Pivot Counties and Senate elections: where races will be won and lost this year.
Throughout the summer, the chances of the Democrats retaining — or perhaps even increasing — their majority in the Senate have improved. FiveThirtyEight estimates there’s nearly a 70% chance of this happening; up from 50% in late July.
This will likely be decided in a handful of places. Georgia (Warnock vs. Walker), Wisconsin (Johnson vs. Barnes), Nevada (Cortez Masto vs. Laxalt), Ohio (Vance vs. Ryan), Pennsylvania (Oz vs. Fetterman), Arizona (Kelly vs. Masters). On a good night for Democrats, North Carolina; on a very good night Florida. Similarly, on a good or very good night for Republicans, New Hampshire. There is, of course, a chance nothing changes and the composition of the Senate remains the same.
Establishing that list takes about thirty seconds. In the days before the 2020 General Election, I kept tabs on key counties across six swing states (note, at that time I didn’t even include Georgia and, probably foolishly, did include Florida and North Carolina). I want to do something similar before the midterms.
