Outside Texas, do Dems have any realistic Senate pickup opportunities?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Srs all you have is Florida and then a bunch of Trump 15%+ states.

[MarkD]

Maybe Indiana, if Dems can find another blue-dog-ish, Joe-Donelly-type to run, and assuming the GOP nominates an embarrassing candidate.

[Spectator]

Just Texas unless a vancancy opens up elsewhere. Indiana and Missouri are long gone, and Florida is probably off the table unless it’s a Trump rematch and Biden is up nationally a bunch.

[Suburbia]

Other than TX, maaybe IN, MO, and maaybe MS.

FL Dems are done for a while.

Dems should have forced Bill Nelson to retire in 2018 and should have put Val Demings to run against Scott.......

[Figueira]

It's worth fielding good candidates in Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and Nebraska special (and really every seat) in case something really bizarre happens, but Texas is the only one with a greater than 1% chance of flipping.

This is why the Georgia runoff is so important.

[S019]

Florida could be gettable if there's a Dem landslide, but realistically no.

[MargieCat]

Not really.

Before November 8th, I would have said Dems should seriously contest FL and TX. After seeing DeSantis win by almost 20 points, I think Florida is probably gone.

I think they should run Taddeo against Scott, to try and reverse some of the trends in Miami Dade. While she lost against another Latina, maybe she would fare better against Rick Scott.

I would also like to see Lucas Kunce run against Hawley. I don't expect to win there, but maybe Missourians will be sick of Hawley's antics. Maybe some bad polls would cause McConnell and the NRSC to dump millions into Missouri.

[here2view]

I'd be interested in seeing the margin of a Jim Hood vs. Cindy Hyde-Smith Senate race in Mississippi.

[Mr.Phips]

I'd be interested in seeing the margin of a Jim Hood vs. Cindy Hyde-Smith Senate race in Mississippi.

I doubt Hood would do much better than Espy in 2020.

[politicallefty]

I'd say we better find someone who can defeat Ted Cruz within the next few months. Anything else requires something extraordinary.

[Mr.Phips]

I'd say we better find someone who can defeat Ted Cruz within the next few months. Anything else requires something extraordinary.

Agreed.  Even that probably requires Dems to win TX or come within a point at the presidential level.

[OneJ]

Unfortunately not, but I think it's still worth it that Democrats actually make some effort in some of these far-out states anyway (think NE, MO, IN). I'm personally hoping for something in MS obviously.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yes, Matthew Sancrainte has filed to rin against Scott

We don't know what type of candidate John Love or Matthew Sancrainte are gonna be

[Orser67]

Well I guess I'm fighting a lonely battle, but I still see FL as more Likely R than Safe R. One (admittedly-terrible) cycle doesn't completely override the fact that FL has been within five points in the last several presidential elections, and that Scott himself won by less than a point in 2018. The combination of a good D year, a well-run Democratic campaign, and a weak campaign by Scott (who probably deserves some credit for winning three statewide elections, but also clearly wasn't the best NSRC chair in the world) could make it competitive.

[Heir of Camelot]

The reason Florida was so bad for Dems was turnout. Repubs got 67% and Dems was only like 54%

Also these rightwing hispanic radio stations are having the Limbaugh effect on Latin men. Dems need to buy up a bunch of AM stations and put Jon Stewart on there.

[Pres Mike]

Democrats really blew it in recent races

WI in 2022. Maine and NC in 2020.

[Vosem]

MS and FL are both probably possible given very specific kinds of landslides, but trends there in 2022 were very bleak in ways that don't seem like one-offs.

My off-the-wall suggestion here might be ND: Cramer is a weak incumbent and he seems on track to lose the convention endorsement to Rick Becker, who nearly knocked off Hoeven; Cramer could come back in the primary but I think the requirements to qualify for it after losing a convention have been tightened (?!), and we'll plausibly see a three-way race here. (Even if it's Becker who ends up running as the third-party candidate, like in 2022, Hoeven is a much stronger candidate than Cramer). ND also has a living Democratic party and they seriously contested some races as recently as 2018 (Senate and Secretary of State); it's also a more elastic state than most of these Southern places. The idea of a flukish Democratic pickup in a three-way contest, which would have to be amidst a national landslide, is very unlikely, but if we're discussing things like MS then this might be on about the same wavelength.

[Atlas Force]

ND also has a living Democratic party and they seriously contested some races as recently as 2018 (Senate and Secretary of State)

Fun fact: North Dakota is one of two states that have state Dem parties with specific names different from the national party (they're called the Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party). The other state is Minnesota which has the DFL. Both state parties are named that way because they merged with third parties a long time ago.

[Xing]

Nope. And Wicker is up in MS, not Hyde-Smith.

[Hope For A New Era]

How do you define "realistic?" The only true chances are Texas and maybe Florida if this year turns out to have been an anomaly. That's it.

The far-out edge possibilities are Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, and Nebraska-special.

I'm most curious about the Nebraska special. A flip is extremely unlikely, but it might be surprisingly close under certain circumstances. Either an open-seat race or a recently-appointed incumbent against a strong D might at least be a little interesting.

The same applies in Mississippi - a flip is extremely unlikely, but I'd like to see Jim Hood run for something. At least it would force Republicans to spend money there.

Indiana, as an open seat, has a distant possibility of something happening if Republicans nominate a bad candidate. Indiana 2012, in fact, was the last time a non-incumbent D won a Senate race in a state Trump won in 2020. The closest it's come to happening since then is, perhaps fittingly given the political similarities between the two states, Missouri 2016.
Who would be the best D for this, though? Mrvan?

And as for Missouri, well, I'm not optimistic. Hawley is peculiar, and a lot of Democrats passionately hate him, but I'm not really sure how Republicans can be convinced to vote against him, even though few love him. He doesn't spark Trumpist turnout the way some on here once thought he would - in fact, he's a very boring and unexciting candidate. But he really doesn't have anything that could be used as a wedge against him, and there's no obvious D challenger either. Certainly no one who gives me any reason to believe they would do well statewide, anyway. The best route for Dems here might be to go unconventional and populist. Maybe Lucas Kunce actually would be the best possible candidate here.

[Dani Rose]

Not any especially likely ones, after the shellacking in Florida this year, but - and hear me out here - we need to seriously contest the Nebraska special after how close NE-01 was and how the Plains seem to be very subtly budging left. The right circumstances and turnout could genuinely create a perfect storm for us.

[NewYorkExpress]

Given how well Evan McMullin did, and how likely it is that Mitt Romney will lose a primary or retire, it might be worth running a serious candidate in Utah.

[Hope For A New Era]

Given how well Evan McMullin did, and how likely it is that Mitt Romney will lose a primary or retire, it might be worth running a serious candidate in Utah.

Who, though? I guess McAdams? McMullin was the serious candidate.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

How do you define "realistic?" The only true chances are Texas and maybe Florida if this year turns out to have been an anomaly. That's it.

The far-out edge possibilities are Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, and Nebraska-special.

I'm most curious about the Nebraska special. A flip is extremely unlikely, but it might be surprisingly close under certain circumstances. Either an open-seat race or a recently-appointed incumbent against a strong D might at least be a little interesting.

The same applies in Mississippi - a flip is extremely unlikely, but I'd like to see Jim Hood run for something. At least it would force Republicans to spend money there.

Indiana, as an open seat, has a distant possibility of something happening if Republicans nominate a bad candidate. Indiana 2012, in fact, was the last time a non-incumbent D won a Senate race in a state Trump won in 2020. The closest it's come to happening since then is, perhaps fittingly given the political similarities between the two states, Missouri 2016.
Who would be the best D for this, though? Mrvan?

And as for Missouri, well, I'm not optimistic. Hawley is peculiar, and a lot of Democrats passionately hate him, but I'm not really sure how Republicans can be convinced to vote against him, even though few love him. He doesn't spark Trumpist turnout the way some on here once thought he would - in fact, he's a very boring and unexciting candidate. But he really doesn't have anything that could be used as a wedge against him, and there's no obvious D challenger either. Certainly no one who gives me any reason to believe they would do well statewide, anyway. The best route for Dems here might be to go unconventional and populist. Maybe Lucas Kunce actually would be the best possible candidate here.

Josh Hawley is the Ron DeSantis of MO and as I said Matthew Sancrainte has filed to run against Scott, Biden is losing by 6 or leading by 2 Rs aren't winning FL by 20 pts or OH ever again if that's the case Brown is DOA because DeWine won by 20

Hurricane IAN was the sole reason why DeSantis won by 20, it won't be IAN for a long time

[Blair]

Well I guess I'm fighting a lonely battle, but I still see FL as more Likely R than Safe R. One (admittedly-terrible) cycle doesn't completely override the fact that FL has been within five points in the last several presidential elections, and that Scott himself won by less than a point in 2018. The combination of a good D year, a well-run Democratic campaign, and a weak campaign by Scott (who probably deserves some credit for winning three statewide elections, but also clearly wasn't the best NSRC chair in the world) could make it competitive.

I think I would have agreed with this a year ago but have undergone a conversion.

Even in 2018 in a wave year where the GCB was very high the democrats still couldn’t beat two of the weakest state wide candidates in DeSantis and Scott! Iirc the democrats also nearly blew winnable house seats too.

Nelson ran a lacklustre campaign ofc but the fact that even he couldn’t win despite two decades of winning easily statewide really shows the trouble the party is in.

The reality is that the party has had what 1 good cycle (2012) in the last 12 years; both Obama and Clinton poured huge amounts of resources into the state and were politicians who appealed to voters in Florida in a way that not many other democrats can.

I wouldn’t write it off completely over the next decade but the evidence really points one way- I think there’s a danger than a poor result in 2018 and a good result in 2012 has meant democrats still think of the state as closer than it is.