In Other News, Who Will Control Congress?
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For most of this year, we've been focused on the race for president and the messages coming from both parties' nominees on what they'll do if elected. But that's not all that's on the ballot this November. And so much of what any president can do in the White House depends on who's in Congress. So before Election Day, I wanted to take a look at the down-ballot landscape of 2024. Who will control the House and Senate?

And what can we learn about both parties when we turn away from the top of the ticket? From The New York Times, I'm Ested Herndon. This is The Run-Up. Can you first just introduce yourself and tell us your title? I'm Amy Walter. I'm publisher and editor-in-chief of The Political Report with Amy Walter. So

So I called Amy Walter, an expert on competitive races, to follow up on the conversation we had back in March. I wonder if you get this too. Like, I'm sure. Like, my friends will text me like, all righty, it's a week out. Like, you tell me who's going to win. Like, who's really going to win? Yeah, like, all right, give me the real tea. Like, who's going to win? And it's always, it's not really disappointing because I keep telling them like, it's, I don't, it's 50-50. Your guess is as good as mine. Yeah.

Right. Like you were not hiding something. Yeah. I'm like, I don't have like a secret like take I'm not putting out there. Like it is actually close. It's really this close. And I think we've all become humbled by feeling so confident. Yeah. In the run up to others. Look at that. The run up. Yes. Yes. We end we end up disappointing each

ourselves and those people we talk to. So let's just not. Yeah. Well, speaking of run up, the run up has been a good portion of this year focusing on the top of the ticket. But earlier this year, during the Democratic and Republican primaries, we had a discussion about down ballot races that we wanted to revisit. And we talked about the House and Senate races mostly, but also important state races like governor's races and state legislatures.

Just in general, is there a single contest you're looking at outside of the presidential race that you're just most closely watching on Election Day that you'll have your eye on?

Oh, I wish I could say that. I think that we have a couple of questions that maybe these down ballot races will help answer. The first is how much can a candidate outrun the top of the ticket? And the Ohio Senate race will be the test case for this. So if on election night,

Trump, as expected, is called the winner of Ohio. And yet Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent, also wins. That tells you that we are looking at an electorate that is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Republicans.

down-ballot candidates who are of a different party. And that would be a totally new thing, believe it or not, Ested, because since 2016, only one other candidate has been able to outperform the presidential candidate of their own party in the state to win, and that was Susan Collins in Maine. So early on, by early, depending on where you live, for those of us on the East Coast,

You know, if we know the answer to the Ohio Senate race pretty early on, that's two signs. One, it's about split ticket. But two, it's a sign that Democrats are likely to have a much better night at the Senate level and –

Republicans not picking up as many seats as they would have hoped. So Ohio Senate as a key race to watch, not just to answer the question of split ticket, but giving a sense of honestly, whether that type of candidate still has legs in this kind of polarized era.

That's that's exactly right. You know, Democrats currently control the Senate by a razor thin margin. And everyone that I've talked to recently seems to have written Democrats chances in the Senate somewhat off. And for the reasons you're kind of pointing to, you know, the Ohio race is a tough one for them. Montana race is a tough one for them. They almost certainly lose a seat in West Virginia where Joe Manchin has decided to retire.

I just wanted to point it to you. I mean, are we really talking about looking at House races down ballot and the Senate is kind of a foregone conclusion? Like, what are the chances the Democrats can stay alive there?

Yeah, it's a very slim chance. And it would really come down to this. It comes down to either winning in Montana, a state where the Republican right now is polling ahead of the Democratic incumbent. So that does look very, very tough for that thing to turn around. It then comes down to a place like Texas, right, where you have Democrats

Ted Cruz locked in another competitive race like he was in 2018. And, you know, you look to Texas, though, and you say, boy, a close race there. You still have to give an advantage to a Republican in a state not just where Trump will win, but where.

You know, moving a Democrat from 48 percent or 47 percent to 50 percent, it doesn't seem like that much. It's only two points. But what he would have to do then is win over a bigger share of the kinds of voters that right now seem pretty comfortable sitting in the Republican column.

Let's talk about the candidates specifically in Montana. We're talking about Democratic Senator John Tester, who's won reelection in that state before. But it's getting harder and harder because it's almost certain to go for Donald Trump in big numbers. He would have to find a ton of those Republicans to cross over and vote for him as a Democrat. That's right. That's right. What I find really fascinating, too, about Montana and Alabama,

John Tester, you know, some of the crossover candidates, the ones who are the most successful, right, people who've been able to hold on in a state that has been trending the other way from what their party is. So, again, Susan Collins in Maine or John Tester in Montana.

Part of it is the parochialness of their state. Right. Maine's a pretty small state. Montana is a pretty small state, not in geographic size, obviously, but in terms of population size. And so voters there, I think, you know, you you have to really be able to convince them that the person that they voted for over and over again isn't.

The person that that same person, right, the national Republican brand, maybe or the national Democratic brand is one thing. But my individual Democrat, my individual Republican is different. And that's getting harder in a state like Montana, which is experiencing a lot of growth. Obviously, they just got another congressional seat in this last round of redistricting.

And a lot of those folks moving in don't have that same parochial approach to politics. They have a more nationalized approach to politics. So a Republican's a Republican and a Democrat's a Democrat. And making the distinction between being a Montana Democrat or a Maine Republican, you know, it gets harder.

Yeah. When you have newer people. I mean, that's an important point. I mean, we've seen this in some races across the country. It's been harder and harder for people to make the case that I'm different from my party and you know me here most specifically. And it's interesting you mentioned the growth of the state because that makes a lot of sense, too. Those folks probably don't have the same type of ties to Jon Tester that maybe the voters would have had years ago.

Right. And that they don't really prioritize that. I mean, what what Tester's campaign has been so focused on in many ways, too, is all these people moving into the state who don't understand us, who don't know us, especially you have a lot of big money moving into Montana, buying up lots of land. But I think you've got a lot of people, whether they're moving in and they are.

Registered Republicans or registered Democrats, yeah, their idea of what a quote unquote Democrat should look like is very different from those people who, let's say they've been lifelong Montanans or they they were around when Jon Tester was first elected in 2006. Right.

It seems like the opposite type of problem you're describing in Texas, where you're not going to meet everybody. You're not going to be able to kind of have a personal relationship with folks. It's really about driving folks en masse. And if I hear what you were saying earlier correctly, the problem is for Senate candidates like Colin Allred, who can make the race tight with Ted Cruz.

The most difficult part, particularly in the South for Democrats, is to go from being able to get 45 percent or 46 percent to being crossover to that 50 percent threshold, which might take more Republicans or or at least a formula they haven't necessarily cracked yet.

That's right. And look, we'll find out in a few days here. But at least in the last election, you know, Texas was closer than Ohio. So just that alone should give a down ballot Democrat running in a national office a benefit there that even if Harris loses, it's still a benefit.

it's not going to be by the margin that she'll lose a place like Montana or even in Ohio. So if I add this together, the challenges for a Colin Allred in Texas and the difficulties for the Sherrod Browns and John Testers in Montana and Ohio, it sounds like we're saying maybe the Democrats aren't toast when it comes to the Senate,

But the challenges are real and the likelihood of a Republican Senate is very high. Yeah, that's fair. I think that's a very fair assessment. Let's look at the House side. Cook Political Report has listed around 25 races as Republican or Democratic toss-ups. And I thought the state distribution here was interesting. We have five in California, two in New York, or even places like Iowa, which aren't specifically competitive on the presidential level, seem that they'll play an important role in these House races.

I guess one question I had was, do these races move in concert? Like, is there a trend that you see across house races in general? Are we really talking about things that have local flavor or flow to the national and are really not working in tandem?

I said that's the $100 million, bazillion dollar, whatever we're going to say question. But typically, yes, what we've noticed is that those closest races, especially when we're talking about the house, they tend to all break in one direction at the end. Now, what you pointed out, though, is also interesting.

critically important. And this is a, this is to me, one of the more fascinating dynamics going on down ballot that doesn't impact those top of the ticket races, whether it's the Senate or whether it's the presidential. And it's that,

California and New York, obviously very blue states, but they were also big underperformers in 2022. And the low turnout there was blamed on, well, in New York, it was Kathy Hochul's really unpopular. In California, it was, you know, there was really nothing to drive turnout. And, you know, people were in just kind of a meh state anyway. Well, now,

The theory of the case was, okay, once we're back in a presidential year, everything is going to go back to normal in the blue states, and it will be good for Democrats. But at least in the data, that's what I'm saying. That's exactly right. So in the data we're seeing at the House level, Harris's numbers...

in those competitive seats in New York and California aren't as strong as Biden's were in 2020. So the difference between, say, Biden winning a seat by 10 points and Harris winning it by four, it doesn't matter. That's still a Harris win. That's still a Democratic win. Still a pickup. But it means that if you are the House candidate, the Democrat that was counting on a big tailwind

you're not getting it. And so, and or, it means if you're the Republican, you're not, the headwind isn't going to be as strong as it quote unquote should be in a blue state like that or the way it was in 2020 when Biden was winning a lot of these seats that are in that toss-up category by double digits. The other dynamic, as you pointed out, is so you've got these states that are, uh,

supposed to be more blue, but aren't performing as strongly. And then you have a state like Iowa, which has fallen off the map. In the swing state type of way. In the swing state category, right? We used to cover Iowa as a battleground state. It hasn't been a battleground state for a while. And yet...

The districts themselves, two of them are really competitive. There's one of them that takes in Des Moines, which is going to be a little bit more Democratic leaning and one that while it is rural, it also takes in some of those college towns to the east of Des Moines. And they are very competitive. But we think of Iowa as well, you know, Trump's going to win it. So why are we even talking about the state? Well, there

There are those blue areas within a red state. And it's why those two districts in Iowa are incredibly competitive, because they are performing like normal, where the presidential contest in those districts will be really tight, unlike the state, which won't be competitive at all.

Another reason we were interested in talking about the down ballot race is beyond horse race. They're very useful to get a sense of the landscape of the party's message and what candidates are talking about that's similar between them, but also what's different between them. We know that Trump in this race has focused mostly on three policy areas, immigration, crime, and the economy, inflation. One question I had is when we look at the landscape of Republican candidates not named Donald Trump, are those the three issues that they're most focused on also?

Yeah, I think that's fair that that immigration is probably going to be the top issue when you're looking at all of these races and the economy. Right. So those two issues, still the big, big driving force.

And I think in part because what it goes at is this idea that Democrats fundamentally are making you less safe, less prosperous, or at least they are hurting your opportunities for cheaper goods and services, whatever. They're impacting your... This is your day-to-day life. It's not just a theoretical piece.

You know, the other thing, Ested, that you can appreciate whenever you're in these swing states, as you know, voters, they see all these ads. A lot of them are on the back on in the background. They're not going to be paying a ton of attention to them, but they don't really know. Is this message on immigration from a House candidate? Is this from a Senate candidate? It's not because these people aren't these voters aren't smart or they're not going to be engaged in.

in the process. It's just that they have these lives to lead and they're not dissecting each and every ad and who paid for it at the end of it. Yeah, and I was recently reminded of just how inundated if you're a voter in a battleground state right now,

Every time you turn on television, your door is being knocked on, your mail is being overrun. And so I can see how it's the aggregate of these messages, more so than any individual targeted ad. But it is really notable that some data shows us that Republicans have spent around a billion dollars on ads related to nativism or immigration alone. I guess the question I had is like, it doesn't feel as if the actual border matters as much

as people's perception of the border and immigration. It does seem as if Republicans all across the country have taken on the message of the country being overrun as their primary kind of offensive message of this election. Is that fair?

Some of it is, and I think you're right. It's going to look different in different states and in different congressional districts. I think a lot of it goes back to this question of if the job of Congress or the president of the United States is at its most essential, one thing is keeping people safe, then this is where, and this is the Republican argument, this is where Democrats have failed us. And so I think what you're seeing in so many of these other ads is

the role that that fentanyl plays. So you don't really hear it as much as, you know, when you hear the Donald Trump rhetoric a lot of times, right, it is these people are coming in, they're

they are terrible people, they're poisoning the blood, all of that stuff. I'm not seeing that in the ads in those battleground states. Instead, it is really linked to this issue of fentanyl, right? That when you open the borders, regardless of how you feel about immigrants, regardless about how you feel about immigration, what it does do is it has allowed these cartels or these people to sneak over all these bad drugs,

Add drugs, kill our kids. And then the other piece of it too, and you've heard this in the aftermath of all that hurricane damage in Western North Carolina, but the idea that

The money that should be going to us, to Americans, to people in need, is instead going to these people who came across the border illegally. The America firstness of it all. That's right. That's right. And there's a certain resonance of that. And I guess that's the question instead is at the end of the day,

This is why I do think that the question for voters, whether it's top of the ticket or the down ballot races, is this question of risk, right? How much risk

Do you think one candidate or the other presents to you and your family? And I think that what what Republicans are counting on is that this issue of immigration really is a question of risk tolerance. Right. Like how safe will you feel with another four years of Democrats being in charge? You know, I'm going to ask one question on the Democratic side.

I've noticed some recent ads from vulnerable Senate Democrats, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, even Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, that have all spoken more positively of Trump and Republicans than I think, obviously, you would hear from Kamala Harris. But it made me think, like, should we take this as a sign of internal polling or things that they might know but might not be sharing with the public? Would they be doing this if they thought Kamala Harris was on track to win?

You mean the ones where they say, oh, but I've worked with Donald Trump. I signed bills with Donald Trump. You know, like his trade policy or even, you know, like I'm saying, like, that doesn't necessarily sound like a world where they think the country's about to turn the page on Trumpism. That's right. Or where, look, their ability to win, your ability to win in a swing state is by your ability to win over independent voters, right? And who are independent voters? Essentially, it's not that they don't have...

say, a partisan lean to them. But what they're really desperate for is somebody that sounds like a person willing to kind of come to the middle on some issues or agree to work with the other side at certain points.

And so if you are in a state like Pennsylvania or Michigan or Ohio, what is what is that issue that has the most resonance, especially with those voters who are swingy? And I would say it's the issue of transparency.

trade, right? That, you know, what is it done to the communities and the industry in our states? And instead, this comes down to the central issue too with Donald Trump, which is if you just add up all the people who say, look, I like everything about Donald Trump. There's nothing I would change. That's about 35% of the electorate. If you said, there is nothing about Donald Trump I like. I don't like his policies. I don't like him.

That's going to get you about 45% of the electorate. And then you got those people in between. And they are people who say things like, I like his policies. I don't like him.

Or I don't like the way he behaves, but there are some things that he says that I agree with. And it yeah. And those are those are the kinds of voters that if that a Senate candidate in a battleground state needs to get, they need to make sure that for those people who are, you know, they don't.

They aren't necessarily on the Trump train, but they also don't believe this talk that he is too radical, this talk that he's right. I also don't buy that. So where can you meet that voter, especially if you're a down ballot candidate? You meet them on the issue where you agree with them. See, we're on the same page, right? I think that outsourcing to China is bad.

And you know what? Even Trump thinks the same thing as I do. So fine. We're going to get together on this issue. And that does help insulate, not just insulate from, you know, maybe there is whatever is happening at the top of the ticket. But it also does speak to that key swing voter, that person who they may like some of Trump's policies.

They don't really like them. The permission structure to break from it. Yes. One question I had was there was so much talk in the midterms about kind of poor Republican candidates, even from people like Senator Mitch McConnell, thinking they gave away opportunities to pick up seats because of untested MAGA-like candidates that weren't ready for primetime. Have they solved that issue? Or are Republicans still hurting themselves, kneecapping themselves by the type of candidates they're nominating in some of these races?

There's no doubt that Republicans did a much better job this time. And I think if anyone gets the credit for that, it is likely going to be the chairman of the National Republican Senate Committee, Senator Steve Daines from Montana, who really was able to not just recruit candidates, but to keep Donald Trump from...

endorsing other candidates who, like in 2022, were not particularly strong. One place where they weren't able to do this was Arizona, where Carrie Lake, who narrowly lost the governor's race, has yet to really concede to that race.

is on board with a lot of the, you know, stop the steal movement. But she is really doing poorly in Arizona, much more poorly than you would expect, given the fact that Trump's narrowly ahead in that state. So that's the one spot where that matters. Last question is, you know, um,

just 10% of the 435 total congressional races are competitive, according to Cook Political Report. I was wondering, like, what do you think is the overall impact of the fact that so few of congressional races are even competitive? Because it feels like it is an important story in our overall narrative about polarization and about gridlock in Congress. It seems a lot of these folks in Congress don't really have tough races.

They don't. And to be fair, you know, even in the good old days of competitive races, maybe you were talking about 50 to 70 races, and now we're talking about 25. So it's not like we've always had 435. But I think your point is a very, very good one, which is the house is basically...

very well sorted out in the same way that the Senate and the Electoral College map has been sorted out, which is so very few people willing to split their ticket based on the performance of their individual member of Congress, rather than what happens to be the letter after their name.

And so you're right. Every election, the most vulnerable incumbents are those who sit in the quote unquote wrong district, Democrats and Republican districts and vice versa. And

that the more that they are voted out, the less incentive you have in Congress for people to try to work across the aisle. And the incentive structure really now has become one in which you're more worried about losing your primary than you are about speaking to voters in a general election. And yet, and here's the real key, Ested, is that...

So few people actually vote in these primaries. Then what you end up getting is a member of Congress who basically won with a fraction of a fraction of the electorate. And where this becomes important is, you know, it's not just whether you're red or blue. It's whether you are somebody who is willing to.

to work with somebody else, right? Is somebody who is willing to say, huh, I'm going to take a nuanced opinion on this. Who you're listening to, who you're accountable to. Exactly. Who you are listening to. And if who you're listening to are the 10% of people who show up in primaries, then this is what we're going to get. Not just blue or red, but willingness to work across the aisle. I won't ask you for a prediction because I know that's not the business. Thank you. But

When do you think we'll have a race call? Can I ask for that prediction? I think that's a great question. So nobody's expecting to be able to call the... That's not fair. Let's say this. It would be unexpected or be surprised to see the House called on election night because California notoriously takes a lot longer to count their ballots. They have a lot of mail-in vote votes.

That takes long to count. So with so many of those races in California, we also have Oregon and Washington with a couple of key races. So unlikely. Oh, and Alaska, which has a more complicated ranked choice voting. So if it's really coming down to three or four seats deciding the majority, no, we're not going to know on election night. And it could be

more than a week. We could be really waiting 10 days or more before we know the final outcome of these elections that would determine who controls the House. The Senate, I don't think we're going to be in that same situation. For the first time in a long time, instead, we don't have Georgia on the map, which means we don't have the conversation about runoffs. Yeah.

And determining the Senate by, you know, extending our lives by like two more. Yes. Yes. So even though we may not know the answer, at least we are not spending Thanksgiving in Georgia like we have been for the last decade.

few cycles. That's a helpful to know, at least that, you know, some of these on the House side, it's almost certain that we won't know that on election night. I think that's our new reality with mail-in ballots and with some of this stuff is we have election days ahead of us rather than... Yeah. And for people to appreciate that this is not about... There's nothing nefarious here.

And that when we're in an era of races being decided by, you know, four or five seats and 20 or 30,000 votes, then this is what you get. At the same time, I would, a Californian should learn how to count votes faster. Yeah, let Californians come after you and not me. There are a lot of them instead. Amy, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much. You too. That's The Run-Up for Friday, November 1st, 2024.

Election Day is four days away, but we'll be back tomorrow with a special episode from the battleground state of Wisconsin. The Run-Up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin.

With original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alisha Ba'i-Tub. It was mixed by Sophia Landman and fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnick, Larissa Anderson, David Halfinger, Maddie Maciello, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, and Elizabeth Briscoe.

Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the voice memo app in your phone. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com. Thanks for listening, y'all.

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