There are seven presidential battleground states, five of which also have senatorial elections. This is important because the senatorial elections, like the presidential election, are statewide. According to a poll Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are essentially tied or close in those states, but the Democratic Senate candidate is ahead in all five states, in some cases by large margins.
Simply put, if the Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states win by margins similar to their current vote share, Trump will likely lose those states and the election.
I wrote about this last May, when President Joe Biden was still on the campaign trail. Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states were ahead of their Republican opponents — or, since some states hadn't yet held their primaries, likely to be their Republican opponents. Since Labor Day, the Democratic candidates have gotten even further ahead.
Let's start with Arizona, which has an open Senate seat (meaning there is no incumbent). According to a RealClear pollThe RCP polling average has Democrat Ruben Gallego leading Republican Kali Lake by 8.2 points, but the margin has varied by 4 to 15 points over the past two weeks depending on the day and pollster.
PennsylvaniaDemocratic Sen. Bob Casey leads Republican Sen. David McCormick by 6.5 points in the RCP average, with the margin ranging from 3 to 14 points over the past few weeks.
Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin Wisconsin takes the lead Republican Eric Hovde is trailing by an average of 6.4 points, with a margin of 1 to 10 points. Michigan's vacant Senate seatDemocrat Elissa Slotkin leads Republican Mike Rogers by an average of 4.7 points, with the margin ranging from 2 to 10 points.
Finally, NevadaDemocratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is leading Republican Sen. Sam Brown by 10.8 percentage points, with the two-week lead now at 9 to 14 points.
In fact, looking at the five battleground state Senate races that Real Clear has tracked over the past few months, the Republican candidate has never had a lead in any of them.
While North Carolina is a battleground state with no senatorial race, it is the only one with a gubernatorial election, which is held statewide just like the senatorial and presidential elections. In North Carolina, Democratic candidate Josh Stein has a sizable lead over Republican Mark Robinson. The RCP has Stein Various polls in August ranged from 5 to 14 points.
Here's the bottom line: If current polls accurately reflect what battleground state voters chose for their respective Senate candidates, then those leads will likely determine each state's choice of presidential candidate.
Sure, some voters will split their votes, supporting Republicans for some offices and Democrats for others, but that trend is declining. According to the Pew Research Center: In a poll conducted just before the 2020 presidential election, only 4% said they would consider voting for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden and the other party's Senate candidate.
Perhaps more telling is a study by the Larry Sabato Center for Politics at the University of Virginia into the postwar history of divisions in presidential and senatorial races.
Until the 1990s, it was fairly common for people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate and the Democratic senatorial candidate, or vice versa, but as party polarization grew, this trend faded and is now rarely seen. According to the centerIn 2016, no state voted for one party's presidential candidate and the other's for Senate. In 2020, only one state did: Maine, which voted for Republican Sen. Susan Collins for president but also voted for Biden.
If the Democratic Senate candidate in a battleground state has a 1 or 2 point lead, Trump might win that state. But if the Democratic senator has a 4, 6, or 8 point lead, Trump would need a significant split in the vote to win. That could happen. Collins in Maine was pretty far down in the polls in 2020, but still Victory was won 51 percent. But this is unusual.
What this means for the next presidential election is that if the leads of the Senate candidates in these battleground states hold (and it's hard to imagine these Senate poll numbers changing dramatically now that the election is this close), Donald Trump is unlikely to win in those battleground states, which means we'll have a Kamala Harris president.
Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.” X@MerylMatthews.
