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One week from Election Day, the battle for Senate control is 'a jump ball'
The race for Senate control remains neck-and-neck in an unusually volatile political environment just one week from Election Day.
Politics
WASHINGTON — One week from Election Day, the race for Senate control remains neck and neck in an unusually volatile political environment, with small margins carrying high stakes for the future of President Joe Biden's legislative agenda and judicial nominees.
Signs of a Republican-friendly landscape are evident in the historical markers of low presidential approval and high economic anxiety, according to recent polls. Yet the same surveys show Democratic candidates holding their own in pivotal swing states.
Now, a year that began with a strong GOP advantage — tilting toward Democrats over the summer and back to Republicans this fall — paints a murkier picture in the final stretch, with the latest polls giving hope to both parties.
Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the battle for the Senate looks like a coin-flip.
“The data we have are not pointing in one direction,” Kondik said. “You just have these competing factors of weaker Republican candidates, but also Biden’s approval being really bad and Democrats’ having to defy gravity to a significant extent.
“It certainly feels hazier than 2018 and 2014 were at this juncture,” he said, referring to midterm elections in which the trends clearly pointed to big wins for the party out of power. “Polling for the Senate is still real close in a lot of these states.”