Senate
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Last Updated: Thursday, July 18 at 10:39 AM EDT
Our model currently predicts that Republicans have a 78% chance of winning the Senate.
Prediction Updates
Last updated on Jul 21 2024 by Decision Desk HQ
A Notice from Decision Desk HQ on our Forecast Models:
Given the unprecedented decision by President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race at this late date, Decision Desk HQ is temporarily freezing our Presidential, Senate, and House forecast models.
The reason for freezing our Presidential model is clear: Democrats have no candidate with the bound delegates needed to win the nomination. If a presumptive nominee emerges before the convention, we will begin to reboot the model; otherwise, we will reboot the model upon a nomination. You’ll likely see a lag between the identification of a nominee (presumptive or official) and the relaunch of our model while we take the needed time to collect and input the new data, primarily polling data, that will enable us to restart the model.
The decision to pause our Senate and House models, the only such models across the major forecasters, is due to the significant correlation between the performance of a Presidential nominee in a state and the performance of their party’s candidates for Congress in that state. Without the ability to reliably forecast the top of the ticket, we cannot accurately model the downballot effects in a given state. (We had planned to publish updated Senate and House models with Q2 FEC data this weekend, along with an updated Presidential model, but given this historic development, we are freezing these models instead.)
Until we relaunch the forecast models, we will continue to collect polls and provide our potential Presidential match-up averages. Our current Trump-Harris polling average and Harris’ current favorability rating remain available.
We look forward to being able to reactivate our forecast models to help you make sense of this historic and unique election.
Senate Seats Forecast
33 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats will be contested in regular elections this November, along with a special election in Nebraska. Like the last Class 1 Senate cycle in 2018, Republicans are considered to have a fundamental advantage, as Democrats are defending 23 of the 33 seats. Among these, three are in states that Donald Trump won in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, while no Republican-held seats are in states won by Joe Biden in 2020. In the last two Senate elections during presidential years (2016 and 2020), only one senator was elected in a state that the opposing presidential nominee won. This map categorizes states by each party’s likelihood of winning, ranging from 'safe' to 'likely' to 'lean' to 'toss-up'.
47
45
2
Democrat
Republican
51
50 + VP for Majority
No election (28)
No election (38)
CT
DE
DC
MD
MA
NH
NJ
RI
VT
Chance of winning the senate
Our model is updated every day, blending the latest data on polls and fundraising with "fundamental" factors like incumbency and each district's partisan lean. This graph tracks each party’s probability of winning control of the Senate over time.
Senate Seats Projections
Republican: 52
Democrat: 48
This graph tracks each party’s projected seat count in the Senate over time.
Chance of winning each seat
This chart visualizes the current probabilities of each party winning individual races. Circles positioned further to the left indicate a higher likelihood of a Democratic victory, while circles to the right suggest a stronger chance for Republicans. Use the 'DEM' and 'GOP' filters to view states most likely to support the respective parties.
Senate Seats Simulations
These graphs display the distribution of Senate seat counts from 14,000,605 simulations for both Democrats and Republicans. The lighter shaded areas to the left of the dotted line depict scenarios where a party fails to secure a majority, while the darker shaded areas to the right represent majority-winning outcomes. Each bar indicates the percentage of simulations resulting in a specific seat count.
Our model currently projects a 11.9% chance of a 50-50 tie in the Senate..
Featured Races
Explore the latest probabilities in the most competitive presidential, Senate, and House races by selecting any of the races listed below.
Interested to see how the DDHQ/The Hill forecast works? Read our methodology statement.
