MEMO: Key Trends Driving Democrats’ Fight to Flip the Senate

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

DATE: November 3, 2020

MEMO: Key Trends Driving Democrats’ Fight to Flip the Senate

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Election Day has arrived, and the Senate is firmly in play because strong Democratic candidates expanded the map and put Republicans at risk in more than a dozen GOP-held seats. Weak GOP incumbents spent the last two years on defense, while Democrats had remarkable grassroots fundraising and maintained a clear focus on the issues that matter most to voters, like protecting pre-existing conditions coverage and improving the federal response to this pandemic. As we get ready for the polls to close tonight, here’s a quick wrap-up of the key trends that put Democrats on offense across the country:

1. Democratic Challengers Expanded the Map, Adding Paths to the Majority

In January 2019, Cook Political Report did not list a single GOP incumbent in the Toss-Up column. That edge has now evaporated. Arizona and Colorado are currently rated as Lean Democratic, and the Toss-Up column includes SEVEN vulnerable seats held by Republicans: both Georgia seats, Iowa, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. GOP-held seats like Alaska, Kansas, and Texas have also moved in Democrats’ direction, creating even more paths to flip the Senate. The ability to expand the map and take advantage of a more favorable political environment was driven by Democrats endorsing strong candidates who could run competitive races in tough states and win general elections.

2. Weak Republican Incumbents Have Themselves to Blame, Lied About Their Records

Senate Republicans want to blame Trump for their tough elections, but that excuse ignores their own problematic records and broken promises. 

Their harmful votes to gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions and support for repealing the Affordable Care Act are a political loser. Unable to defend their health care records, Republicans lied about them — and then lost one fact check after another. This 2014 class of incumbents promised to be independent checks on their party leaders, but instead turned out to be rubber stamps for McConnell and then Trump. From their Supreme Court hypocrisy to their unpopular tax giveaway to giant corporations and the rich, these Republicans cannot run on what they’ve done in Washington. Now, in the middle of a public health crisis exacerbated by the White House’s incompetence, Republicans have praised the administration’s failed coronavirus response and haven’t passed a relief package in six months.

3. Grassroots Energy Fueled Small-Dollar Donation Records for Democratic Candidates

Grassroots supporters powered the rise of Democratic Senate challengers. Capping off a cycle of eye-popping fundraising, Democratic candidates outraised vulnerable Republicans in 14 GOP-held seats in the third quarter while smashing records thanks to unprecedented backing from small-dollar grassroots donors. In the final pre-general FEC reports covering the first two weeks of October, Democrats in the 14 most competitive races raised more than double what their Republican opponents brought in combined.

4. Republicans Were Forced to Rely on Billionaire Mega-Donors Riding to the Rescue

As Republicans hit the panic button over Democrats’ record-breaking Q3 hauls, GOP mega-donors “stepped up their 11th-hour fundraising efforts” to try to rescue endangered incumbents. A handful of billionaires wrote multi-million dollar checks to Mitch McConnell’s super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, to fund a surge of late ads in red states. In September and the first two weeks of October, SLF raised a staggering $142.4 million, with their last-minute funding coming “almost entirely from big donors, or from unknown sources.”

• Nearly half of SLF’s $92 million September haul came from just six large donors.
• 30% of SLF’s nearly $50 million raised in early October came from just five large donors.
• SLF used these massive checks from wealthy donors for “blitzing the map with TV ads,” spending nearly $100 million on the airwaves in the final weeks of October.

5. “Health Care, Health Care, Health Care”

Republican senators knew they would have to answer for their decade-long crusade against the ACA this cycle, but they still have no plan to actually keep the health care law’s pre-existing conditions protections intact if the federal lawsuit to dismantle them succeeds – a lawsuit that all GOP senators enabled or openly supported.

• Kaiser Health News: Opposition to Obamacare Becomes Political Liability for GOP Incumbents [8/28/20]
• NBC News: Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions [9/15/20]
• HuffPost: GOP Hoping Empty Health Care Rhetoric Can Save Their Senate Majority [10/14/20]
• Los Angeles Times: Repeal Obamacare? Once GOP dogma, it’s now the party’s albatross [10/15/20]

Democrats, meanwhile, remained laser focused on the biggest issue this election in their pitch to voters and their paid advertising: protecting and expanding access to affordable health care.

• Boston Globe: On Senate campaign trail, it’s health care, health care, health care [10/30/20]
• New York Times: “Democrats have largely been on the offensive. In Senate races over the past 30 days, Democratic candidates and outside groups have spent $10.3 million on television ads on health care, while Republican candidates and groups have spent $2.4 million.” [9/8/20]
• CNN: “The top issue for both parties is still health care. In general election advertising through the end of September, Senate Democrats and their allies referenced health care in over 67% of TV advertisement spots, and they have continued to do so in nearly 58% of spots since October 1. It was referenced to a lesser extent by Republicans, popping up in about 47% of their ads through September and about 40% of their ads since October.” [10/20/20]
• Wall Street Journal: “Democrats are running on the theme that helped them flip the House in 2018—health care. In the 14 most competitive Senate races, more than twice as many broadcast-television spots mention health care than any other topic, according to ad tracker Kantar/CMAG.” [11/2/20]

Bottom Line: Democrats expanded the map, took advantage of a weak class of GOP incumbents, built a candidate fundraising advantage fueled by small-dollar donors while Republicans relied on a Super PAC bailout, and relentlessly focused on health care as their central message. All of these trends shaped the final weeks of the fight for Senate control — and put Democrats in a strong position to retake the majority.

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