State Senate Smackdown

The presidential contest may be sucking up all the media oxygen, but here in New York we all know the most important races are in the pitched battle for control of the state Senate. In our latest issue we took a first pass at outlining the race, ranking districts as safe, likely, lean and toss-up, and after much discussion our editorial staff landed on this breakdown:

• Safe Republican: 18

• Likely Republican: 3

• Lean Republican: 8

• Toss Ups: 4

• Lean Democrat: 1

• Safe Democrat: 23

And of course we had to factor in these:

• Simcha Felder: 1

• IDC: 5

I wanted to take a few minutes to explain our reasoning behind the rankings, focusing on general trends as opposed to a race-by-race examination. First, it’s important to note that historically Senate Democrats do better in presidential elections than midterm contests. This has been the case for the last decade, probably longer. Second, it’s important to note that this presidential election is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

There is a logical argument to make that having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket will drag down GOP candidates. We definitely considered this in some of the races, mostly involving moving “safe” Republicans to “likely,” or “likely” Republicans to “lean.”

But there’s also an argument to be made that Democratic voter enthusiasm may be low for this election as well. In 2008, 4.8 million votes were cast for Barack Obama in New York. In 2012, that number dropped to 4.48 million votes. Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating in New York according to today’s Siena College poll is 51 percent, while Obama’s is 62 percent. So, there is an argument to be made that Democrats won’t turn out in the numbers they have in the past. We factored this into our calculations as well – though, to be fair, not as much as the impact of Trump.

Finally, we should note that all elections are local, and local factors are often far more telling in close elections than national trends. One perfect example of this is the 55th Senate District. There, Democrat Steve Glickman has a real chance if he is on the ballot – currently he isn’t. But there is a fair chance that he will get back on the ballot, which is why we left the race a tossup. If he is not on the ballot, that’s a huge victory for the GOP, not only because they will hold the seat, but because they will not have to invest any resources there. Considering it’s only August, there will undoubtedly be some changes in the weeks to come.

And since we are out early with this, I am sure we will get some pushback on our classifications, but we welcome it! Not only from the respective conferences but from our Insiders. If you have comments, please contact me at mjohnson@cityandstateny.com.

Also, we want to know what you think will happen in November. Are Democrats going to take control of the Senate? Will there be a co-leader situation? Are Republicans going to grow their conference? Because there are too many potential scenarios to include in a typical poll, we created a simple, anonymous survey where you can send us a full description of your predictions. We’ll share some of our favorite answers in Wednesday’s blog post.

Click here for the survey.

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