Latest 2020 Senate Poll Shows Incredible ‘Red State’ Surge

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Democratic Senate candidate Jaime Harrison is running a formidable challenge against South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Despite South Carolina’s history of leaning heavily towards Republicans, in new poll results that Quinnipiac University released on Thursday, Harrison and Graham were tied. Each candidate garnered 44 percent of the support in the poll. While that’s of course not any kind of insurmountable hurdle for Graham, the results also seem to yet again indicate that even Graham’s Senate seat might be within reach. If Graham’s Senate seat were to turn “blue” this November, talk of a “blue wave” would likely be very much in order.

It’s worth noting — Graham is not the only incumbent Republican Senator whose political career seems to be on the rocks. In the very same set of polling data from Quinnipiac in which he was tied with Harrison, Maine’s incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins also got some bad news. Her Democratic challenger Sara Gideon had a 4 percent lead, with 47 percent of the support compared to just 43 percent for Collins. It’s not the first time that the widely unpopular Collins has come in behind Gideon in polling — for instance, in a survey from July from Public Policy Polling, Gideon had a 5 percent lead over Collins, with 47 percent compared to her 42 percent.

Democrats need a net gain of at least 3 Senate seats to become the majority party in the upper Congressional chamber. Adding 3 Senate seats on to the current Democratic total would leave the chamber 50-50, and vice presidents break ties — so whoever wins the White House could determine how a 50-50 chamber leans. For a majority irrespective of the White House, Dems would need a net gain of four seats. Currently, the Cook Political Report has assigned toss-up status to currently GOP-held seats in Montana, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina. A seventh currently Republican seat — Martha McSally’s in Arizona — is rated as leaning Democratic.

The dismal prospects for Republican Senators mirror the dismal prospects for Trump himself. As of Thursday afternoon, Joe Biden leads by an average of 6.4 percent in national polling, according to RealClearPolitics.