The passage of a sweeping infrastructure plan in the Senate on Tuesday gives both parties plenty of ammunition heading into a midterm campaign season -- look no further than the most competitive Senate seats for how that will play out.
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The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip
CNN —
The
passage of a sweeping infrastructure plan in the Senate on Tuesday gives both parties plenty of ammunition heading into a midterm campaign season – look no further than the most competitive Senate seats for how that will play out.
Democrats are on offense in six of the 10 top races; they’re trying to flip those red seats blue, and they’ll be pointing to
the $1.2 trillion package as a shining example of what Democratic control can deliver for the American people, while some GOP candidates attack it for spending too much money.
One of Democrats’ top targets – Pennsylvania – remains the seat most likely to flip. The top 10 Senate seats most likely to flip are based on CNN’s reporting and fundraising data, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. As the cycle heats up, polling and advertising spending data will also become factors. Our ranking first published in March, and was updated in
April, May and
July.
President Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania in 2020 after former President Donald Trump narrowly carried it in 2016, and it’s now an open seat since GOP Sen. Pat Toomey is not running for reelection. Toomey, a former president of the Club for Growth first elected to the Senate in 2010, voted against the infrastructure bill, calling it “too expensive, too expansive.” The bill passed 69-30 with
19 Republicans joining with Democrats.
Most of the other GOP senators vacating competitive seats backed the bill: Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Rob Portman of Ohio. As CNN’s Manu Raju and Alex Rogers have
reported, that puts them at odds with many of the Republicans vying to replace them, underscoring how today’s GOP candidates are much more likely to follow Trump’s lead than their senators’.
After Pennsylvania, Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities remain Wisconsin and North Carolina, where one GOP senator – Sen. Ron Johnson – still hasn’t made up his mind about running for reelection and the other, Burr, announced five years ago that this would be his last term. Democrats are attacking Johnson for voting against the infrastructure package and they’re deploying a similar line against Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida. Republicans still have the advantage in the Sunshine State, but it’s the eighth most likely to flip for the second month in a row.
Republicans’ best pick-up opportunities are in Georgia and Arizona, two states that Biden and Senate Democrats flipped last cycle. Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock, who won in a 2021 runoff, and Mark Kelly, who won last year, face reelection again next fall for full six-year terms.
Here are the 10 seats most likely to flip:
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