What tonight's key Senate races will tell us about 2016

What tonight&#039;s key Senate races will tell us about 2016

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

North Carolina is "ground zero for the forces shaping 2014," Gerald F. Seib says in The Wall Street Journal. It's also an incubator for the 2016 presidential race that will inevitably pit short-term trends that favor Republicans against long-term demographic changes that tilt Democratic.

Facing off in North Carolina are mainstream Democratic incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan and mainstream conservative Republican Thom Tillis. As of Monday night, Hagan was ahead by 2 percentage points.

North Carolina is one of the four "truly fair battleground" states — including Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire — because it doesn't obviously lean one way or another, Seib says. President Obama narrowly won the state in 2008 and then narrowly lost it in 2012. Several of the other states up for grabs tonight, including Montana, West Virginia, and South Dakota, are typically red states that Obama lost in both elections.

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Lauren Hansen produces The Weekâ€™s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.

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