5 possible Election 2016 outcomes

What happens if the GOP keeps the House and Senate and wins the White House? Or if the Democrats seize the Senate but can't quite take the House?

The U.S. House of Representatives chamber.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

If the GOP nominates Donald Trump, it may well crater the party's chances of taking the White House in November. But it could have far broader effects than that. As The Week's Paul Waldman writes, nominating Trump makes a Democratic Senate in the fall a real possibility. And even the seemingly impervious House of Representatives is beginning to look vulnerable, according to the Cook Political Report, which recently shifted its rating of a number of races towards Democrats. Democrats are looking at the tantalizing prospect of unified government — though it remains a real long shot.

Six years ago, in 2010, we saw a Tea Party wave election. Many of those Tea Party-backed GOP senators are now up for re-election, which means Republicans are defending many more seats than Democrats. There are 24 Republican incumbents facing re-election in the Senate, versus only 10 Democrats. Republicans have a 54-46 majority, which means that Democrats need to flip five seats — or four, if there's a Democratic vice president to break a tie — to control the Senate. The Cook Political Report lists six Republican seats and one Democratic seat as toss-ups. It will be challenging for Democrats to flip the Senate, but hardly impossible.

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Noah Berlatsky

Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer whose work appears in The New Republic, The Guardian, and other venues. He is the author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism from Rutgers University Press.