Here are 7 Key Races That Will Decide Control of the Senate. Vote Pro-Life

The race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to become our nation’s 47th president has rightfully dominated American political discussion over the past few months. The outcome of Tuesday’s presidential vote will have immense consequences for the country.

However, the presidential election will only decide a part of the United States’ future.

The Framers of the Constitution explicitly established the United States federal government as one split into three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The branches are subject to a system of checks and balances, and must govern in concert with one another.

On Tuesday, American voters will decide what party controls two of these branches – the executive branch – via the presidential election – and the legislative branch – via elections to both the Senate and the House.

By extension, voters will also decide control of the judicial branch on Tuesday – as federal judges are nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

This Election Day, 33 of the upper chamber’s 100 seats are up for election for six-year terms.

Control of the Senate is key for the winning presidential candidate to implement his or her agenda. Many times in the past, a president has entered the Oval Office with bold policy goals, only to be completely stymied by a hostile Congress.

Trump has spoken of many innovative policy solutions during his 2024 White House bid, such as making the government more cost-efficient and providing tax relief for parents who wish to homeschool their children.

However, if Trump wins but the Democrats end up with the Senate, he would simply not have the votes to get much of his “Agenda 47” enshrined into law.

On the other hand, Harris has vowed to shepherd a national pro-abortion law that would codify the overturned Roe v. Wade decision and wipe out virtually all current pro-life laws in conservative states.

In order for Harris to realize this goal and first eliminate the filibuster as she promised, she would need her party to maintain control of the Senate.

The Senate Landscape: An Overview

Heading into November 5, Democrats narrowly control the Senate with a total of 51 seats in the party’s caucus (including four independents) to the Republicans’ 49 seats.

In the event of a 50-50 split in the Senate, the nation’s vice president makes the tie-breaking vote.

Therefore, to assume control of the upper chamber, the Republicans need a net gain of one seat if the Trump-Vance ticket wins the presidential election, and two seats if the Harris-Walz ticket wins.

Regardless, the Grand Old Party is the overwhelming favorite to recapture the Senate, which they lost four years ago.

As of this weekend, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast gave Republicans a 90% chance of winning control of the Senate, compared to the Democrats’ 10% chance.

Meanwhile, Republicans were favored to win the Senate at an 80-20 spread on the leading prediction website Polymarket.

Due to the current class of Senate seats being last up for election in 2018 – a Democratic wave year – there is now an unusual amount of contested seats with Democratic incumbents in red states and swing states.

As a result, analysts widely consider the 2024 Senate election map to be exceedingly favorable for Republicans.

Off the bat, the party is already assured of a pickup in deep-red West Virginia, where incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin, I-WV, is retiring. Manchin is an independent who left the Democratic Party earlier this year, but still caucuses with his lifelong former party.

FiveThirtyEight gives Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice greater than a 99% chance of winning the election to succeed Manchin.

Therefore, with West Virginia taken into consideration, Republicans simply need to have no net losses in the rest of the country if Trump wins the presidential race, or just one more net gain if Harris wins.

The 7 Key Races that will decide the Senate

Montana: The GOP’s must-win

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D) vs. businessman and retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy (R)

FiveThirtyEight favorite (as of 11/3):

Sheehy (91%)

Polymarket favorite (as of 11/3):

Sheehy (83%)

Consensus rating:

Leans Republican

In reliably red Montana, longtime incumbent Democrat Jon Tester is seeking reelection to a fourth six-year term.

Despite his incumbency Tester is seen as a heavy underdog as most polls show him narrowly trailing to his Republican challenger, retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy – who was a top recruit for the party.

Picking up Montana (in addition to the inevitable West Virginia) and holding all of its other contested Senate races is the most likely path for Republicans to win back the Senate majority, if Harris wins the presidency.

First elected in the Iraq War-era Democratic wave election of 2006, Tester has been quite the political survivor. He won reelection by around four points in both 2012 and 2018 – years where Democrats enjoyed electoral success across the country.

Tester won his initial reelection bid on the same day Democratic President Barack Obama lost Montana’s vote by nearly 14 points to failed 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The state went on to vote for Trump by 20 points in 2016, 16 points in 2020, and is poised to back him by another double-digit margin again this cycle.

However, many analysts feel that Tester – who despite the occasional break with his party still overwhelmingly votes in line with the Biden-Harris administration – will see his luck run out on November 5.

If victorious, Sheehy, 38, would be one of the youngest members of the Senate, where the median age is 65.

Florida and Texas: Democrats on offense?

Let’s say Democrats lose the Montana race as expected. Then, in order to retain the Senate, the party must pick off one (if Harris wins) or two (if Trump wins) of the seats currently held by Republicans – a tall order indeed.

Of all the 11 seats Republicans are defending this cycle, only two could be plausibly won by Democrats – the races in Florida and Texas.

However, it is still incredibly likely that Republicans will win both of these contests in light red states that are almost certain to back Trump on the presidential ballot.

Florida

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Rick Scott (R) vs. former Rep. Debbie Murcasel-Powell (D)

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Scott (83%)

Polymarket favorite:

Scott (92%)

Consensus rating:

Likely Republican

Florida may be “fool’s gold” for the Democratic Party, so to speak.

It is clear from recent election cycles – particularly 2022 – that Florida’s “hanging chads” history is in the past and the former swing state is now comfortably in the Republican column.

This however has not stopped the Democrats from trying to defeat one-term Republican Senator and former two-term Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott is notably one of the three Senators vying to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, as leader of the Senate Republican Conference. McConnell is stepping down from his longtime leadership role at the end of the year.

To oppose the governor-turned-senator, Democrats have nominated one-term former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-FL, who won her party’s primary with little difficulty.

Mucarsel-Powell served one term in the House representing a Miami area district. She was defeated in her 2020 reelection bid in an upset to now-Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-FL. She is a self-professed Catholic who has made supporting abortion an integral part of her campaign.

While Scott is well-known in Florida for winning his past three statewide elections – 2010, 2014 , and 2018 – by one point, it is increasingly looking like this time around, he will prevail by a wider margin.

Furthermore, the Democratic Party investing relatively little outside money to boost Murcasel-Powell may be a sign that Scott’s reelection is a foregone conclusion.

Texas

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R) vs. Rep. Colin Allred (D)

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Cruz (82%)

Polymarket favorite:

Cruz (80%)

Consensus rating:

Leans Republican

Although Democrats have slightly better chances of winning the Senate race in Texas than in Florida, they are still the underdogs there.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX – the runner-up for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination – is seeking a third term where he is challenged by well-funded Democratic nominee Dallas area Rep. Colin Allred, D-TX, a civil rights attorney.

Democratic activists have long targeted Cruz due to both his national profile and history of taking conservative stances on various issues, most notably border security.

While he won his initial 2012 race to a then-open seat in a landslide, Cruz’s 2018 reelection – where he scraped by, besting Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, D-TX, by two-and-a-half points during the Democratic wave year – was a different story.

Kamala Harris’ party hopes that Allred can succeed where O’Rourke narrowly failed.

Allred has served in Congress since 2019 and is a former Obama administration official and linebacker for the National Football League’s (NFL) Tennessee Titans.

CatholicVote reported in September that Allred “vowed that if elected he would support an initiative to upend the filibuster in order to pass a pro-abortion law codifying the overturned Roe v. Wade decision nationally.”

Late last year, CatholicVote noted that Allred “secured a $1 million grant of taxpayer money to a far-left LGBTQ group” that pushes the “transgender” movement on children. Allred’s website claimed the grant was for a “housing project.”

The Blue Wall trio: Insurance for Republicans

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – collectively known as the “Blue Wall” battleground states conversely present an insurance policy for Republicans if they are to lose either the Senate races in Florida or Texas in an upset.

Polling and political forecasts for the Senate races in the Blue Wall states favor Democrats – the party that currently holds all three of these seats. All three of the Republican nominees in these races have been consistently running behind Trump’s margins in the polls.

By all accounts, the Republican Party does not need to win any of these seats to retake the majority of the upper chamber.

However, winning in one or more would, in addition to offsetting a potential loss elsewhere, also give the Republicans a more comfortable majority as a pair of moderate Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins, R-ME, and Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, frequently vote with Democrats.’

Michigan

The contenders:

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) vs. former Rep. Mike Rogers (R), open seat: incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) is retiring

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Slotkin (77%)

Polymarket favorite:

Slotkin (81%)

Consensus rating:

Leans Democratic

Michigan boasts the only competitive open seat Senate race during the 2024 cycle.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-MI, is retiring after holding her seat for 24 years. Interestingly, both major party nominees in the race to succeed her come from a national security and intelligence background.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-MI, won the two-way Democratic primary by over a three-to-one margin.

Slotkin, who has represented a Lansing-based district since 2019, formerly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD).

On the Republican side, former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-MI, won his party’s primary with 63% of the vote.

Rogers, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who represented the same congressional district as Slotkin, served in the House for 14 years before retiring in 2015 – spending his last four years in Congress as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

While Slotkin remains the favorite, Rogers has a chance of winning, especially if Trump carries Michigan for the second time in three election cycles. Michigan’s last Senate race – in 2020 – was decided by less than two points.

Pennsylvania

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D) vs. former U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury David McCormick (R)

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Casey (74%)

Polymarket favorite:

Casey (76%)

Consensus rating:

Leans Democratic

Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-PA, is seeking reelection to a fourth term. A self-professed Catholic, Casey first entered the Senate after unseating his Republican predecessor Rick Santorum, later a presidential candidate, in 2006.

The sitting senator is the son of late Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey Sr., who led the Keystone State from 1987 to 1995.

The elder Casey was best known for signing and championing a state pro-life law that spurred the 1991 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The younger Casey had once identified as pro-life himself but unlike his father, who passed away in 2000, now appears to fully support the Democratic Party’s pro-abortion platform.

In fact, Casey made headlines last year after requesting a $1 million earmark of taxpayer money for a LGBTQ Community Center that once hosted a “youth drag show.”

Recently, Casey came under scrutiny after a political action committee (PAC) linked to him was accused of anti-Republican voter suppression.

Former U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury and hedge fund CEO David McCormick was unopposed for the Republican nomination to face Casey.

This is McCormick’s second go at running for Senate. In 2022, he lost the Republican primary for the state’s other Senate race by 950 votes (0.07%) to television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, who went on to lose the general election to now-Sen. John Fetterman, D-PA.

While initially viewed as a longshot against the entrenched Casey, McCormick’s prospects of pulling an upset in what has been widely called the presidential election’s most important battleground state have improved in recent months.

RealClearPolitics’s polling average on Friday showed Casey leading by only 2.4 points, within the margin of error of almost all polls.

Wisconsin

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) vs. businessman Eric Hovde (R)

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Baldwin (69%)

Polymarket favorite:

Baldwin (75%)

Consensus rating:

Leans Democratic

Wisconsin is perhaps the most likely of the Blue Wall states in which the Republicans can gain a Senate seat this cycle. Some political forecasters even rate the race as a tossup, although most seem to favor the incumbent’s chances.

Incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-WI, is running for a third term. She is a self-described “progressive” and multiple critics have accused her of being too left-wing for Wisconsin – a swing state where the presidential election was decided by less than a point in both 2016 and 2020.

Political outsider Eric Hovde, a mustachioed real estate businessman and banking executive won the Republican nomination with 86% of the vote.

If Hovde manages to win, this would not be the first time in recent Wisconsin history that a little-known Republican businessman upset a sitting left-wing Democratic Senator.

During the Tea Party wave of 2010, then-plastics company CEO Ron Johnson stunned three-term incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold, a progressive darling well known for casting the lone Senate vote against the PATRIOT Act in 2001.

Johnson has since been reelected twice, including once in a rematch with Feingold, and remains the state’s other U.S. Senator, serving alongside Baldwin.

Ohio: the only true tossup

The contenders:

incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) vs. businessman Bernie Moreno (R)

FiveThirtyEight favorite:

Brown (56%)

Polymarket favorite:

Brown (51%)

Consensus rating:

Tossup

Like Baldwin, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, is another “progressive” senator who has been accused of being out of touch with the state he represents.

However, unlike the evenly-split Wisconsin, Ohio leans Republican and is all but certain to back Trump in the presidential race for a third consecutive time.

Like Tester, Brown was swept into the Senate during the blue wave of 2006 and has mainly survived his first two reelection contests due to running when the national environment was friendly for his party. He certainly does not have that advantage this year.

Emerging from a hotly-contested three-way Republican primary was yet another outsider, Bernie Moreno – a Colombian immigrant and former car dealership owner.

While running for the party’s nomination, Moreno had the backing of both members of the Republican presidential ticket: Trump and Ohio’s other senator, JD Vance.

Polling shows a close race between candidates. A recent aggregate of 33 polls from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill shows Moreno with a lead of 0.3%.

After West Virginia and Montana, Ohio is the state with the Senate race most likely to flip to the Republicans. It is therefore the most likely place for the party to make up ground if it is upset in either Florida or Texas.

LifeNews Note: Anthony Iafrate writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Here are 7 Key Races That Will Decide Control of the Senate. Vote Pro-Life appeared first on LifeNews.com.