Senate Democrats may have lost their majority this cycle, but they did something that the party had never done in the age of Trump: win multiple Senate races in states the former and soon-to-be president carried.
The 2024 elections saw four Trump-won states also elect Democratic senators: Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.
In the previous two presidential cycles, Democrats had never achieved this feat. In fact, since 2016, only one senator — Republican Susan Collins of Maine — won reelection in 2020 even as Joe Biden won her state. She outran Trump that year by seven points. That’s the same amount Jon Tester was able to outpace Harris by in Montana this year, proving that may be the modern max for any candidate.
If every state had once again gone the same way as the presidential contest, Republicans would have won a 57-seat majority instead of their 53-seat one. That makes a Democratic resurgence in 2026 or in 2028 more plausible — though that’s still a tall order given the seats Democrats need to defend.
But in the short-term, it
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