Paths to a Democratic Supermajority, Part 3: How to Dominate the Senate

Nov 9

Note: This is the third in a series of blog posts that explore what it would take to usher in a new era of Democratic dominance. Read part 1, “Does Anyone Have a Plan?” and part 2, “Scenarios for an ‘Electoral Lock’ on the White House.” This series is a thought exercise in possibility. Those of us who work in Democratic and progressive politics need a North Star. We should know what it might look like to win big — and to keep winning big.

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When Barack Obama took office in 2009, Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. It didn’t last long. The party’s brand soon began a freefall in rural America, and by 2015, Democrats had lost 13 seats in the Senate.

While the party now has a bare majority in the upper chamber of Congress, that may not hold beyond 2024, when three Democrats in solidly red states are up for reelection: Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana.

How do we secure a more reliable Democratic majority in the Senate? And more ambitiously, what would it take to achieve a supermajority — holding the 60 seats necessary to break filibusters and have true governing control?

These are challenging questions that prompt a larger one: How can Democrats connect with a broader swath of Americans, especially in predominantly white states with large numbers of rural voters?

Some progressives argue that this is a moot question, given the potential to mobilize large numbers of voters of color and young people. But while that logic may hold when it comes to securing control of the White House — as I explained in my last post — a New American Majority (NAM) strategy by itself won’t deliver the gains we need in the Senate.

Nor is eliminating the filibuster a reliable pathway to governing control. For one thing, it may never happen. But even if it did, Democrats might still struggle to enact major legislation absent a generous buffer of extra seats. Senators have historically shown themselves quite willing to buck party discipline in favor of their own interests and policy preferences. Just look at the recent antics of Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Given all this, it makes sense to focus our long-term imagination on achieving a supermajority in the Senate — a goal that should hardly seem far-fetched since, again, Democrats last held such an edge just over a decade ago, in 2009–2010.

A lot has changed since then, obviously. Elections have become far more nationalized against the backdrop of intense polarization. Not only have Democrats hemorrhaged support among non-college-educated whites, but ticket-splitting by voters — long a salvation for well-liked Democratic Senators in red states — has plummeted.

Given these realities, how can Democrats make big gains in the Senate?

Where We Are

Let’s start with what the Senate map looks like right now.

To retain the majority in 2024, Democrats need to win three out of four very tough races in red states: Ohio, Montana and West Virginia — while also holding seats in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

That’s a daunting landscape. Democrats will need to achieve a near-perfect record in Senate races next year just to achieve a 50-50 split in that chamber.

This is certainly possible, given that strong incumbents are running in most of these races. Plenty of analysts are commenting on the 2024 Senate races — including those at 538, Cook and Sabato — so I won’t dig in further here. What’s important to keep in mind is that just holding a current bare majority hinges on Democrats performing strongly in heavily white states with large numbers of non-college-educated voters. Related, it requires that enough voters in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia engage in ticket-splitting to reelect Democratic Senate incumbents in states that Biden is sure to lose.

Analyzing how things may play out in 2024 and beyond is complicated by the fact that ticket-splitting does still happen. To get a cleaner handle on the Senate’s long-term future, as part of my thought experiment, let’s imagine that ticket-splitting disappears entirely. This could well happen, given that the correlation between voting in Senate and presidential races rose from 71% in 2008 to 80% in 2012, then to 93% in 2016 and to 95% in 2020.

Below, I look at Senate scenarios that track potential shifts in presidential voting.

Getting to a Solid Majority

Right now, if the Senate’s composition reflected the electoral college map of 2020, it’d have a 50-50 split, as shown in Map 1.

What would it take to break this deadlock? In my last post, I argued that the best chance Democrats have of fortifying their hold on the White House in coming years is to flip North Carolina (which Biden lost by 1.3 points) and Florida (which he lost by 3.3 points). Both states have large numbers of nonwhites and young people who could potentially turn out for Democratic candidates if donors invest over the long term in a NAM organizing strategy.

If flipping North Carolina and Florida eventually translated into winning both Senate seats in those states (as we’ve seen in Georgia), on top of the 2020 blue states, Democrats would have a solid majority in the Senate with 54 votes. If we add flipping Texas to the picture, a state that Biden lost by 5.6 points (less than his margin of defeat in either Ohio or Iowa), Democrats would control 56 Senate seats, as shown in Map 2. While many Democratic donors seem ready to give up on Texas after Beto O'Rourke's 2022 loss to Governor Greg Abbott by 11 points, that would be a mistake given the scale of demographic change in that state. A 2022 memo by the Center for Voter Information points out that "Nearly three out four Texans in the citizen voting-age population (CVAP) are a member of the New American Majority." (NAM is defined here to include non-whites, people of color, and unmarried women.) The memo notes further that only 38% of CVAP people of color in Texas are registered to vote.

In other words, the fight for Texas is only just beginning. And the potential for gains in the state show how a New American Majority strategy could eventually translate into a sizable Democratic edge in the Senate — assuming, as I stipulated in my last post, that activating large numbers of new base voters doesn’t both push down margins with moderates and non-college voters, while also catalyzing higher turnout among non-NAM voters. Mobilization and persuasion must go hand in hand.

If Democrats had 54 or 56 seats in the Senate and eliminated the filibuster, they wouldn’t need a supermajority of 60 votes to get big things done, right? Maybe. But before we declare mission accomplished in our thought experiment, remember my two earlier caveats: first, that some Democrats might ultimately balk at nixing the filibuster, and second, that senators have a funny way of breaking with their party.

Given that, let’s take a look at two possible paths to achieve true Democratic dominance in the U.S. Senate

Getting to a Senate Supermajority

To get beyond the gains from a NAM strategy — one that eventually flips Florida, North Carolina and Texas — Democrats could look to the Midwest.

I argued in my last post that Ohio and Iowa are the next two best pickup options — based on the 2020 election results. These are states that Obama won twice and that Biden lost by 8 points each, a margin that hardly seems insurmountable, at least in comparison to other possible options — such as Missouri, which Biden lost by 15 points.

To win Ohio and Iowa, Democrats would need to improve their margins with non-college-educated whites while also maximizing whatever base they have in these states, especially Ohio. That should be doable, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment. Flipping back these two states, on top of the NAM gains already discussed, would get Democrats to the magic number of 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, as shown in Map 3.

In a different scenario, Democrats might forgo trying to reprise their past glory days of winning Ohio and Iowa. Instead, they’d cast their sights west to two sparsely populated states where the party may have a better chance in coming years: Montana and Alaska. While neither of these is worth focusing on as part of a White House strategy, they offer a tempting path to Senate gains.

Biden lost Alaska by 10 points, a margin only a tad higher than his deficits in Ohio and Iowa, and a big improvement over past performances by Democratic presidential candidates there. Last year, Democrat Mary Peltola won the state’s lone House seat, defeating Sarah Palin. According to the analysis by the Center for Voter Information, Alaska is among those states with the highest share of potential NAM voters. With the right investments, it just might turn blue in the not-too-distant future. Montana is also within the realm of possibility, another state that’s seen an influx of outsiders and changes in its voting population that brings Colorado to mind. Map 4 shows a path to 60 Senate votes that hinges on Alaska and Montana even as Ohio and Iowa stay red.

Whatever the exact path, all four of the states discussed here have large numbers of non-college-educated whites. Lots of efforts are now percolating to help Democrats do better with these voters, many of whom live in rural areas or in struggling factory towns.

One strand of this work focuses on investing in organizing in heartland communities, reversing decades of neglect. The Rural Democracy Initiative (RDI), which Blue Tent strongly recommends to donors, has emerged as an important funder of progressive groups across rural America. Not only does it provide financial support for such work, but it also offers policy ideas to improve life for parts of the country that have been left behind economically. Other efforts, such as Run for Something and Contest Every Race, seek to build up a Democratic political presence in areas that the party has almost entirely ceded to Republicans.

Another strand of work focuses on economic narrative, looking to position Democrats once again as champions of working-class voters. For example, Mike Lux has offered insightful guidance here, with research showing that a strong message on jobs and prosperity can offset vulnerabilities on social issues. The Winning Jobs Narrative drills even deeper in this area, offering extensively tested recommendations for how progressives can connect better with voters on economic issues.

In turn, this narrative work connects to an ambitious new policy push to reverse the decline of rural and small-town America. Through the Biden administration’s initiatives on manufacturing, infrastructure and climate — along with its hard line on China — Democrats have moved to co-opt the economic nationalism agenda that helped Trump win votes among the white working class, including many union members. Meanwhile, Biden’s bold anti-monopoly agenda doesn’t just convey a new populist tilt by the Democrats, it also offers a way to attack the outsized and abusive power of agribusiness in rural America. Finally, buried in recent Democratic spending bills are substantial investments in areas like broadband and public health for rural America.

If Democrats can stay on this path — combining a stronger economic narrative with policies that deliver for working families — it should translate into gains with non-college-educated whites. Steps to defuse the culture war could also bring major gains with these voters, a subject I’ll discuss in future blog posts.

Remember, Democrats don’t need to win outright in deep red counties to flip back Ohio and Iowa or accelerate the positive trends in Alaska. They just need to lose by less. For example, an analysis by RDI found that a voting shift of just a few percentage points in rural Ohio could be enough to swing the state to Democrats.

Losing by less doesn’t sound so hard, does it? In fact, we’ve already seen how it’s done, when Biden improved on Hillary Clinton’s margins with non-college-educated whites by a few points in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania — just enough to help snatch them back from Trump.

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Making major headway in the Senate will be no easy thing for Democrats; we’ll be lucky even to keep a majority in 2024. Over the long term, though, there is clearly a path to 60 seats. But to realize this opportunity, the Democratic Party needs to become a stronger, more collaborative coalition. We need to double down on a New American Majority strategy in those states where it can so clearly yield major gains. And simultaneously, we need to forge a comprehensive new approach to better connect with non-college-educated voters, especially in rural areas.

These two tracks aren’t mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are both essential. Those pursuing these different tracks need to respect each other. More crucially, they need to not undermine each other. In an era of nationalized politics, progressives need to be careful not to brand the party in ways that doom it with independent voters and rural Americans — just as moderates must take care to not demobilize base voters.

All that is easier said than done, of course. But look, nobody ever said that being in a coalition is easy. In a parliamentary system, the Democrats would probably be three parties. Here, we’re only one. And we can either be fractious and out of power; or work together to build a lasting Democratic supermajority.