The "small state problem", however, doesn't change just because Democrats run better candidates. And I'm not even saying the senate should be made up differently, even though Puerto Rico and DC should be granted statehood.
Running better candidates is only part of the story (Gideon really isn’t that strong, I’d say). The biggest problem is Trump/Republican voters simply being much more likely to split their ticket/elect a Senator from the other party than Democratic voters.
There’s no way a Republican equivalent of Jason Kander or Doug Jones would have even kept it close. Heck, Hugin who ran against a scumbag barely did better than Trump, and Republicans couldn’t even hold NH-SEN 2016 where Clinton lost by less than .5%.
Yeah that seems to be a big thing. Why are Trump voters more willing to split their tickets? You would think that they would be more partisan than Democrats.
Democrats regularly have the more popular platform, outside of guns and abortion, and especially on "kitchen table" issues. It's far easier for a mainstream Republican to buy into a Democratic candidate's agenda than vice versa. Plenty of Republican-leaning folks can palate a Democrat who frames their campaign around affordable healthcare and taxing billionaires but very few Democrat-leaning folks can palate a Republican who frames their campaign around hardline immigration restriction and an arch-conservative judiciary.
Also, I know it can be an Atlas meme to say this, but candidate quality matters. MT Treasurer is right that Democrats overperform in red states frequently, but this really only happens when the Democratic candidate is credible as a political officeholder and raises decent money (would the nobody weed activist who ran against Shelby in 2016 have been as strong against Roy Moore as Jones was?). This is a big part of why Kansas, for instance, will still be competitive even without Kobach.
This video is also a great on the topic.
