Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980 (user search)
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  Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980 (search mode)
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Author Topic: Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980  (Read 2133 times)
politicallefty
Junior Chimp
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« on: October 16, 2021, 07:19:20 AM »

2000: MO-SEN (this was always expected to be close, but Ashcroft [at least technically] losing to a dead man was quite something) but more generally the near-D sweep of competitive Senate races that year even as they lost the White House
2002: LA-SEN runoff (illustrated how overblown R gains were in that election and how far Republican candidates actually ran behind Bush's approval rating and the partisan leans of red states)
2004: LA-SEN (Vitter avoiding a runoff)
2006: MT-SEN (Burns nearly saving the Senate for Republicans despite Tester being seen as a lock for most of 2006 and the most likely Democratic challenger after Casey to flip a R seat)
2008: AK-SEN (Begich nearly losing) but also the margin in ME-SEN
2010: NV-SEN (Reid's margin of victory)
2012: MO-SEN (McCaskill's margin of victory)
2014: VA-SEN (Warner nearly losing) but also the margin in MI-SEN
2016: IN-SEN (Young's margin of victory), WI-SEN wasn’t really that surprising (even polling indicated a Tossup by election day)
2018: FL-SEN (Scott winning in a Trump +1 state in a D landslide/massive D wave in which Republicans couldn’t even flip WV, MT, OH and lost House seats in OK, SC, etc.)
2020: MT-SEN (KS-SEN makes it close, both were shocking because of the margins by which they were decided)

The ones I put in bold are definitely the most noteworthy I would think of within the past 20 years. This is what I would add:

2004: KY-Sen (Republican incumbent only holding on by a little over 1% while Republicans win every competitive seat except CO-Sen.)
2012: ND-Sen (I didn't even have Heitkamp winning in my predictions. I'd predicted 54 seats, but Democrats pushed the majority to 55.)
2014: NC-Sen (Hagan losing.) and IA-Sen (The margin. It was a sign of things to come.)
2016: OH-Sen (Strickland losing by 21 points.)
2018: MO-Sen and IN-Sen (I definitely didn't see those two going down by 6 points. I also thought Donnelly was going to win. I was far more nervous about McCaskill.)
2020: ME-Sen (I thought Collins was done.)

Overall, what tends to surprise me is how strongly Senate races tend to fall to one party. I've read about that from Charlie Cook for years, but some years it's really staggering. The 2004 map was my first real experience with that being fully aware of politics. I remember Republicans were hoping for at best 54 seats that year, but managed to push it further and get 55. In that same vein, 2006 and 2008 went pretty much as expected near the end. The Democratic tsunami was at full force in the Senate. The same happened for Republicans in 2014, although the magnitude of that was quite unexpected. I think 54 seats was beyond even the highest range of most prognosticators.
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