A look back at our (mostly correct) Senate predictions after Donald Trump’s big win
A week ago, The Independent made a list of predictions for the US Senate, thinking it unlikely but possible that Democrats would hold the chamber. After a surprisingly powerful performance by Donald Trump on election night, it’s clear that won’t be happening.
Our predictions largely held up, with two big exceptions: Jacky Rosen is teetering on the edge of a possible loss in Nevada, where she currently leads her opponent Sam Brown by a little more than 12,000 votes but awaits results from Nye County, a ruby-red rural part of the state.
And in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey trails David McCormick by about 30,000 as votes continue to be counted. 0.4 percentage points separate the two candidates; the threshold for an automatic recount in Pennsylvania is 0.5 percent.
The rest of our predictions were mostly correct, thanks mostly due to Kamala Harris underperforming her party’s Senate candidates across the board. Maryland’s Senate race came within single digits, a feat that probably wouldn’t have been accomplished with any Republican besides Larry Hogan in the race — but Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks pulled off a commanding win regardless and will go on to be Maryland’s first Black senator. That’s a notable development for the state, which is a solidly blue bastion and is nearly 30 percent Black, according to the latest census.
Incumbents Tammy Baldwin and Martin Heinrich also won re-election, while Democratic candidates in Michigan and Arizona, Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego, also claimed victory.
The dominating Republican victory on Tuesday did claim a few expected casualties. Jon Tester, the incumbent Senator from Montana, lost his seat to Tim Sheehy in a race that was less close than The Independent predicted it would be, though it still remained within the single digits. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown, another incumbent, lost to Bernie Moreno, a car salesman. Brown was always likely to be a casualty of a red wave scenario.
In Florida, Rick Scott also did not “squeak by”, as we wrongly said he would. He actually won a clean victory over Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, his Democratic challenger — beating her by 12 points.
So, what happened? The Independent would definitely like to know, as polls indicated very clearly that the race was swinging in Harris’s favor at the presidential level. So we’ve dived right into it — and looked at what the pollsters have said after a bit of a shocking evening.
"The key thing is people made the same mistakes they did in 2016,” said James Johnson, founder of J.L. Partners, in a statement to Newsweek. His outfit was one of the few to correctly predict a Trump victory in the popular vote.
“They understated the Trump voter who is less likely to be engaged politically, and crucially, more likely to be busy, not spending 20 minutes talking to pollsters… People working a pretty common job or, as the case of many Hispanic voters, juggling two or three jobs at a time."
Looking ahead to January, Trump will enter office next year with a Republican-controlled Senate. The House of Representatives has not yet been called, but GOP members are optimistic about retaining their majority there too. The president-elect will have free reign to nominate Supreme Court judges, if there are vacancies, and will be able to achieve some Republican priorities through the congressional budget process. Others may be thwarted, like Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, by the Senate filibuster rule. The GOP will not take a supermajority in the chamber.
There’s also the Executive Branch itself. Mike Pence’s ex-national security adviser Olivia Troye spoke to The Independent on Wednesday and warned that her “greatest concern is that people like myself, people like General [Mark] Milley, Mark Esper won’t be there.”
She warned that Trump would be unhinged and unrestrained by his allies in a second term.
“Am I shocked? Yes. Am I horrified at what’s to come? Yes,” Troye added in our interview.