What to Watch for in the Senate Races

[Geee]

National Review:

The real Election Day drama may come in the fight for the upper chamber. Here’s where each race stands.

 

On Election Night, watch the battle for the Senate. Most analysts and strategists who have been following the campaign closely are predicting that the presidential race will be called early for Hillary Clinton. Several operatives involved in Senate races, all of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly, say that the real drama tomorrow will be in the fight for the upper-chamber — and right now, the reality is that nobody knows which party will emerge victorious.

 

Tomorrow marks the first presidential race in eight years without Barack Obama at the top of the ballot. Obama, of course, upended conventional turnout models and, in 2012, helped drive African-American voter participation past white turnout for the first time in history. Though that’s unlikely to happen again this year, pollsters remain unsure what the electorate will look like, and how it will affect Senate races across the country. “The reality is that there’s more uncertainty this year than there has been because of the presidential [race], which has the two most hated candidates in history on the ticket,” says one Republican pollster involved in multiple Senate races. “It injects a degree of volatility that is usually not present.”