Democrats need to change their 2022 strategy

Democrats need to question their strategy for the 2022 midterms, because if they have any hope of holding the senate in the long term, they need to make big gains in this election. They can’t settle for just maintaining their majority. As of right now, the 2022 senate election is on pace to be one of the closest in history, with a significant chance that the end result will be a 50-50 tie. In the event of a 50-50 tie, control of the senate is decided by the vice president, which means that Democrats currently hold that advantage. Vice president Kamala Harris gets to cast the tie-breaking vote. Because of this, Democrats’ strategy for the 2022 midterms seems to be focused on the defense of their most vulnerable seats: Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. If the Democrats manage to hold on to those seats, but don’t make any pickups, then they will narrowly hold the senate until the 2024 election. However, the 2024 senate map is a disaster for Democrats. As you can see in the map below, Democrats will be defending three seats in states that Trump won easily, (Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia) as well as defending in several of the swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020, (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada). And their best pickup opportunity is in Florida, a state that has had a significant red shift and is likely in the “safe” Republican category. This means that it is very likely that Democrats will lose a minimum of three seats in the 2024 cycle. So in the 2022 elections, Democrats should be aiml to pick up at least 3 seats, so that they have a chance to defend their majority in 2024. There are three seats that Republicans are defending in 2022 that seem like potential pick up opportunities for Democrats: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Two of these states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, were won by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, while North Carolina was carried by Trump by about 1.4 percentage points. As of now, the deluxe Model of 538’s senate forecast considers Democrat Jon Fetterman to be winning the Pennsylvania race,  but it also predicts that Republicans Johnson and Budd are leading the Wisconsin and North Carolina races, respectively. If Democrats want a chance to hold onto the senate in the 2024 election, they likely need to focus their fundraising efforts on Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Sure this would mean a cut in their support of the Georgia and Nevada races, but as long as they maintained some of their spending there, they would keep a solid chance at winning both of those states. In addition, if the plan doesn’t work out as expected, all they need to do is win any 2 of these 5 states to maintain their control over the senate for the next two years.Overall there are clear upsides and downsides to a change in strategy, but it’s key to remember that the strategy proposed in this article would risk losing Democrats’ majority for 2 years in the senate, but significantly increase the chance for Democrats to secure the senate majority for  4 years.
                                                                                                                   

written by Tiarnan Babcock O'Neill                     T-Max