In this week’s Political Edge, we look at how many votes 2020 candidates are missing in order to run for president, highlight comments from CNN’s Harry Enten’s on the 2020 Senate map, and delve deeper into the Q1 House fundraising totals.
Missing Votes to Run For President
As it currently stands, 6 Democratic Senators are running for president. As these members are off campaigning around the country, The Hill wondered how it’s impacted their duties in Washington, D.C., particularly when it comes to casting votes.
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Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) appear to have missed the most votes in the Senate so far this year. According to The Hill’s analysis, they have both missed 16 roll call votes of the 77 total roll call votes (20.7%) the Senate has held since the start of the 116th Congress in January. Harris was notably absent for “two failed votes on a stalled disaster aid package meant to respond to a spate of recent storms, wildfires and hurricanes.”
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The Hill’s analysis found that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has missed seven votes so far (9.1%).
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Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) have missed three votes each (3.9%), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has missed one vote (1.3%).
Harry Enten Looks at the 2020 Senate Map
Political Analyst Harry Enten, who was formerly the senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight and currently works for CNN, released his first analysis of the 2020 Senate map. Enten believes Republicans are favored to maintain control of the upper chamber, and he had a few good observations worth keeping in mind (reminder: 34 Senate seats are up for election in 2020, with Republicans controlling 22 of them). He writes:
“An astounding 87% of the differences in the Senate margins across states could be explained by the statewide aggregate House margins in 2018. Ergo, if you voted for a Democratic (Republican) candidate for the Senate last year, there was a very high likelihood that you voted for a Democratic (Republican) candidate for the House.
“The same pattern is apparent when comparing the Senate results last year with past presidential election results across states. States that leaned Democratic (Republican) in past presidential elections were far more likely to vote Democratic (Republican) in Senate races last year. The Senate and last two presidential election results were more simpatico in 2018 than Senate and past presidential results had been in any midterm election since at least 1982.
“This comes on the heels of 2016, when every state that sent a Republican to the Senate voted for Republican Donald Trump and every state that sent a Democrat to the Senate voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton. In no other presidential year in the last 100 had this phenomenon (of all states voting the same for Senate and presidency) occurred.”
Additional House Fundraising Analysis – Republicans Bounce Back
As analysts continue to pore over the latest fundraising numbers for House candidates, they’ve pointed out several trends worth noting. While it’s true that Republicans were outraised in 2018 by their Democratic challengers, it appears that vulnerable Republicans have received the message that they will need to be actively fundraise if they want to compete in 2020. As Roll Call writes:
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“Republicans placed on a ‘retirement watch list’ by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised more than they did during a similar period two years ago, when they were in the majority.”
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15 of the 18 Republicans on the watch list “improved their fundraising this year. Five raised six figures during the first three months of this year after only raising five figures two years earlier.”
