Hotline’s 2016 Senate Rankings

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Hotline’s 2016 Senate Rankings

The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip

By Kyle Trygstad, Andrea Drusch, Alex Roartyand Josh Kraushaar

 

December 27, 2015

The ques­tion is not wheth­er Demo­crats will pick up Sen­ate seats next year, it is al­most cer­tainly how many. With the elec­tion year upon us, a two-seat gain ap­pears highly likely, while any more than that still falls closer to pos­sible on the com­pet­it­ive spec­trum of 2016 races.

 

It’s that gray area where the Sen­ate ma­jor­ity will be de­cided: The races for the seats of 2010 class­mates Kelly Ayotte, Pat Toomey, and Rob Port­man, along with the seat left va­cant by Marco Ru­bio. All three Re­pub­lic­an in­cum­bents have tan­gible polit­ic­al strengths, but they’re either fa­cing a chal­lenger with a statewide vic­tory on the re­sume or are run­ning in a state that votes re­li­ably Demo­crat­ic in pres­id­en­tial years—or both.

 

If Demo­crats win in Illinois and Wis­con­sin, as ex­pec­ted, the party would need to add just two of those four seats if it also re­tains the White House, giv­ing the vice pres­id­ent the tie-break­ing vote. The party would need a total net gain of five seats if Re­pub­lic­ans win the pres­id­ency.