Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The caption at rollcall.com which accompanies the above photo describes Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) and his wife as they "celebrate on the final night of the Democratic National Convention". That's one grim-looking "celebration". It seems they aren't feeling the "joy" which, as you surely know by now, is one of the laughable emotional buzzwords that has been assigned to Queen Kamala's campaign by the gaslighting liberal media. It looks more like the Caseys are feeling a bit of constipation, and there's some chance they may get that sensation again in November, whenever Pennsylvania finally decides to stop vote-counting.

The article linked above was published on Thursday and ranges from the mundane to the ludicrous. It's mostly good news for Republicans, with (on the mundane side) the five Senate seats most likely to flip being ones currently held by Democrats. On the ludicrous side, they dredge up the highly unlikely possibility of upsets in dead-red (proper color usage) New Mexico and true-blue Nebraska.

We'll give our detailed analysis below, which provides much more depth than the cursory evaluations published by left-leaning Roll Call. What follows are the Senate races, in order of their likelihood to move from R to D based on the outcome of the 2024 elections. The current partisan breakdown of the Senate is 51-49, with Democrats in control. There are only 47 actual Democrats, but there are four so-called "independents" and every one of those four are highly dependent on the Democrat party. Even the ones who are retiring after 2024 (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema) are still showing their true colors and voting with the Democrats as often as ever.

Photo credit: CNN

1. West Virginia

West Virginia is going to be a Republican pickup, period, and at this point there's nothing pertinent left to say about the Mountain State's Senate race. Incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin ran away rather than see his perfect record of election victories shattered into pieces, and doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice will be the new senator from West Virginia in 2025. His voting record may not differ much from Manchin's, and Justice will be a reliable tool for Mitch McConnell or whichever one of his sock puppets becomes the party leader in the Senate next year.

West Virginia will finally have two elected GOP senators for the first time in nearly a century. It's a shame that this now heavily-Republican state still won't have any conservative senators.

Photo credit: Fox News

2. Montana

The Senate race in Montana is looking OK for now, but don't count those chickens yet; the Biden-Harris administration may quietly transport some Haitian "refugees" into Montana, and those chickens (and geese, cats, dogs, etc.) would become greatly endangered.

A few months ago the GOP establishment, or those who work on its behalf, used threats of violence against conservative Rep. Matt Rosendale and his family in order to intimidate him out of the Montana GOP Senate primary (and out of Congress altogether) just moments after he entered that race.

Moderate businessman Tim Sheehy thus was effectively unopposed for the Republican nomination to take on three-term liberal Democrat Jon Tester. Tester has never been truly popular with the Montana electorate -- he's cleared 50% just once in three tries, and even that one was by a mere 0.3% -- but he is adept at campaigning as something other than the ultra-liberal that he is, he has the state's major media outlets thoroughly on his side, and he has benefited in the past by the presence of Libertarian candidates who suck votes away from the Republican. The last time Tester ran (2018) the Libertarian saw that he was being used as a pawn for Democrat dirty tricks, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But since he exited only one week before the election, it had little effect aside from highlighting the dirtiness of the Democrats.

Montana is far from the monolithically-Republican state that some may think it is. It almost never votes Democrat for President (just once since 1968, and that was only because of the Perot Factor in 1992), but Democrats have won 9 of the last 12 elections for Senator or Governor. One of Montana's two House districts is somewhat marginal; the other is solid GOP.

Photo credit: AP News

At long last it appears that Tester's appeal has diminished to the point where he is in serious trouble. He may be in trouble in the polls, where surveys lately show Sheehy ahead by about 5 points, but if money alone determined the election outcome Tester would be winning in a landslide. As of the latest FEC filings, Tester has spent over $33 million as opposed to just over $10 million for Sheehy. As we have mentioned here on numerous occasions, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. This will be proven to be true in almost every single hotly-contested Senate and House race in 2024.

This race is not nearly over yet, and Sheehy's lead is hardly insurmountable. Even months-old data shows Tester with nearly $11 million still in the bank, and those funds will be used to saturate the airwaves and mailboxes of Montana with typical Democrat ads full of hate and lies about Sheehy (and lies about what a great senator Tester has been). Sheehy may not yet comprehend what's going to hit him between now and November, but he will find out shortly and he'd better be prepared. His lead could evaporate as quickly as it materialized.

Photo credit: 10TV

3. Ohio

The current Senate campaign in Ohio bears a strong resemblance to the one which took place in that state two years ago. The only substantial difference is that there was no incumbent seeking re-election in 2022 however there is one running in 2024. Incumbency is normally a distinct advantage, and this race is no exception even though the incumbent is a Democrat and Ohio (like Montana) is thought to be unfriendly territory for those on the far left of the political spectrum.

In 2022, Republican senatorial squish Rob Portman retired and there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat challenger Tim Ryan faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

In 2024 there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

Photo credit: WCPO

The 2022 Republican nominee, J.D. Vance, was (and still is) unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Ryan was on the attack 24/7. Smelling blood in the water and sensing an unexpected pickup opportunity, Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Ryan was able to outspend Vance by the margin of $57 million to $15 million. After trailing most of the time, finally in October Vance consistently pulled ahead in the polls and then won in November, but it was uncomfortably close in supposedly "dark red" Ohio.

Photo credit: Ohio Star

The 2024 Republican nominee, Bernie Moreno, is unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he has had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Brown was on the attack 24/7. Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Brown has so far been able to outspend Moreno by the margin of $43 million to $11 million. After trailing the entire time, finally in September Moreno appears to be closing the gap in the polls, but has yet to be shown in the lead in any poll. Will "dark red" Ohio come through for Moreno, with Trump dragging him across the finish line?

We'll see.

Trump may have difficulty attaining the 8-point margin he received in Ohio in 2020, which means his coattails aren't going to be as long as might be hoped.

Photo credit: Market Realist

4. Michigan

Retiring liberal Democrat incumbent Debbie Stabenow was first elected to Congress in 1996 when she unseated conservative freshman Republican Dick Chrysler in Michigan's 8th congressional district. At the time that district was rated as "even" although it included all of Ingham County (Lansing) and a heavily-Democrat suburban portion of Genesee County (Flint). The presence of suburban Livingston County helped balance out the bad areas of the district, and Chrysler had won in the glorious year of 1994 because of Livingston alone (he very narrowly lost the rest of the district).

As you will see, there has been a cozy relationship between this Senate seat and that particular congressional district ever since.

Stabenow moved up to the Senate in 2000, failing to win a majority of the vote but still defeating incumbent one-termer Spencer Abraham. Abraham's win in 1994 was the last time a Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Michigan, and Stabenow was re-elected with relative ease in 2006, 2012 and 2018, all of which were anti-GOP years. Like nearly all Democrats in elections which are even slightly contested by Republicans, Stabenow was able to outspend her GOP opponents each time by considerable margins.

Photo credit: Rogers for Senate

Stabenow's replacement in the 8th congressional district in 2000 was Republican Mike Rogers -- the same guy who is now trying to replace her in the Senate in 2024. Rogers, who was at the time a Michigan state senator, defeated fellow state senator Dianne Byrum in 2000 by just 160 votes out of nearly 300,000. Rogers campaigned as a moderate and was even able to obtain some endorsements from Democrat politicians.

Rogers' voting record in the House was a shade to the right of "moderate" for most of his 14-year career, which ended when he chose not to run for re-election to an 8th term in 2014. The 8th district was moved to the right in the 2001 redistricting, perhaps emboldening Rogers to show a little more backbone in his congressional voting. Or maybe it forced him to move a little to the right, lest he be vulnerable to a conservative challenge in a primary election.

The district's partisan composition notwithstanding, Rogers anticipated that he would never face the voters again and therefore he dropped the charade and lurched to the left in his final term. He announced his retirement in March of 2014, and pointedly declined to endorse a conservative Republican state legislator as his successor (claiming that the guy might "embarrass" the district) and opted instead to back the more moderate Mike Bishop.

After two terms in the House, Bishop was sent packing in the anti-Trump referendum election of 2018. Bishop's ultra-liberal Democrat opponent and her party were able to spend a whopping $7.5 million to purchase that House seat -- and that doesn't even include the $5.5 million which was accumulated on her behalf by "independent" groups.

Who was that extremely well-funded Democrat?

Photo credit: CNN

It was Elissa Slotkin -- the "former" Deep State operative who is now the Democrat nominee for the 2024 Senate race against Mike Rogers.

Financially, it's the same story as in all other swing states this year: the Democrat has raised and spent far more money than the Republican. As of two months ago, which is the latest available data at this time, Slotkin has raised $24 million to $5 million for Rogers; she has spent $15 million while Rogers has forked out less than $3 million.

You don't have to be in some Michigan media market to understand that voters are being influenced by non-stop Democrat ads, while Rogers probably has his hands full just playing defense and trying to fight off the attacks. Rogers has done well to stay within the margin of error (but always on the losing side) in the polls. A poll which was released on September 13 showed him down by 3 points, which is his high-water mark over the last several months.

Can Rogers break the 30-year iron grip which liberal Democrats have had on Michigan's pair of Senate seats? The probability of that happening is still less than 50%, but his chances seem to be improving at this time.

Photo credit: Lancaster Online

5. Pennsylvania

Current senator Bob Casey, Jr. is dumber than a chimp (or even Kamala Harris). But unfortunately so are a slim majority of PA voters, as has been consistently demonstrated in recent years with the exception of the 2016 presidential election, when Democrat overconfidence led to a (relative) lack of fraud on their part, and Trump was able to win the Keystone State by a fraction of a percent.

Part of that slim majority of ignorant PA voters consists of Gullible Geezers who tend to believe whatever lies ("Republicans are going to ELIMINATE your Social Security and Medicare! For real this time!") the liberal media continually spouts on behalf of their party.

PA is a fairly elderly state, with a percentage of over-65s (18.8%) that is nearly as high as Florida's (20.3%). When they see the name "Casey" on a ballot, some portion of Pennsylvania geezer-dom undoubtedly believes that it is Bob Casey SENIOR they are voting for. Senior was a much-beloved Governor in the 1980s and 90s who became famous nationally when he was prohibited from speaking at the 1992 Democrat National Convention due to his outspoken anti-abortionist position. Senior was totally in line with liberal Democrat orthodoxy on every other issue, however.

Photo credit: Dave McCormick PA

Casey's (the Junior one) challenger this year is Dave McCormick. McCormick spent lavishly of his own money in the 2022 Republican primary vs. "Electable" Dr. Oz, but lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 1.34 million which were cast. McCormick graciously conceded and now has returned for another shot at the Senate -- this time with the GOP field cleared for him; no more dealing with pesky moderate dilettantes like Oz or staunch conservatives like Kathy Barnette. McCormick is again funding a large part ($4 million as of late June) of his own campaign and, aside from a recent left-biased outlier poll from CBS, appears to be inching closer to a possible -- but still unlikely -- upset.

Casey is now in his 18th Senate year, and has voted the liberal position 94% of the time during his tenure. He has been a reliable supporter of the Biden-Harris agenda and marches out of lockup on only the rarest and most unimportant of occasions. McCormick is a wealthy moderate businessman -- the kind of candidate the GOP establishment absolutely adores. Wealthy businessguys often lack icky conservatism and they have the ability to waste spend lots of money on their own behalf. It could be argued that a true conservative would have little chance of being elected statewide in Pennsylvania, and a nominal conservative like Pat Toomey or Rick Santorum is the best we can do.

Should McCormick somehow pull off the upset, his voting record in the Senate would likely be a little to the left of Toomey-Santorum though nowhere near (hopefully) as lunatic leftist as ex-Republican Senator Arlen "Judas" Specter, who went out in a blaze of bitterness back in 2010. Anything even close to Toomey-Santorum territory would be a tremendous improvement over the Casey pup in the empty suit.

PA may be 51% Democrat at the ballot box, but it deserves better than a pair of 100% liberal Senators; one is quite enough.

• Democrats are desperately wishing for major upsets of Republican Senate incumbents in Florida and Texas; there are no other GOP-held Senate seats which are even close to being in play. Republicans are desperately hoping for major upsets in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Maryland. The probability is that none of the above will happen, although the loss of Florida or Texas for the GOP has a greater chance of occurring than pickups elsewhere.
• GOP candidates are particularly floundering in the southwest (AZ, NV) and Ted Cruz is underperforming in Texas. We've already written in great detail about how Texas is absolutely not the solid "red" state that it might have been a few years ago, and people have quickly forgotten how marginal Florida is capable of being; 2018 wasn't all that long ago.
• Even after Governor Ron DeSantis' successful election integrity measures which targeted shady Democrat election officials in places such as Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida can still be finicky and Rick Scott may not be taking this Senate race as seriously as he should. Scott has raised a handsome sum of money, but he may have shot his wad too early -- the femiNazi running against Scott actually has more cash on hand as of the end of July. She is also a lot closer to Scott in the polls than she should be.
  
  Debbie Mucarsel Hyphen Powell isn't right on Scott's tail because of anything desirable or positive on her end; she may as well be listed on the ballot simply as "Not Rick Scott". Scott is the "Jon Tester" of Florida -- he has won three elections and only once has he cleared 50% (he received 50.1% in 2018). He is not popular and never has been; he has been just barely popular enough in the past.
• Only one outlier poll has showed the Republican within true striking distance in Wisconsin. In Maryland, although Larry Hogan is keeping it somewhat close against his affirmative-action opponent, Hogan seems less interested in winning a Senate seat than he does in using his campaign as a vehicle for virtue-signaling and Trump-hating.
  
  Perhaps Maryland's version of Chris Christie is trying to position himself as a GOP presidential candidate for 2028? Or maybe he's looking to be the Democrat nominee? Either way, Hogan's not winning anything in 2024 absent divine intervention. He's going to get beat down hard in the Baltimore-D.C. corridor.

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2024 Senate Montana Ohio Michigan Pennsylvania

If the polls are even close to being accurate, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is going to be determined by the results in just six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These are often referred to as the "swing" states. North Carolina isn't on that list, but probably should be; folks on the right like to pretend it's a 1000% mortal lock for the GOP, but it's not. It just leans slightly in the direction of Republicans at the presidential level in recent years.

2024 presidential election map; swing states in purple

If the Democrat candidate, whoever it turns out to be, wins every state that Democrats normally win, he/she/it will receive 226 electoral votes (EV) from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine*, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

If Donald Trump wins every state that Republicans normally win, he will receive 235 electoral votes from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska*, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

[* Maine and Nebraska are the only states where electoral votes are not winner-take-all; they award them by congressional district, and the statewide winner gets the other two votes. Because of this, Trump is expected to easily gain one of Maine's four electoral votes, and the Democrat is narrowly expected to take one of Nebraska's five EV.]

The magic number is 270 EV; that's the number a candidate needs to obtain in order to be elected president.

The six swing states combine for 77 EV:

• Arizona (11)
• Georgia (16)
• Michigan (15)
• Nevada (6)
• Pennsylvania (19)
• Wisconsin (10)

2020 presidential election results in PA

Pennsylvania has been reliably Democrat presidentially from 1992 to the present with the exception of 2016 when overconfident Democrats just barely failed to manufacture enough votes in the Philadelphia ghetto to deprive Donald Trump from eking out a statewide win by 0.7%. Trump would have won the presidency even without PA's 20 electoral votes that year, but Democrats still rued their mistake and vowed it would not happen again in 2020. It didn't.

Trump 270, Democrat 268

If Trump loses PA, then he still loses even if he takes both Arizona and Nevada along with Georgia (268-270).

Democrat 270, Trump 268 (and now that one Nebraska electoral vote looks huge)

Wisconsin likely isn't going to Trump (current illusions aside), what with the Wisconsin Democrat Supreme Court recently issuing a ruling which trashes the election integrity measures passed by the state legislature, and practically mandates Democrat vote fraud. Correspondingly, any delusionals who are dreaming about a GOP Senate pickup in WI can wake up now and face reality unless some 1994-ish tidal wave hits in November.

Politically speaking, Michigan is PA's poorer, more liberal Rust Belt little sister. If Trump can't take PA, he surely isn't winning Michigan. Maybe lightning strikes again as it did in 2016 and he takes both. Like Wisconsin, Michigan has also recently taken measures to thwart election integrity.

To summarize: if the Democrat candidate wins both Michigan and Wisconsin -- as is still probable, though we all wish it wasn't -- and all non-swing states go as expected, there is no scenario under which Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

Even with Joe Biden's obvious mental and physical degradation, swing state polls remain exceedingly close although most of them slightly favor Trump as of this time, but within the margin of error. On July 6, Bloomberg released polls for the seven obvious swing states (NC included) and Trump was ahead in five of those, though the pollster cheerily noted that Biden was closing the gap. This is likely to be as close to reality as we have seen so far, with Trump losing Michigan and Wisconsin. They say he remains slightly ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. One day later the Emerson pollsters had Trump sweeping all six of the swingers (NC wasn't polled).

If 2024 somehow mimics 1984 or 1972 then we will see fluke outcomes in states that shouldn't even be on the radar right now (e.g. Virginia). But even with as much disarray as President Alzheimer and his party seem to be in at the moment, expecting anything along the lines of a rout is foolish.

If you're trying to forecast the 2024 outcome, don't forget to factor in the following:

1. Biden is looking less and less likely to be the nominee.
   
   
2. Mitt Romney's inflammatory (yet quite accurate) comment from 2012 is still operative, undoubtedly at an even higher level than his now-outdated 47% figure. In case you've forgotten what that comment was:
   "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the [Democrat] no matter what. . . who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
   
   
3. The mass invasion of new welfare recipients streaming across the Mexican border -- who are infiltrating numerous states and not merely Texas or other border states. And all they have to do to earn their "paychecks" is vote Democrat.

2000 presidential election results

In 2000, Dubya won several states which are no longer normally winnable for the GOP in a presidential election -- Colorado and Virginia being the biggest of those. In 2000 CO and VA, plus Nevada and New Hampshire, added 29 electoral votes to the GOP total, more than offsetting the absence of PA's 23 EV. Bush of course also won as expected in Arizona and Georgia, which were solid Republican properties at that time but are now rightfully considered swing states. Bush did lose Iowa which is now considered true-blue (proper color usage). Bush won by a total of 5 EV that year, 271 to 266.

2004 presidential election results

In 2004 Bush repeated his victories in VA + CO and picked up Iowa and New Mexico but dropped New Hampshire. The outcome in the electoral college wasn't nearly as close as it had been four years earlier. The final score was: Bush 286, Lurch 251. The major Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin once again were not needed.

In 2024, barring a landslide of wishful thinking, Trump is not likely to win states like Virginia (unless Glenn Youngkin is on the ticket as VP, and maybe not even then) and is highly unlikely to win places such as Colorado or New Mexico. He must hold North Carolina and take a couple of the biggest swing states. Pennsylvania is the top prize among the swingers.

Without neglecting the other tossup states, Trump's campaign would do well to stay laser-focused on PA from now through November -- with hard-hitting advertising, as many rallies as possible and -- most importantly -- doing whatever can be done to ensure election integrity in order to avoid a repeat of the highly questionable 2020 results here.

Photo credit: visiterie.com

Erie sector (Erie County):

At one time the Erie area had just about the highest percentage of unionized workers in the entire U.S., however it was still often politically marginal as those workers did not always vote the way their labor union bosses instructed them to. Even working-class Erie was not particularly enamored with FDR and how he prolonged his Great Depression. In 1936 it gave FDR his lowest percentage (barely 50%) of any sector in PA against Republican joke candidate Alf Landon.

Erie was the only urban sector in Pennsylvania to vote against America's beloved King-for-Life in both 1940 and 1944. The sizable Catholic vote in the area helped Erie give a narrow two-point majority to JFK in 1960. Ever since that time, Erie has voted for Democrats in all but the most GOP-landslide years (1972, 1980 and 1984, but not 1988) and had a lengthy streak of voting against the GOP candidate in every presidential election from 1988 through 2012.

After an aberrant vote for Trump in 2016, Erie narrowly returned to the D column -- maybe (see below) -- by 1% in 2020. Erie casts only about 2% of the state vote, but is included here as a distinct though not terribly significant sector of PA, because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else.

[Erie made the news on Election Day of 2020 when an alleged poll worker there by the name of Sebastian Machado boasted on Twitter that he had personally "thrown out over a hundred ballots for Trump already!" and "Pennsylvania gonna turn blue 2020!!". The liberal media quickly raced to defend the Democrat vote-counters. They contacted a Democrat operative in Erie who conducted no investigation but labeled Machado's tweet a "false claim" (referring of course only to the first part of it). Democrats insisted that Machado was not actually a poll worker at all. Then the media -- which is the final arbiter of things like this, not law enforcement -- declared Machado's claim of shit-canning 100+ Trump ballots to be "debunked". Meaning that the number of trashed Trump ballots in Erie was likely far higher.]

Photo credit: govtech.com

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton sector (Lackawanna and Luzerne counties):

Presidentially, the electoral history of the anthracite coal country of northeastern PA has been quite similar -- albeit with a much smaller number of votes -- to that of the bituminous coal region of southwestern PA. To some extent the demographics of these two areas at opposite ends of Pennsylvania are also quite similar, in that they contain a significant percentage of residents of eastern European/Slavic descent -- blue-collar workers with little or no formal education who toiled in the mines and the mills back when such things were operational. Their pride and their work ethic (traits which are absent in certain other demographic subgroups) caused them to volunteer to endure difficult and dangerous jobs rather than being lazy and living off of welfare.

The demographics of southwest PA and northeast PA may be similar but they are hardly identical. As a fairly major city, Pittsburgh has far more blacks than WB/S; prior to the invasion of Hispanics which has greatly accelerated in the 2000s, northeastern PA was one of the Whitest areas in the entire country.

Northeast PA and southwest PA tended to favor the same party (normally Democrats) in almost every presidential election from 1932 through the 1970s. However the two regions diverged in the 1980s when the Pittsburgh area continued to blame President Reagan for the fact that Democrat Jimmy Carter presided over the near-destruction of the steel industry in the 1970s. WB/S voted for Reagan twice in the '80s while metro Pittsburgh remained ignorantly Democrat.

From 1988 through 2008 the two opposite corners of the state were back in sync, voting Democrat for president every time. By 2012 however, the "bitter clingers" in the smaller towns and cities of western PA had taken offense to Bathhouse Barry Obama's slur and his total destruction of the coal industry, and western PA marched solidly to the right. By 2016, northeast PA and southwest PA were marching together again, this time on the GOP side. Despite a noticeably higher minority percentage, Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) is much more Republican than Lackawanna County (Scranton).

In recent elections this sector of Pennsylvania casts approximately double the number of votes as Erie County, which works out to about 4% of the state vote.

Photo credit: visithersheyharrisburg.org

Harrisburg-Lebanon-York sector (Cumberland, Dauphin, Lebanon and York counties):

Harrisburg-Lebanon-York, along with the non-metro sector, has been consistently the most patriotic sector in the state even though the city of Harrisburg began deteriorating in the 1950s and continued doing so at an accelerated pace through the 1970s and beyond. Enough good people eventually fled, that the city began electing Democrat mayors and Democrat-controlled city councils, something which had not happened there since before World War I. The suburbs closest to Harrisburg are now nearly as reprehensible as the city itself, and in terms of registered voters Dauphin County flipped from R to D over 15 years ago. York County is steady, however even fast-growing (by PA standards) Cumberland County is beginning to decline and is now only moderately GOP instead of solid GOP.

Contemporary deterioration notwithstanding, in terms of its presidential preference this sector has been highly Republican from the late FDR years through the present time, though the area is weakening. From 1944-2020 the only time it voted for a Democrat was in the anti-Goldwater landslide of 1964 and even then this area only gave LBJ 55% -- a lower percentage than even the staunchly Republican non-metro sector of PA known generally as "The T".

Comparing 2020 to 2016, the aforementioned deterioration of this sector would appear to be slow-paced. Trump's percentage dropped only from 56.9% to 56.1%, but that is misleading. Even though Trump won PA in 2016 and allegedly lost it in 2020, his percentage actually increased in nearly every sector. Only this one and WB/S gave Trump a lower percentage in 2020 than it had in 2016. However the Democrat percentage increased by greater amounts in all sectors, with the number of those who voted third-party dropping substantially from its 2016 level.

In terms of political influence, Harrisburg-Lebanon-York currently accounts for about 8-9% of the votes in the state, which is about 50% more than Erie and WBS combined.

Photo credit: amishfarmandhouse.com

Reading-Lancaster-Allentown sector (Berks, Carbon, Lancaster, Lehigh and Northampton counties):

Northampton County (Bethlehem, Easton) is a true bellwether for the rest of PA. From 1984-2020 the most it has varied from the statewide GOP presidential percentage is a fraction over 1%. In Berks County (Reading), Republicans began to outnumber Democrats (by a very small amount) as of 2023, and this is the first time that has happened in forever. Across most of PA, the GOP is making inroads against the voter registration advantage which Democrats have enjoyed for decades. For a counterexample however, see below for the description of the Philadelphia sector.

As of early July in 2024, the Republican registration deficit in the state is down to 371,000. It was 915,000 in November of 2016, and 687,000 as of the 2020 general election. It's been half a century or more since Republicans were "only" outnumbered by 371,000 in PA.

Like the Harrisburg sector, the Reading-Lancaster-Allentown amalgamation has voted consistently Republican for president since 1944. The two exceptions were 1964, when everyone voted Democrat, and 2008. The mistake of 2008 was quickly corrected; Lehigh and Northampton counties still voted for Obama in 2012, but Carbon, Berks and Lancaster swung to the right sufficiently to push the whole area back into the blue.

Lehigh County (Allentown) remains a Democrat bastion, with the Rats having a 10% registration advantage. Allentown and the portion of Bethlehem which lies in the county cast nearly 30% of the vote, and the rest of the I-78 corridor (Whitehall, South Whitehall, Upper Macungie, Lower Macungie) is no bargain either. The other four counties which comprise this sector of Pennsylvania lean sufficiently to the right to offset Lehigh, though as noted Northampton is perennially close to the state average which means it is close, period.

Photo credit: wellsboropa.com

Non-metro sector, i.e. "The T":

The counties which run across the northern tier of PA combine with a wide swath of counties in the central part of the state, running all the way to the Maryland border to form a capital letter T. These counties are for the most part rural or small-town oriented. Modestly-sized cities such as Johnstown, Altoona, State College, Williamsport, Pottsville and Chambersburg are typical for this area.

We define the non-metro counties of Pennsylvania as the following: Adams, Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Crawford, Elk, Franklin, Forest, Fulton, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniata, Lawrence, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Mifflin, Monroe, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, Pike, Schuylkill, Snyder, Somerset, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Warren, Wayne, Wyoming. The Census Bureau defines some of these as metropolitan, but for our purposes they are small enough to qualify for this grouping.

Voters in most of patriotic, rural, small-town America naturally tend to be Republicans, and The T of Pennsylvania is no exception. In 2020 the above-listed counties represented 20% of the PA electorate, and voted 67.0% for Donald Trump as compared to only 31.4% for Joe Biden. This, not surprisingly, was by far the best portion of the state for Trump. Since 1932, The T has only voted Democrat for president in the landslide years of 1936 and 1964, and much of the time it has been at or near the top of the state's sectors in GOP percentage.

In this part of the Keystone State, Republican presidential and other statewide candidates are expected to do well and they need to rack up sizable margins in order to win, given the precarious (or worse) situation in the larger metro areas of the state.

In 2016, Trump won PA by approximately 44,000 votes out of 6.16 million. He amassed a margin of 446,000 votes in The T while losing the rest of the state by 402,000. In 2020 Trump won The T by about 493,000 votes -- but lost the remainder of PA by 575,000. This lamentable result was not due to a relative lack of turnout, or lack of support, in The T. Turnout there was up by 13.5% from 2016 to 2020, and only up 12.3% in the other sectors which contain most of the state's urban and suburban territory.

Photo credit: Richard Nowitz / visitpittsburgh.com

Pittsburgh sector (Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties):

This sector in the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania casts approximately as many votes as The T does -- about 20% of all votes in the state.

As is well known, the greater Pittsburgh region was heavily-unionized coal and steel country back in the days when Pittsburgh was known as the Smoky City. From the Great Depression up through recent years, southwestern PA was the most radical portion of the state. These counties have always been fairly White as major metropolitan areas go, and the ethnic Catholic Democrats who comprise a major part of the polyglot Pittsburgh area have often been moderate or even conservative on non-economic issues. It's true that they like their FDR-style economic "safety net", but they also treasure their guns and their Bibles and they are not rabid pro-abortionists nor do they appreciate governmental pandering to welfare state racists.

Because of these traits, the White working-class citizens of small-town western PA were slandered as being "bitter clingers" by prospective president Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. In April of that year, shortly before the Pennsylvania primary (which he lost by almost 10 points), Bonzo showed how out-of-touch he is with the heartland of America. While safely ensconced behind closed doors at an expensive Democrat fundraiser in elite ultra-liberal San Francisco, he had this to say about the good folks some 2,000 miles to the east:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and... they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The media and other Democrats will always use urban ghetto and barrio areas as examples of woeful "poverty" because it suits their racist anti-White agenda -- but if you ever want to see real poverty in America, look to the areas of Appalachia mentioned in the last paragraph. They were poor to begin with and now have been further impoverished by Democrat political policies.

In Appalachia, these indigent victims do not tend to use their EBT cards for crack cocaine, nor are they overstuffed to the point of being morbidly obese; "poverty" is not supposed to weigh 300 pounds and have Type 2 diabetes.

The poor people of Appalachia do not drive their Cadillac Escalades down to the luxury grocery store (parking in a handicapped spot, natch) to get their mac & cheese dinners and then plop down in front of the 75" TV in their rent-free air-conditioned apartments so they can tune into Oprah and be told how downtrodden they are and what a hateful, racist country the U.S. is while they consume their 3,000-calorie meal which was purchased at taxpayer expense.

All of these regions of Appalachia, including southwestern PA, flipped from Democrat to Republican as of 2012. Even many inhabitants whose livelihoods were not tied to coal mining and processing began marching resolutely to the right, and the voter registration patterns and election outcomes prove it.

Being more urban and suburban rather than isolated and rural, much of greater Pittsburgh has little in common with the rest of Appalachia, and the region's grip on Republicanism is tenuous in its infancy. As in the rest of the United States, the more-upscale suburbs (of which Pittsburgh has several) have run screaming to the left since 2016 while the less privileged White working-class precincts in urban and suburban areas have moved to the right. Whether these trends will continue in the post-Trump years, we'll have to wait a while to see. If Biden couldn't win southwestern PA even in 2020, it's not likely that he (or whatever stooge replaces him) will be able to do so in 2024 either.

But that doesn't matter a whole lot as far as Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes are concerned, because the ace up the Democrats' sleeve is. . .

Photo credit: Thom Carroll / phillyvoice.com

Philadelphia sector (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties):

Southeastern PA was actually the most Republican region of Pennsylvania heading into FDR's elongated depression; it voted nearly 60% to re-elect Herbert Hoover in 1932, and no other segment of PA was even close to that figure. As recently as 1948 the City of Brotherly Love was still electing GOP mayors, but never again since that time. The city reached its peak population of 2.07 million as of the 1950 census, and the mass exodus to the suburbs then began in earnest. The end of Mayor Frank Rizzo's term in 1979 marked the last time that someone who wasn't an ultra-liberal coddler of criminals occupied that office; Philadelphia started racing downhill without brakes in the 1980s and has continued to do so ever since.

For several decades, the large suburban counties around Philadelphia were able (and willing) to counterbalance the city's effect on presidential elections. Those suburbs also normally sent Republicans to Congress and voted for the GOP in other statewide races, but their preference was for Republican candidates who were well to the left of center.

Metro Philly grudgingly voted twice for Ronald Reagan, with 46.4% in 1980 and a bare majority (50.4%) in 1984. Philadelphia-area voters have not, as a whole, voted Republican for president at any time since then. This has been far and away the most liberal sector of PA since the 1990s.

The mid-1990s, specifically 1994, was very much a watershed date in metro-Philly politics.

As Sir Isaac Newton might have said, for every political action there is an opposite reaction (but not necessarily an equal one).

The trend, at least at the presidential level, began much earlier than 1994. The glorious outcome of the 1994 midterm election which placed the Republicans in control of the House and Senate for the first time in four decades represented the culmination of a long journey away from the Democrat party in parts of the country where such a thing seemed unlikely to ever happen.

The Democrat hold on the "Solid South" helped to keep them in charge of the Senate at all times and was a major factor in the House too, along with customary hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders in the most important states like California and Texas. The overconfidence and venality (and criminality) of Democrat politicians finally caused a critical level of voter discontent to be reached in that wonderful year of 1994, and a major congressional coup was the result.

That was the "action", or at least the most visible part of it. The "reaction" was not necessarily just a backlash against GOP control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, although the liberal media wasted no time trying to make that backlash happen. Congress has always been unpopular with the American people; only beginning in 1995 did the media feel the need to constantly remind people exactly which party controlled Congress, so the voters would know which party they were supposed to hate.

Photo credit: AP / Denis Paquin

The real "reaction" was against the fact that the GOP was now being led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and like-minded conservatives -- and therefore was viewed by the left-wingnuts of BOTH parties as being racists, rednecks, sexists, Bible-thumpers, illiterate trailer-trash, etc. This was no longer the party of moderate milquetoasts like former House Minority Leader Bob Michel. Republicans finally had some power in Washington after four dark decades and -- gasp! -- they might actually try to use that power!

These developments especially did not sit well with the upscale, suburban, country-club elitist wing (the "George Bush wing") of the Republican party, and in few places was the revulsion more obvious than in the suburbs of northeastern cities like Philadelphia. While these areas had been ancestrally Republican, they were never conservative, and now these Republicans were terrified by what they thought "their" party was becoming.

The Philly suburbs had seemingly always been represented by GOP politicians who were self-described "fiscal conservatives" (a true oxymoron, since these so-called conservatives voted for every budget-busting social welfare program that came along). They took great pains to make clear that they were not conservative in any other way. This formula of being on the far left of the GOP on all issues aside from some minor spending bills was sufficient to get elected in moderate-liberal suburbs for many years. It boiled down to "I won't raise your taxes as much as a Democrat would, but otherwise you'll never know from my voting record that I am actually a Republican!"

Democrats occasionally won U.S. House elections in the Philly burbs, but the GOP normally swept those districts every two years or came close to doing so. Naturally there was a clean sweep of the four districts which covered the suburban Philly area in 1994. Things barely held together in 1996 (liberal Republican Jon Fox almost lost the Montgomery County-based 13th district) and began disintegrating in 1998 when Fox did lose to future statewide failure Joe Hoeffel. That district and its successors have never again elected a Republican to Congress.

The old 7th district (mainly Delaware County) fell to the Democrats in the anti-Republican landslide in the "Abramoff scandal" election of 2006. Democrats ran the table in 2008 in their giddiness over the prospect of electing America's first half-black president. The scales tipped back towards equilibrium when buyers' remorse set in and GOP voters kicked numerous liberal Democrats out of the House in 2010; two of those evictions came in the Philly area.

The status quo held until the hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymander which was mandated by the Pennsylvania Democrat Supreme Court became law in 2018 and remains in effect today. Liberal Republican stooge Brian Fitzpatrick has been able to consistently squeak his way to re-election in the marginal Bucks County district, but the remaining districts which ring the city of Philadelphia have been crafted to elect nothing but liberal Democrats -- which they do.

Photo credit: Charles Fox / Philadelphia Inquirer

Before we close, there is one other factor to consider regarding elections in Pennsylvania:

PA Secretary of the Commonwealth (chief election officer) Al Schmidt is the token appointed RINO in the administration of far-left Governor Joshie Shapiwo. Schmidt, a Philadelphia liberal with significant experience being around Democrat vote fraud, never met a liberal he didn't love or a conservative he didn't despise. Schmidt became a hero to the left after the 2020 election, at which time he "courageously" resisted Donald Trump's efforts to obtain a fair and accurate vote count in Pennsylvania.

Schmidt will do everything in his (considerable) power to thwart Republican gains of any kind in PA in 2024 -- including protecting the White House and Senate from evil GOP challengers, and trying to ensure that the Democrat-gerrymandered congressional delegation doesn't lose any of its vulnerable leftists and does lose its one and only conservative (Scott Perry).

And don't forget the Rats' one-seat margin (102-101) in the Democrat-gerrymandered state House, which must be protected to the fullest extent possible; and the fact that the Republicans are on the verge of losing just barely enough seats (3) in the Democrat-gerrymandered state Senate in November to give liberals 100% control of PA government at every level -- executive, legislative and judicial.

The transfer of power in the state legislature from Republicans to Democrats may not be all that noticeable, what with many GOP legislators in PA basically being Democrats in Republican clothing already.

The voters will have some say in how these elections turn out, but just be aware that anything good which might happen for Republicans in PA this year will happen over Al Schmidt's dead body. (That's just an expression, ha ha.)

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Here is a review of everything important which happened in the Pennsylvania primaries yesterday.

Turnout:

D votes (presidential): about 991,000
R votes (presidential): about 944,000

People on the right who habitually search for something to be disappointed about are concerned regarding the supposedly low GOP turnout. But based on current registration figures, the percentages are:

D turnout: 25.4%
R turnout: 27.0%

The races at the top of the ballot (President, Senator) featured essentially unopposed candidates for both parties, and there was little to vote for even at the U.S. House level. Since there was basically nothing contested for the GOP anywhere, what reason would there have been for sky-high turnout on that side? Democrats had some things to vote for -- a couple of statewide offices and a couple of U.S. House races.

Photo credit: Philadelphia Inquirer / Patel campaign

The highest-profile Democrat primary in PA took place in the Democrat-gerrymandered 12th congressional district, where terrorist-supporting liberal racist Summer Lee was challenged by a slightly less liberal racist Democrat named Bhavini Patel. Lee didn't bother to campaign much at all (and now we know why) but Patel did. Aside from a minor disagreement on the subject of Israel, Patel tried to stress to her potential primary voters that she was just as hate-filled toward all the "right" things as Lee is. Despite her somnambulant campaign, Lee still outspent Patel by nearly 3:1 according to FEC data from early April, and won by about 20 points.

Months ago when Lee proudly displayed her anti-Semitism by supporting the Hamas terrorists, we considered the impact that her hate might have on this primary election. CD-12 has a substantial Jewish community which did temporarily swing to the right in November of 2023 in the local Allegheny County elections even though Lee herself had nothing directly to do with that movement. That community's financial weight is far more substantial than its voting weight, but there's no evidence that they are suddenly steering their geld to the GOP. Lee only narrowly lost Pittsburgh's heavily-Jewish 14th Ward yesterday (and will apparently win it easily in November), reflecting the fact that she still has considerable support among the more atheistic, secular, ultra-liberal, self-loathing sector of that community. The remainder of the 14th Ward opted for the lesser of the two evils.

Any incumbent who prevails by less than about 70% in a primary election is normally considered vulnerable, depending of course on the composition of the district (Lee barely attained 60%). The CD-12 result in November will probably be closer than many expect but whatever hope yesterday's outcome is generating is highly likely to be false hope. Democrats still outnumber Republicans here by more than a 2:1 ratio and the vastly underfunded Republican in the race, James Hayes, will still probably lose by a considerable amount.

Hayes is a moderate conservative -- a 100% conservative would have a 0% chance of winning this district -- but his campaign treasury contains barely enough to pay for a few yard signs, nevermind expensive media buys. Unless there is some clear evidence in the internal polling that Hayes stands any chance of coming within even 10 points of Lee in November -- which is unlikely -- the RNC is going to spend its limited resources elsewhere, mainly trying to play defense for (at least) a couple dozen vulnerable GOP incumbents. Next up is one of those districts where they are frantically trying to play defense. Or at least they should be:

Photo credit: Bill Kalina, The York Dispatch

Photo credit: glensidelocal.com

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Photo credit: thetimes-tribune.com

We've referenced Scott Perry (R-PA) before as someone who is a prime target of left-wing hatred and someone whom liberals would dearly love to exterminate from Congress in 2024 [see commentary posted here 10 months ago] -- by any means possible. The haters have noticed by now that the hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymander which was implemented on their behalf in Pennsylvania in 2018 in violation of existing state law isn't working as intended in this case (though it worked perfectly in numerous other districts in PA). Perry is still in Congress and has been re-elected three times since the Democrat gerrymanders went into effect.

Since they can't get their way at the ballot box every time, the Democrats are now resorting to lawfare via frivolous legal actions against "insurrectionist" politicians (like Rashida Tlaib, right?) to try to bar them from being able to run for office again. A left-wing nutjob "activist" has filed suit to stop Perry from seeking re-election in 2024. The Rats know this Stalin-esque suppression of their political enemies probably isn't going to hold up in court, even in the court of a liberal judge who uses the Constitution for toilet paper, but there's no reason for them not to try.

It's a no-risk venture; the Stalinists have full control of the "mainstream" media, which helps the less intelligent voters stay that way; and the Republicans are absolutely not going to fight back by justifiably doing the same thing to election-denying (2016) Democrats like the racist homeboy from Brooklyn who is highly likely to become Speaker of the House in the aftermath of the 2024 elections.

Even if the Democrat move to bar Perry, the lone conservative Republican in Congress from the entire northeastern U.S., from the 2024 ballot does not succeed, the idea is to generate as much negative publicity for him as they can and thereby jeopardize his re-election chances as much as possible. That effort will be fully aided and abetted by the local and national media, Trump-hating (and hater of all conservatives) RINO PA Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the corrupt PA Democrat Supreme Court, and more.

Perry's district is only slightly right-leaning and getting worse by the day. It was a safe district as configured back in 2011 and Perry first won it in 2012 when thoroughly squishy Republican Todd Platts retired:

Link: PA District 10 Demographics & Election Results

The corrupt PA Democrat Supreme Court seized control of the redistricting process in 2018 -- when no redistricting was even required -- and demanded an immediate and severe Democrat gerrymander which flipped several congressional seats from R to D and greatly endangered two other Republican incumbents (Perry being one of those two).

Actions such as these by black-robed Democrat tyrants in places like PA, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia were the ONLY reason the Democrats controlled the House after 2018.

Think about the impact that had on the final two years of the Trump presidency and in subsequent years; if the 2018 congressional elections had been left to the voters instead of the judges, the Republicans would have controlled the House during those years.

In the next redistricting in PA, the corrupt Court again stole control away from the GOP legislature -- which, thanks to the Court's state-level Democrat gerrymander, is no longer in GOP control -- and then screwed the Republicans again by taking away one more seat.

Perry has managed to survive so far, and the Rats inexplicably didn't even seriously challenge him in 2022; the best they could do was a radical leftist Harrisburg city councilwoman.

They are taking no chances this time. Smelling Perry's blood in the water, so far seven liberals have lined up to take him on, including a "bubble-headed bleached blonde" media bimbo who might be the current favorite (of the far left) in the race for the Democrat nomination.

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Photo credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Fifteen Democrats went on record as failing to support Israel after the Hamas attacks, when asked to vote on a resolution comdemning those attacks. The 9 who voted against the resolution are:

Rep. Jamaal "Fire Chief" Bowman of New York
Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri
Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana
Rep. Al Green of Texas
Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois
Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan

These 6 voted "present", thinking they could escape scrutiny:

Rep. Greg Casar of Texas
Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas
Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington
Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts
Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York

All but one of these racists represent heavily-Democrat ghetto or barrio districts, and their chances for re-election are not endangered (perhaps they are even enhanced) by this vote.

The exception: freshman Hamas supporter Summer Lee in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district. While that district does include the city of Pittsburgh and a few of its more reprehensible suburbs such as Duquesne, Homestead and Braddock, it also includes quite a bit of good suburban areas, particularly those in the western portion of Westmoreland County, where Trump won by nearly 30 points in 2020. The district is rated as D+8 because the bad areas outvote the respectable ones.

The district contains a significant number of Jews, in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh and elsewhere. When Lee comes up for re-election in 2024, it will be interesting to see if the Jews in CD-12 side with Israel or whether they are the secular, atheistic, ultra-liberal types who couldn't care less about their ancestral homeland and care only about voting straight-ticket Democrat as usual.

Ms. Lee won the Democrat primary in 2022 only by a very small margin over an ultra-liberal (but not completely psychotic, like herself) Jewish candidate; she may not be so lucky in 2024 but whoever wins that primary will very likely win the general election too.

A year from now this might all be old news, but for now it's quite current and a good "proxy" for her chances in 2024 is coming up in a few days: the 2023 Allegheny County district attorney election, in which long-term Democrat Steven Zappala was defeated in the Rat primary by a mega-woke nutjob. Zappala is now on the ballot as a Republican because the GOP naturally didn't bother to run anyone in such a normally lost-cause as this one (Zappala won via write-in votes).

If Zappala can somehow pull off a miracle win in a hardcore Democrat bastion like Allegheny County with all he'd have to overcome (Democrat fraud too, if it's close enough to warrant that), it would be a serious wake-up call to radical, racist Democrats like Lee. If Zappala gets the vast majority of Republican votes, splits the "independents" and takes a percentage of the Democrat vote anywhere close to what he received in the primary (that's going to be the toughest part) this election may be much closer than expected.

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Photo credit: Getty Images

The leftists at 538 are only just now realizing that Democrats are favored to keep the Senate? Oz is toast in PA and always was, so that's minus-1 for the GOP and the loss is not likely to be offset with a Walker victory in Georgia which was supposed to be (and may still be) the most likely Republican pickup. But "most likely" still doesn't mean "likely" whatsoever. Assuming all other incumbents win too and open seats are held, that means a 51-49 Senate with the GOP on the short end.

If any other seats flip, the reality is that it's much more likely to be R to D than D to R. Wisconsin, North Carolina and maybe even Ohio are not slam dunk retentions for Republicans. Things are not 100% safe even in Utah (!) or Missouri depending on who wins that state's primary next week, however sanity is still favored though not guaranteed to prevail in both of those states in the end.

Aside from Georgia, Senate seats in Arizona and Nevada are the only plausible flips in the good direction; anyone thinking of adding New Hampshire, Colorado, etc. to the list can dream on. But don't forget Alaska, where Tshibaka (R) beating Murkowski (RINO) -- if that actually happens -- should count as a Republican pickup even though it technically isn't.

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