Here’s the clear path for the Democrats to retake the Senate

It’s just one of those things. Senate elections are divided into three different rotations across each six year span, and 2018 just happens to be the rotation where a whole lot of Senate Democrats are up for reelection, and not many Senate Republicans are up for reelection. It’s why the Democrats face a tall task in retaking control of the Senate next month, despite strong blue headwinds across the country. But there is a clear and realistic – if narrow – path for the Democrats to prevail in the Senate.

Here’s the thing about all these Democrats running for reelection in the Senate: most of them are winning. For instance, Donald Trump spent last night campaigning for the Republican Senate candidate in Montana, but the polls appear to show that Democratic incumbent Jon Tester is ahead by around four points. This is generally the trend for Democratic incumbents. In fact the only one who appears to be seriously underwater is Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota. It’s not time to give up on that race, but for the sake of math, let’s say the Democrats do end up losing precisely one of their own Senate seats.

In such case, the Democrats would need to take three seats from the Republicans in order to gain two seats and establish a 51 vote majority. In other words, the Democrats would need to win three out of these four races: Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee. Is that doable? In a word, yes. Despite the lack of national attention, the Nevada (Jacky Rosen) and Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema) races appear to be the closest, and are probably the two best shots the Democrats have out of the four. That would mean they’d still need to win one out of Texas and Tennessee.

To give you an idea of how up-in-the-air the Tennessee race is, in the past few days we’ve seen polls in that state that have Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen anywhere from up one point, to down fourteen points. What’s really going on there? Ask Taylor Swift. In Texas, the polls all have Ted Cruz ahead by at least a few points, simply because the state is so very red. But Beto O’Rourke is targeting nontraditional voters, who aren’t easily polled. And there’s a reason Heidi Cruz suddenly decided yesterday to take the big risk of giving her first interview of the entire 2018 election cycle to a liberal news outlet. Hint: it’s not something you do when you think you have things locked up.

The bottom line is that a lot of things have to go the Democrats’ way for them to retake control of the Senate. That includes winning at least a couple races where they’re currently behind a bit in the polls. So it’s a bit of an uphill battle – but the path is a clear and realistic one. The key is to invest your time in all four of the competitive Republican-held seats, not just the ones being talked about on TV. And while the Democrats are the odds-on favorite to retake the House, no one can afford to be complacent. What happens if the Democrats win the House but not the Senate? We explain that here.