Democrats hold Senate edge, but Republicans keeping it close

This dy­nam­ic is be­ing fueled by Hil­lary Clin­ton’s own strategy. Her cam­paign has con­sist­ently ar­gued that Trump is a can­did­ate well out of the main­stream, and bears little re­semb­lance to mod­ern con­ser­vat­ism. The mes­sage was re­in­forced by Clin­ton in a speech in Cin­cin­nati this week on Amer­ic­an ex­cep­tion­al­ism de­signed to win over soft Re­pub­lic­an sup­port­ers. These are smart tac­tics for her own cam­paign, but it makes it tough­er for con­gres­sion­al Demo­crats to con­nect oth­er Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates to Trump. The emer­gence of more split-tick­et voters this year isn’t a co­in­cid­ence. In fact, in con­ver­sa­tions with Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic strategists, there’s a con­sensus that can­did­ates need to con­vince voters about their own re­cord and can’t merely rely on Trump.

Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans are already be­gin­ning to take ad­vant­age of the get-out-of-Trump-free card Clin­ton has giv­en them. Sen. John Mc­Cain, in a web video re­leased after win­ning his con­ten­tious primary, called on Ari­zona voters to back him as a check on a Clin­ton pres­id­ency, mak­ing no men­tion of Trump. Port­man is look­ing in­creas­ingly safe in Ohio, thanks to a well-run, well-fun­ded cam­paign and the will­ing­ness of voters to vote split tick­et.

But that’s about all the good news Re­pub­lic­ans can count on. Be­cause of the volat­ile polit­ic­al en­vir­on­ment and the Demo­crats’ strong re­cruit­ing class, as many as 12 GOP-held seats are in play. I wrote about this whack-a-mole prob­lem for Re­pub­lic­ans last month, con­clud­ing that even a pro­duct­ive night for the party could res­ult in them los­ing the Sen­ate. Even if Trump wasn’t on the bal­lot, Re­pub­lic­ans would be hard-pressed to hold a ma­jor­ity thanks to a tough map.