With just 11 weeks left until the 2022 midterms (and it being 8 weeks since I first posted my opinion on this topic The Five Senate Seats Most Likely To Flip (in 2022) – Left Coast View) here is an update on the five Senate Seats most likely to flip in 2022.
Number One: Pennsylvania (previous ranking number one): John Fetterman has opened up a huge lead over celebrity (quack) doctor Mehmet Oz. The RCP average has Fetterman up by 8.7 points. Oz has not been able to make a turn towards attacking Fetterman primarily because he has never yet really recovered from the brutally close primary in which he was defined as a New Jersey native Hollywood millionaire phony. He spent a lot of his own money in order to win the Republican primary and has not yet been willing to invest any of his personal wealth in what appears to be a losing general election campaign. He is stuck with a horrible anti-semitic MAGA candidate running mate (running for Governor of PA) and is still at the stage of planning to bring in former President Trump for a rally in September to try to hold his base. This race seems likely to be baked in for a Democratic pick up. It was previously represented by Senator Pat Toomey who was a very right-wing Republican. Fetterman will quickly become one of the more progressives Senators in the Democratic caucus.
Number Two: Wisconsin (previous ranking number two): Mandela Barnes won the Democratic nomination and was fortunate to have all of his opponents drop out and endorse him in the last weeks before the primary. He therefore had no problem consolidating the Democratic support. The most recent Marquette Law School poll (considered the gold standard in Wisconsin) has Barnes up by 7 points and already above the significant 50 percent point (51-44) Johnson is still struggling with very low favorability ratings and is just now starting to try to “re-brand” himself. Johnson has come back from behind in his previous campaigns but will have trouble because he is so well known as a MAGA supporting Social Security opposing extremist. If Barnes holds on to win this seat it will be another big flip with the addition of another Democrat pledged to vote to change the filibuster rule and support abortion rights, medicare for all and the green new deal.
Number Three: Ohio (previous ranking number five): This remains a surprise because it Ohio gave Trump an 8 point margin over Biden in 2020 (53-45) and a similar margin (51-43) over Clinton in 2016. It is reasonable perceived of as being a very Trumpy state yet it is still the state that voted for Obama (narrowly) in both 2008 and 2012 and has sent populist Sherrod Brown to the US Senate three times. Ryan is very much in the model of the winning Democrat candidate (a local born and raised pro worker populist ) and the Republican nominee JD Vance is exactly the model of the worst Republican candidate. Vance is a millionaire who does not even appear to be sincere in his Trumpism. Vance won a multi candidate primary with only 32 percent of the vote with the help of Trump’s endorsement despite having previously referring to Trump as an idiot and announcing that he did not vote for him in 2016. Vance has taken extreme positions on abortion having recently argued against exceptions for rape and incest with the absurd statement that “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Vance’s only benefit is that the he is being propped up with heavy spending from Mitch McConnell’s “Senate Leadership Fund” which understands that there is no way for the Republicans to win majority control of the Senate without winning Ohio.
Number Four: North Carolina (previous ranking number four): Polling continues to show this race extremely close in a state that Trump very narrowly won in 2020 (by just 1 percent) and Senator Thom Tillis only barely won after the Democrat self-imploded in the last money of the campaign with a scandal involving leaked texts showing an affair that he had previously denied. So far, the Democratic candidate (former state supreme court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley) is running an almost flawless campaign and abortion might become the defining issue. Republican Ted Budd (like the other Republican anti-abortion extremists) calls for an outright ban without any exceptions.
Number Five: Florida (previously unranked): Florida is a big surprise (that it is even considered a possible flip) but polling shows the race to be very close (with Val Demings ahead). If this is true the only explanation is that Rubio is not quite trusted by the Trumpist wing of the state Republican base (which controls the party) while Demings has managed to have a strong hold on the Democratic base in a state that is always truly close.
The bottom line is that Nevada (previously ranked number three) is no longer a likely Republican pick up. There too abortion has become a winning issue for the Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto and a loser for the Republican challenger who has called the overturned Roe v Wade decision “a joke” and bemoaned that the state of Nevada is not yet anti-abortion.