13 Senate races to watch in 2018

The Capitol Building. — (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, ABBPhoto/iStock)

The battle for the Senate is tilted heavily in Republicans' favor. But there are glimmers of hope for Democrats.

The GOP advantage is largely due to Democratic successes in the last two elections of for this specific one-third of the Senate. The party did so well in 2012, during the re-election of President Barack Obama, and before that during the 2006 midterm swing against President George W. Bush, that they had won seat after seat beyond expectations in each instance. But after Republicans scored major gains and a Senate majority in 2014, and then managed to defend their position in 2016, the remaining portion of the Senate up this year would appear — at least on its face — to make a change of party control a big lift.

The fundamental nature of this year's Senate map puts Republicans in a position of fairly low risk. Of the 35 Senate seats that are up for election this year, Democrats (and the two Dem-aligned independents) hold a whopping 26 of them, to only nine seats for the Republicans. Furthermore, 10 seats are held by Democrats in states carried by President Trump in 2016, while only one Republican is from a state carried by Hillary Clinton.

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Still, Democrats received a major bump with the shocking win of Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in last year's special election. That one victory achieved two aims: It brought the party to 49 seats, ever so close to a majority (Democrats now only need a net gain of two Senate seats in the 2018 midterms, instead of the much more daunting three seats they'd needed before) while also demonstrating that Democrats could win in red states.

This state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1988, with the re-election of centrist incumbent Lloyd Bentsen (who was simultaneously running for vice president on the ticket with presidential nominee Michael Dukakis — and they lost that race both in Texas and nationally). Still, lots of wags are focused on this race, thanks in part to Cruz's personal unpopularity. (Texas Republicans are trying to drive up O'Rourke's negatives, as well — though possibly with some mixed results.)

And in a very interesting sign for a Senate seat in such a red state, President Trump has announced that he will be campaigning for Cruz. This is also quite the interesting turn, after they had spent the 2016 Republican primary season attacking each other, with Trump gaining the upper hand by nicknaming Cruz "Lyin' Ted," spreading a conspiracy theory about his father, and publicly insulting his wife's looks.

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who has become a very public critic of the Trump administration, announced his retirement at a time when polling showed that he would likely lose in a primary challenge from right-wing former state Sen. Kelli Ward. Instead, the Republican primary in August was won by Rep. Martha McSally, an Air Force veteran, who easily defeated Ward. The Democratic nominee is Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who has touted her rise from poverty and childhood homelessness to graduating from college and serving in Congress.

The perennial swing state, Florida narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, after having previously voted narrowly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. And when there's a large swing state, with numbers in both population and geographic media markets, that means a lot of money will be coming in. Indeed, this is expected to be the most expensive Senate race of the year, thanks in part to the wealthy Gov. Rick Scott putting in over $20 million of his own money so far.

This state voted 68 percent for Trump, while Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has touted his own conservative positions such as support for funding a border wall, and even gone so far as to say it was a "mistake" to support Hillary Clinton in 2016, due to her opposition to the coal industry. At the same time, he has touted his support for health-care reform, and the protection of pre-existing conditions as a key condition for his vote on Supreme Court confirmations.

As with other states, we see the issues of Trump's trade war and a local Democratic incumbent's proclaimed independence and bipartisanship — indeed, both candidates have ads featuring them shaking Trump's hand. Donnelly is also running on the issue of protecting health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions, while Senate Republicans are set to air a TV ad featuring Pence himself, attacking Donnelly and urging a vote for Braun.

A potential wild card: This seat is unexpectedly up in a special election, with Smith having been appointed to the seat by Gov. Mark Dayton last year after the resignation of Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Smith was previously elected as lieutenant governor on a ticket with Dayton, and before that she had been the governor's chief of staff. However, she has never run for an office by herself, thus making her a somewhat untested political commodity.

A recent poll has Smith ahead, with 44 percent support to Republican candidate Karin Housley's 37 percent. Smith also has another benefit: running alongside popular incumbent Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose regular term is also up this year, and who is ahead of her own Republican opponent by a margin of 54 percent to 34 percent. President Trump's disapproval rating stands at 54 percent, making this favorable ground for Democrats.

Another odd case of a vulnerable Democrat in a blue state: Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez went through a corruption trial from 2015 to 2017, ending in a mistrial due to a hung jury — after which one juror spoke out, saying that 10 out of 12 were in fact ready to acquit him. Then after a judge acquitted Menendez on some of the charges, the Justice Department gave up on plans to retry him and simply dropped all of the remaining charges.

A recent poll gave Menendez just 43 percent support, though still ahead of Hugin at 37 percent — and in a troubling figure, 49 percent believe that Menendez was involved in some kind of serious wrongdoing, against only 16 percent who say he wasn't. But at the same time, President Trump's 63 percent disapproval in the Garden State — much higher than Menendez's own disapproval figure of 47 percent — also makes Republican chances here an uphill climb, to say the least.