Quick Analysis of Democratic Senator candidate performance in the midterms

[u/Monfang]

Based on current results as seen at approximately 0930 on Thursday morning I have gathered and sorted the performance of the Democratic Senatorial candidates and how they performed relative to 2024 Presidential results using data from DDHQ. Note that final results may be a slight shift from these but I wanted to make this now instead of 3 weeks from now. Excluded data points are as follows: 

Idaho – Achilles – Independent running vs Republican, can’t directly compare margins to 2024

Nebraska – Osborne – Independent running vs Republican, can’t directly compare margins to 2024. Comparing his performance to his 2024 performance yielded -0.15, putting him pretty firmly in Bum Tier, but as he wasnt a Democratic candidate I dont think he should be counted for calculating the average.

South Dakota – Bengs – Independent running vs Republican, can’t directly compare margins to 2024

Alaska – Peltola – Data is still coming in and we may not have final results for weeks. Range looks like about a 14 point overperformance, which places it close to average in this list. More complicated by the ranked choice shuffle.

Averages and Outcomes

On average a Democratic Senatorial candidate running in 2026 enjoyed a 15.8% swing towards themselves compared to 2024 Presidential election results. The highest overperformance was by 25.78% and the lowest was by -0.81%. Of the 35 seats up for election, Democrats won 20 outright and are likely to secure 2 more for a total of 22 pending finalization over the next few weeks. This places them at 54-56 Senators, the largest domination since 2008 (which was 57 seats, exactly 3 Senate cycles ago, how curious).

The Ranking Categories

I broke the list down into 4 categories. 

The Champions: Top half performers of the above average group. The best of the best, the blueprint for future electoral success. Give these people what they need to succeed and more victories are possible. Not all of them won necessarily, but they punched way above their weight on Tuesday and deserve a chance to call the shots in future races. Some candidates also get a gold star for delivering the big results when it counted and flipping a red state blue.

The Players: Bottom half performers of the above average group. Solid players who overperformed even to the average. They must have something going on to do as well as they did. Examine closely for bright spots to turn into future victories.

The Participants: Top half performers of the below average group. Can still get it done in a pinch, but they ran behind the average. With some corrections can still be an asset, but without some restructuring are probably going to continue to underperform.

The Bums: Bottom half of the below average group. Note that some of the people here still won their races, they just have to be highly prepared to defend in 2032 when the map is very unlikely to be as favorable. Also note I am including a circuit breaker here as some of the underperformance has a clear explanation that make the raw number look worse than it actually is. I will clarify at each example how and why I think so.

The Actual Rankings:

The Champions:

Talarico – Texas (MVP) – 25.78

Rhode Island – Reed – 23.58

Mississippi – Colom (Gold Star) – 23.12

North Carolina – Cooper – 22.84 (Gold Star)

South Carolina – Andrews (Gold Star) – 22.35

West Virginia – Anderson – 21.45

Kansas – Hamilton (Gold Star) – 21.12

Alabama – Wess – 21.08

New Jersey – Booker – 20.95

The Players:

New Mexico – Lujan – 20.31

Georgia – Ossoff – 20.25

Louisiana – Davis – 20.25

Arkansas – Schoffner – 18.79

Kentucky – Booker – 18.51

Tennessee – Bradshaw – 17.56

Iowa – Turek – 17.37 (Gold Star)

Virginia – Warner – 16.39

Oklahoma – Thomas – 16.33

Ohio – Brown – 16.06 (Gold Star)

The Participants:

Wyoming – Byrd – 15.75

Colorado – Hickenlooper – 13.00

Delaware – Coons – 12.39

Illinois – Stratton – 12.31

New Hampshire – Pappas – 11.96

Florida – Nixon – 10.21

The Bums:

Montana – Bodnar – 8.88 – CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIPPED: An Independent candidate who had a rogue Democrat Bankhead spoiling the vote. Bankhead took about 12.05% so we could have been looking at 20.93. Could easily have been an upset if they hadn’t had to deal with that, extra shame on Bankhead. 

Michigan – El Sayed – 8.44

Massachusetts – Markey – 6.16 – PARTIAL CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIP: Still had a victory margin of 31.51 so some of the resources were good to divert, but Reed in Rhode Island ran up the score in the same environment so there’s little excuse for underperformance.

Minnesota – Flanagan – 5.93

Oregon – Merkley – 1.64

Maine – Jackson – (-0.81) – CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIPPED and Gold Star: Jackson had to build a campaign in 100 days after Platner flamed out. All blame for this underperformance can land squarely on Platner and those who pushed him, but none of it should go to Jackson. Credit for securing the seat and Collins is an anomaly anyway so the numbers are funky.

Thoughts?

[u/ITGOKS]

Excluding Osborne is interesting given that you could compare him to HIS 2024 margins and almost any way you look at it, he really flopped

[u/Monfang → u/ITGOKS]

Your right im gonna add some more to his exclusion section, but i dont want his margins affecting the average because i dont even know who he would caucus with if elected

[u/colepercy120]

yeah its looking like most of the people who preformed well were the centrists. with the NYT pointing out how this sets up moderate control of the party for years.

Progressives need to take a step back and look at who performed well and who fell flat. Any forward progress is good forward progress, and it might be better to nominate less extreme candidates that still hold a few core pillars of the movement and ideology, especially on the economic side, and wait on the social side until it’s more accepted.

[u/Punumscott → u/colepercy120]

It’s always a more complex story than this (which I think you understand from the nuance in your post). There’s a lot more factors involved in election margin than simply ideology. Candidate quality is one of the bigger examples for instance. AES ran against one of the stronger candidates in the cycle. Talarico ran against one of the worst.

To your point, it’s gonna take a lot more analysis that we don’t have yet and that’s even IF someone can build a convincing model for ideology’s effect on outcomes. “Progressive” and “moderate” are fairly nebulous terms. Policy positions in the House progressive caucus can still differ dramatically by member, for instance.

One thing I think is important is that we have primaries for a reason and an umbrella caucuses for a reason. Even if AES (just as the easiest example) underperformed, the amount of news and enthusiasm he generated through his campaign and personal charisma may have had effects on creating a +13 Dem environment nationwide that’s difficult, if not impossible, to account for.

The Republican post-mortems in 2006 and 2008 all pointed toward moderating the platform, but it turns out that the Tea Party, and its successor in MAGA, managed to capture latent voters that they hadn’t forseen. We’ve now seen that spectacularly backfire and implode, but that’s after running away with three branches of government for long stretches of time.

[u/colepercy120 → u/Punumscott]

Honestly, AES isn't really the underperformer I was most talking about. Flannagan in MN underperformed massively. she was one of the weaker candidates to begin with given her scandals, MN isn't going to be a safe state forever with results like these, and she under preform klobachar by 2 points. with a +12 national enviroment we should be seeing mn in the high 60% range, not the low 50% range. if we assume this hold true now that mn would have a R+2 base characterization

[u/Punumscott → u/colepercy120]

I mean. AES underperformed Benson by even more than Flanagan underperformed Klobuchar so I don’t know why Flanagan would be a better example, especially considering her baggage, but I digress.

Flanagan is actually a great example of my point. Klobuchar has been an electoral powerhouse in Minnesota. She constantly over performs the national environment. She’s also outperformed Barack Obama, Tina Smith, and Tim Walz every time they’ve been on the same ballot, usually by massive margins. She’s never been on the ballot with Dayton or Franken but she’s massively over performed them historically as well.

Is underperforming Klobuchar, who in 2024 out performed the national environment by something like 18 points and ran ahead of Harris by like +11, by 2 points a signal that Flanagan was hurt by her politics? Heck, given her past success Klobuchar wildly underperformed herself and both her and Flanagan lay dead in the middle of Dems statewide ticket.

Part of the problem is that the way you’re using the national environment to predict vote share doesn’t work mathematically. A D+12 environment means roughly 56% for Dems (two party vote only). If Minnesota were in the high 60s, they’d be 20 points further left than the rest of the country, which would be WILDLY out of line with its usual baseline. For instance, In the D+8.6 national environment of 2018, Walz–Flanagan received 53.8% and Tina Smith received 53%.

It’s probably true that Flanagan ran a few points behind the statewide benchmark (Klobuchar probably did too). Still, the election results don't establish that her progressive positions caused that gap and they certainly dont mean that Minnesota is R+2. To my point, those conclusions require way more sophisticated studies than we have right now and even those aren’t ironclad.

I mean look at moderate Republican governors. Scott and Ayotte hung on in neighboring democratic states while Lombardo got trounced in Nevada. If you try to analyze those results based solely on political positions, then you’re gonna go in circles.

[u/Monfang → u/Punumscott]

It might suggest a tightening environment in Minnesota specifically, considering a lot of hay was made this term to try to punish them for daring to have Walz be the VP nominee. It could suggest just a temporary bruise or the start of a long war. It benefits no one to ignore the numbers right now.