The Democrats have won the Senate majority!
It’s taken months of work, and days of waiting for the results, but now it’s happened: the Democrats have won the Senate majority. It became official on Saturday night when major news outlets called the Nevada Senate race for Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, ensuring the Democrats will retain at least fifty Senate seats in the upcoming term. Fifty seats, plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaker vote, is a de facto majority.
This means Senate Democrats will be able to continue confirming federal judges for the next two years, including filling any Supreme Court vacancies that might occur. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has done a masterful job of getting judges confirmed these past two years, and now he’ll retain that title.
Senate Republicans will now have to decide whether to keep Mitch McConnell as their Senate Minority Leader. Internal discontent toward McConnell has spilled over into the media this week as the Republicans’ prospects for taking the majority have dwindled. There is also prior reporting that McConnell would retire early if the Republicans failed to win in 2022, though we’ll have to see if that turns out to be the case.
Palmer Report spent the final weeks strongly urging everyone to pay closer attention to the Nevada Senate race, because it was getting almost no national media coverage and it was likely to come down to the wire. Thank you to those of you who heeded our call and donated or volunteered for the Nevada race – you helped make the difference.
Of course there is still one more Senate race on the table, and it’s a crucial one. The Georgia Senate election is going to a runoff. If Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock does win reelection, it’ll give the Democrats fifty-one seats, which is a true majority. It’ll allow the Democrats to put the troublesome Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema against each other on every vote, and act as an insurance policy in case either of them tries any hijinks in the new term.
We believe that Warnock is going into the runoff with a slight advantage for a few different reasons. But as we keep seeing, close elections don’t win themselves. They’re won by the side whose activists are the most willing to get involved. Sign up to donate or volunteer for Warnock here.
