What 2014 Senate Races were winnable for the Democrats?

[Calthrina950]

NC, CO and AK were very close so with a slightly better campaign in the states and/or better national environment they could have gone the other way. That would bring it to 51-49. GA wasn't winnable even if it looks competitive, because it is so inelastic. IA might have been winnable if Braley wasn't such a terrible candidate and Ernst ran a great campaign that year too, so effectively Democrats were an 8% margin away from keeping the Senate. LA was too Republican to actually be won again by Democrats. The other states were too Republican to go the other way, though in a Romney midterm with them having incumbents up for re-election they would have been winnable. I'm not sure if Kansas was ever flippable given the margin and its partisanship. Maybe Orman would have won if he promised to caucus with Senate Republicans, but that could have just depressed his vote without growing it much. So 50-50 was probably the best-case scenario for Democrats in a second Obama midterm.

From what I gather, Hagan and Begich didn't run bad campaigns. They lost because they were running in right-leaning states in a horrible environment for Democrats, so even though the margins were narrow, I'm not sure what either could have done differently to actually win. Udall was a completely different story. He would have easily won a third term last month if he'd been smarter and not run a s**ty single-issue campaign about abortion.

For the rest of his life, Udall will always be known as "Mark Uterus". Gardner's win in 2014 truly was a fluke, and this is further reinforced by the fact that Hickenlooper managed to win reelection on the same ballot as Udall.

[Calthrina950]

Alaska, Colorado, North Carolina.

In addition, had the cycle been a D wave, Kentucky probably would have been winnable too, given how horrifically unpopular Mitch McConnell was.

I doubt it. McConnell still won by 5 points in 2008, which was a Democratic wave year, so I don't think he would have lost in 2014, even if it had been a Romney midterm.