOP nominates; that way the Republican could win with merely a plurality of the vote, and a plurality is probably the best they can do in this state these days. Some believe that Kari Lake will be back for a repeat of 2022. She was too good to be allowed to win then, and the same applies now. Whether it takes threats, bribes or both, Independent Sinema may not even choose to run for re-election, clearing the field for the Democrat nominee to very likely prevail next November.

Wisconsin: Rebecca Kleefisch, who would probably be Governor right now if it weren't for Trump's misguided and ineffectual endorsement of proven loser Tim Michels in 2022, would be a very good candidate and former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke would be good as well. Unfortunately, the GOPe is far more interested in millionaire candidates who will spend their own funds and not waste the apparently limited amount of cash the party has to throw around this cycle ("Pleez send us munney!"). Better still for the GOPe, the typical millionaire-type candidate often tends to be a squish although in this case Wisconsin venture capitalist Eric Hovde is described as a "conservative activist", at least by those on the left who hate him. So maybe he's not bad, but any Republican starts off as a clear underdog here.


Other possibilities, but don't hold your breath: There's Michigan, where incumbent liberal Debbie Stabenow is retiring in 2024 and will likely be replaced by well-funded liberal congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. There are a lot of GOP possibles to take her on, but none of them are serious threats to win. Except perhaps former Detroit police chief James Craig, who tried to run for Governor in 2022 but made the rookie mistake of having Democrat operatives in disguise gather signatures for him, which were deliberately falsified and Craig was kicked off the primary ballot at the last minute, leaving nothing but a field of underfunded and outclassed twerps on the Republican side. Hopefully he'll be smarter this time around.

Then there's Nevada, where the current Democrat Senator barely got 50% in 2018 against former Republican incumbent Dean Heller, who ran screaming to the left in a failed effort to keep that seat. The string-pullers on rare occasions allow the GOP to win a close election in Nevada (e.g. 2022 Governor) when the Republican candidate is acceptable to the left. If Sam Brown or Jim Marchant becomes the Senate nominee: (a) either one would make a great Senator, therefore (b) that is not going to be one of the few times the puppetmasters will allow the Republicans to win a statewide general election in Nevada although the result would likely be close. The GOP could simply nominate an eternal loser such as Adam Laxalt or Danny Tarkanian again, at least that would remove any suspense regarding the outcome.

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Senate 2024 West Virginia Slam dunk Montana Ohio Arizona Wisconsin Wishful thinking Michigan Nevada