Unloved

Senate Control May Turn on Who’s More Unloved, Obama or G.O.P.

By Nate Cohn

With the campaign season officially begun, Republicans hold a modest but clear advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. Leo, The Upshot’s Senate model, gives the G.O.P. a 66 percent chance of winning a majority.

Nonetheless, the outcome remains very much in question. As my colleague Josh Katz has pointed out, the Republicans’ odds of winning the Senate are about the same as those of an N.F.L. team holding a 3-point lead with the ball at its 40-yard line at the start of the second half. It is quite clear which team has the advantage, but there’s plenty of time left.

Whether the Democrats can keep the game close to the end, or whether the Republicans will build an even larger advantage, turns on one big question about the national environment: Is 2014 a fairly neutral year in which Republicans hold an edge because races are mainly being fought in Republican-held states, or is it also a bad year for Democrats, who might face a “wave” election like the ones that brought Democrats to power in 2006 and swept them away in 2010? The answer hinges in part on whether the G.O.P.'s unpopularity is enough to mitigate the expected backlash against President Obama.

Usually, election watchers can get a good read on the mood of the electorate by looking at presidential approval ratings or at the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would prefer to control Congress. Historically, they’re fairly interchangeable. Leo happens to use the generic ballot; the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog uses the president’s approval rating.

This year, the two metrics are not so interchangeable. Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are stuck in the low 40s — around 42 percent, according to the Huffington Post’s Pollster tracker. That’s lower than at this time in 2010, so it’s easy to see why so many have taken the president’s ratings as a sign of an impending catastrophe for Democrats.

The generic ballot, on the other hand, puts the Democrats ahead by about 2 points among registered voters. That’s nothing like 2010, when the Republicans had opened a 3-point lead on the generic ballot by early September after making steady gains over the summer. It’s more like 2012, when Democrats were ahead by about the same amount among registered voters. And 2012, of course, proved to be a pretty good year for Democrats, who made gains in both the House and the Senate.

It is possible that one of the two metrics will triumph over the other, that 2014 will prove to be another Republican landslide, as in 2010, or that it will be an outright strong showing for Democrats, as in 2012. It is also possible that the two metrics will come into alignment by Election Day, perhaps if Mr. Obama rallies Democrats to his side, or if voters who disapprove of Mr. Obama ultimately decide they prefer Republicans to control Congress. Today’s G.W.U. Battleground Poll, which showed Mr. Obama’s approval rating at 44 percent while Republicans led by 4 points on the generic ballot, might have been a step toward convergence.

But so far there is not yet much of a trend in any direction. There has been no clear movement on the generic ballot, as there was during the summer in 2010. There has been no movement in the key states, at least outside places like Colorado, Iowa and Georgia, where Republicans made gains after viable nominees managed to win the party nomination. It was not obvious seven months ago that the Republicans would end up with decent candidates in those states, but it was surely predictable that the G.O.P.'s odds would improve were they to do so. This is much different from the inexorable decline of Democratic fortunes in states like Missouri or Ohio during 2010.

Anything, of course, is still possible. Labor Day is traditionally the start of the campaign, not the end. But what may be more likely than a Republican rout is that 2014 ends up somewhere between 2010 and 2012. Not a Republican landslide or a Democratic victory, but a fairly neutral if Republican-tilting year in which the G.O.P. benefits from a large number of competitive races in red and purple states.

The Republicans would still have an excellent chance to retake the Senate in that scenario. No Republican wave is needed to beat Democrats in an open state like Iowa, or to unseat Democratic incumbents in states as red as Louisiana, Arkansas or Alaska. Republicans would also benefit from an older, whiter midterm electorate, especially in North Carolina, where Democrats depend on the so-called “new” Democratic coalition of young and nonwhite voters. A Democratic midterm turnout problem would allow Republicans to perform better than they did in 2012, even if national conditions were just as favorable for Democrats.

If you need any proof that the Republicans can win without a wave, just check the current polls. Even today, the Republicans are still extremely competitive in the states they need to win the Senate, like Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado and Alaska.