The odds seem to be increasing that, once the next session of Congress begins, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will no longer be the Senate Majority Leader — assuming that he’s still in the Senate at all and doesn’t happen to lose his own ongoing re-election battle against Democratic challenger Amy McGrath. The elections forecasting site known as the Cook Political Report has now shifted their forecasts for three currently GOP-held Senate seats, and all three of the updates have been in favor of Democrats. The affected seats are in Texas, Georgia, and Alaska — none of which are exactly longtime bastions of Democratic support!
NEW: "We are increasing our current projection of the most likely outcome to a Democratic net gain of between two and seven Senate seats."
Read @JessicaTaylor's latest masterpiece which includes three new rating changes (🔒): https://t.co/SVsNoFAbOR pic.twitter.com/a4WBCURi4b
— CookPoliticalReport (@CookPolitical) October 13, 2020
There’s what seems like an outcry against the corruption of the Trump-led GOP growing across the United States. Following their updates, the Cook Political Report now rates the U.S. Senate seats currently held by John Cornyn of Texas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska as merely “leaning” towards the GOP rather than “likely” Republican wins, which is what they’d been rated as previously. Meanwhile, the Georgia Senate seat held by Republican Kelly Loeffler is now in the toss-up column, which makes a total of seven currently Republican-held seats that are in the toss-up column alongside two GOP-held seats (in Arizona and Colorado) that are in the “lean Democrat” column. That’s a total of nine currently GOP-held seats that are either toss-ups or leaning towards the Democrats, which suggests that a sizable blue wave is imminent.
Amazingly, the toss-up column even includes the South Carolina Senate seat that is currently held by Republican Lindsey Graham. Graham’s opponent — Democrat Jaime Harrison — recently announced that his campaign had raised a staggering $57 million in the third quarter of 2020, which is the highest single-quarter fundraising total for any U.S. Senate candidate ever. During Tuesday’s part of the confirmation hearings for Trump Supreme Court pick Amy Coney Barrett, Graham suggested that there could be some kind of conspiracy against him underlying the funds, but that’s nonsense. There’s a nationwide outcry against his belligerence — the Harrison campaign reported almost one million individual donors, with an average donation size of $37.
Elections forecasting site FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 69 percent chance of winning control of the Senate, as of early Tuesday. Republican Senators’ re-election chances have been falling amidst ongoing turmoil for the re-election campaign of President Donald Trump himself. As of Tuesday afternoon, FiveThirtyEight gives Joe Biden an 87 percent chance of winning the presidency, and there’s little apparent reason to imagine that Trump’s fortunes will majorly change in the less than a month before Election Day.
