More Inconsistent Patterns

As covered in the past couple of weeks, polling around the country is consistently showing former President Donald Trump leading in a state with a Senate race, yet the Democratic candidate is simultaneously ahead.

Other new data complicates the political situation even further. The aforementioned situation is occurring in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The fall-off pattern is also present in Montana and Texas, but the Trump lead is so large in those states that the Republican Senate candidate is still positioned to win even though lagging behind the Trump performance. In the Michigan open race, though the likely Republican nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers*, slightly trails Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Lansing), the presumed Democratic Senate nominee, his standing is close to Mr. Trump’s number.

Yesterday, several pollsters released their generic vote numbers, meaning the responses given to questions that probe the party label as opposed to an individual candidate’s name. 

According to a CNN report, their own poll, the Wall Street Journal, and Monmouth University are all showing national generic responses that favor the Republicans, by 2 (CNN) and 3 (WSJ and Monmouth) percentage points. The July 1-2 Cygnal poll sees the national Republican edge at 4 percentage points. Emerson College, in their July 7-8 national survey, projects the Democrats slipping past the GOP by one percentage point. Typically, the Democrats universally lead on this question. Yet, while most of the recent generic results are consistent with Trump’s standing nationally and in most states, the Senate candidates continue to lag.

Again, we see this familiar pattern present in the most recent Wisconsin survey. A Republican polling firm and a Democratic survey research operation again combined efforts to conduct a Badger State poll for the AARP organization (Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research; 6/28-7/2; 1,052 WI likely voters; live interview & text). They found former President Donald Trump leading President Biden by a 44-38% margin. When moving to the Senate race, however, it is the Democratic candidate, incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who leads by a similar margin from the same sampling universe, 50-45%.

This pattern of Trump running well ahead of the Republican Senate candidate, while the latter also generally falls behind the most recent generic results, is a GOP problem. The explanation could be as simple as voters being more familiar with the incumbent Democrat, or potentially the participants are deliberately splitting their ticket to, in their minds, prevent Mr. Trump from having too much power. 

Earlier, most of the Republican Senate message ads – and those from outside conservative Super PACs – attempted to tie the Democratic opponent, particularly if they are incumbents, directly to President Biden. This approach, which was not particularly successful for them in the 2022 midterm elections, does not appear to be hitting home to the degree that the GOP strategists need in order to develop a definitive Senate majority. 

Recently, the approach may be changing. Instead of tying the Democratic incumbent to their full support of President Joe Biden, the ad messages are now laying the blame for high prices, the border, and the tense situations overseas directly on the Senator and doesn’t make his or her Biden association the key message driver. We will see if their Senate numbers improve once this approach further develops.

With a virtually assured conversion win in West Virginia, the Republican worst case scenario is a 50-50 Senate deadlock. Should Tim Sheehy successfully unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) by taking advantage of an overwhelming GOP turnout in Big Sky country, the Republicans would secure an outright majority irrespective of how the presidential campaign ends. To better protect such a majority in future elections, the GOP would need to win at least two more seats this year.

For Republicans to maximize their opportunities on a promising national Senate map, they must secure multiple conversion seats in order to protect themselves against favorable Democratic maps in the 2026 and 2028 election cycles. To achieve such a goal, the new message themes need to begin showing definitive results.


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