Which Senate race are Republicans more likely to blow?

[DaleCooper]

If only one of these races is going to go Democratic, I expect it to be Arizona. But I very much agree with IndyRep. AZ can remain competitive even if it ends up favoring Democrats in the future. North Carolina, once it flips, will not. I understand that NC's trajectory hasn't reflected Republicans' fears or Democrats' hopes, but once it's gone for Republicans, it'll be gone for good.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Obviously Arizona.

GOP is favored there but it’s very close.

North Carolina is consistently been fools gold since Obama’s win.

You, of all users, should be forbidden from ever using the term "fools gold" again

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I now say NC, NC is trending blue and most users except for Progressive and Milineienial Moderate believe Kelly is safe

[Frenchrepublican]

Even if they were, they’d still lose TITANIUM TILT R NC by R+1.2937302843901

All kidding aside, I like how people are now acting like NC is a considerably more R state than WI/AZ just because Biden barely lost the former while narrowly winning the other two states. Even the House PV (which I realize isn’t a perfect metric, but certainly more pertinent here than in IA) was as D in NC as in AZ and more D than in WI even after you adjust for the uncontested NC-12. Yes, Republicans can’t afford to lose much more ground in Maricopa, but I’d be sounding the alarm bells over some of those internal swings/trends & population shifts in NC if I was a Republican strategist. There’s a feasible path to winning back AZ (with some combination of clawing back lost ground among seniors and R-leaning independents, making slight inroads into the Hispanic vote, attracting more R transplants/retirees than NC, maybe narrowing D margins in the Native American areas) and at least keeping that state competitive, but once those TX-style margins in exurban NC start drifting toward GA-type margins, it’s going to be hard for the GOP to retain NC. Their long-term viability in NC is really on a knife-edge at this point because it’s very doubtful that the rural areas can save them in the long run. Republicans also performed better in down-ballot races in AZ/Maricopa County than Trump, and while local races indeed aren’t always comparable to federal elections, it does feel like Trump was a particulary bad R candidate for AZ. This doesn’t mean that AZ isn’t trending D, but I don’t think it’s headed the way of GA either, at least not yet.

I strongly disagree with the notion that Republicans should be more worried about AZ than NC — they should be equally if not more concerned about the electoral trajectory of NC than that of AZ.

Agreed completely. If the shifts seen in places like Cabarrus continue, NC won’t be “Titanium Tilt R” for much longer. It also shouldn’t be too surprising if Biden wins the state in 2024.

Well, the problem for democrats is that Cabarrus is more the exception than the rule as with maybe the exception of Union all the largish exurban counties around Charlotte (Catawba, Iredell, Gaston, Rowan, Lincoln) are either static or trending right.