Throwback: The 2020 Battlefield In Review

To predict the future, we must understand our past -- in this case, the 2020 Senate elections. Why did Republicans overperform both poll-based and historical expectations? Where can Democrats improve?

As per the 6-year Senate term precedent established by the Constitution, the 2026 battle for the Senate will be fought on the same terrain as 2020.

With this in mind, before diving in to my forecasts for the next cycle, I wanted to cover some background on the current state of the map — along with a run-down of the ‘greatest hits’ of 2020.

2026 Landscape: Where We Are Now

In this article, I’m not forecasting any races in 2026, so I’ll keep this introduction to a minimum.

If you’ve previewed the 2026 map already, you probably picked up on a key detail: unlike 2024, where Democrats are defending 24 seats to Republicans’ 10, Republicans will be playing defense during the 2026 cycle.

Republicans, as you probably noticed, they have more seats up for grabs than Democrats. 

Out of the total 33 Senate seats up for election in this cycle, and Republicans hold 18 of them. That leaves Democrats with the remaining 15. 

Now, this disparity is relatively small: a 6:5 advantage for Democrats compared to Republican’s 12:5 advantage in 2024.

This is one of the reasons that I’m fairly confident in saying that 2026, as a whole, will not feature the gigantic shifts in the Senate balance like we saw in 2010 or 2014 (where Republicans gained 6 and 9 seats, respectively).

As a result, in our currently very polarized and partisan environment, no matter like what the circumstances are come November 3rd, 2026, so many states are so locked in for their respective party that it would take something truly cataclysmic (or miraculous) to really shake up the battlefield. 

That being said, considering the heavy monetary and time burden that Democrats have suffered under in the 2024 cycle and are now relieved of, the party already begins the 2026 cycle in a more favorable position than the previous.

2020 Election in Review: The Rundown

Now, since Senate elections follow a cycle of three which takes place over 6 years, the Senate seats up for grabs in 2026 were last competed for in 2020.

You might remember 2020 for being the year of the pandemic, the year where Joe Biden successfully defeated Donald Trump, and the year where Democrats gained their first trifecta in 6 years by keeping the Senate or by gaining the Senate and keeping their House majority. 

But peer beneath this surface-level victory, and you'll see the narrative that Democrats really had a disappointing night or a disappointing week, really. 

Democrats came into the 2020 elections expecting a much bigger victory than they got, 'cuz Donald Trump was so unpopular, especially considering his gross mismanagement of the pandemic, as well as the fact that from the polls, it looked like Democrats were going to have a smashing victory on every level, in every state.

Also, in terms of campaign funds, Democrats overall, not just in the presidential race but in like Senate races or House races, were consistently outspending their Republican opponents across the board. Democrats were on ads more; they were on the air more; they were on TV more often than Republicans, and all of those factors really pointed towards this big Democratic victory, even potentially a landslide, the likes of Obama's 2008 victory. 

And that was reflected in a lot of forecasters' opinions, even very respectable ones who have been in the game a very long time. And the same thing can be seen in like what the news cycles predicted, or how they were viewing the election, in commentating on the current circumstances. 

And yet, take a look at the presidential map. 

Yes, Joe Biden successfully restored the blue wall: he won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, states which had sealed Hillary Clinton’s defeat four years earlier.

Yet, Biden won these states by tight margins, to say the least. He won Wisconsin by 0.6%; he won Michigan by less than 3%, and he won Pennsylvania by around 1.2%. 

The polls in each of these states had consistently shown Joe Biden above Trump by 5 or 6 points. There was not a single forecast in any of those states that predicted a Trump win. Most people in 2016 were sure that those three states would go to the Democrats, and yet, they very nearly did not do so. 

Additionally, Joe Biden didn't flip Iowa and Ohio back to the Democrats; in fact, he barely improved on Hillary's margins in those two states. 

That said, Biden did have some fairly major accomplishments over Obama. 

He won Georgia for the first time since 1992, and Arizona for the first time since 1996, but overall, Biden really did not perform up to par with what most, you know, people watching the election and people who were actively engaging in it from a statistical level, would have predicted the election to look like. 

Now, the same story can be seen on the House level. 

Democrats came in with the majority, yes. And forecasters also expected them to not only keep that majority but also expand on it by successfully gaining seats in Republican territory. 

And yet, on election day, Republicans gained 13 seats in the House, defeating a lot of Democratic representatives who had seemed safe in their seats. 

Now, Democrats did not lose the House, thankfully enough for them, but they came relatively close. At the end of the election Democrats only had 222 seats in the House. Before then, they had 232. 

Some predicted that after the election, Democrats would have as much as 240 or 245.

2020 Senate Elections

And finally, on to today's topic, let’s look at the 2020 Senate elections. 

Democrats were widely expected to finally regain the Senate after suffering a little bit of an obstacle in 2018, thanks to an unfavorable map. 

It looked like 2020 would be the year where they finally break this glass ceiling and regain their majority. 

But they didn't. To understand the full picture — where Democrats succeeded and failed, and the factors that determined this — let’s break things down on a state-by-state basis.

ARIZONA

Arizona falls under the success column for Democrats. The Grand Canyon State was one of Democrats’ few bright spots in 2016, when Hillary Clinton improved on Obama’s 2012 performance by over 5 points while slipping nationwide. After winning one of the state’s Senate seats in 2018, Democrats were cautiously optimistic about 2020.

Bolstering their hopes was the presence of Martha McSally — Republicans’ unsuccessful 2018 nominee — on the ballot again after having been appointed to the seat by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

That was also projected to go to Joe Biden. That looked like a smashing Democrat victory. 

Mark Kelly

COLORADO

And in Colorado, Republican incumbent Cory Gardner had only won by two points in 2014, and Colorado had shifted substantially left since then, to the point where it voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by nearly 14 points. 

That seemed almost like a safe Democratic flip. 

GEORGIA

In Georgia, there was both a special election and a regular election. While the cycle started off with most people not considering Georgia to be the most competitive state on the Senate level, over time, it looked like Democrats were the real favorites in polling. 

MAINE

And go up north a little bit, and you'll see Maine, where four-term incumbent Susan Collins had been under serious, serious backlash from voters, it seemed, for her vote for Brett Kavanaugh to the Senate, or her vote to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, and Maine was shifting Democratic substantially, to the point where Joe Biden won it by nearly 10 points in 2020. 

It seemed that Susan Collins had almost no hope of surviving. But come November, she did the impossible. Collins fended off Democratic challenger Sara Gideon by 8.6%, overperforming fellow Republican candidate Donald Trump by nearly 20%.

While Joe Biden turned in record performances in Portland and southern Maine as a whole, Collins was able to retain support in these same areas. Collins represents the very last of the moderate, northeastern Republican: a once-thriving breed which has seen its ranks depleted over the last 15 years in an era of Trumpism and rising partisan polarization.

The fate of this Senate seat in 2026, more than any other race, depends on a single candidate: whether Collins seeks a 6th term or chooses to retire will determine which party is the favorite to win the election.

MICHIGAN

In Michigan, Democrats were playing defense. Senator Gary Peters was running for a second term after winning his first term by nearly 14 points in 2014, an knockout victory made even more impressive considering the Republican national environment.

Most analysts justifiably assumed Peters would coast to a second term, seeing as 2020 was a bluer year than 2014 and his opponent, Republican veteran John James, had already ran for Senate two years earlier and had lost — most rerun candidates tend to fare more poorly than their first run.

However, despite Peter’s advantages, he also faced one key disadvantage, compared to 2014: Michigan was not the same state as it was 6 years prior. In 2016, the Wolverine State backed a Republican presidential nominee for the first time since 1988 — a result which can be attributed towards the massive swing among working class voters towards Republicans. This shift disproportionately affected the political dynamics in Michigan, a state with a large working, blue-collar population.

Now, 2016 and 2014 were only a couple of years apart: is it really possible that things changed so drastically in the two-year period?

I don’t know. But what I can say is that, in 2012, only two years prior to 2014 and four before 2016, Michigan had supported Democrat Barack Obama by over 10%. In less than a half-decade, a significant shift did take hold in Michigan.

And as it turns out, this X-factor nearly doomed Peters, who came within 1.7% of losing reelection.

2020 — both the presidential and Senate races — proved that Michigan’s status as a swing state is here to stay. Expect the 2026 Senate race to prove nothing different.

NORTH CAROLINA

Another Democratic target state in 2020 was North Carolina, where first-term Republican Sen. Thom Tillis seemed to be endangered. Democrats began the race with two major reasons for optimism.

For one, North Carolina had been trending leftward in the 21st century, being won by Obama in 2008 and decided by extremely narrow margins in the succeeding elections. Additionally, Democrats had nominated State Sen. Cal Cunningham, an Air Force veteran who had all the characteristics and qualifications of a top-tier candidate.

It seemed 2020 might be the year that Democrats could break through in North Carolina, winning not only the presidential election but also the concurrent Senate election.

Unfortunately, reality played out differently. North Carolina was once again decided by a razor-thin margin, but it wasn’t in Democrats’ direction: Trump had escaped with a narrow 1.5% victory over Joe Biden. And Cunningham, once thought to have been a potential contender for the presidency, saw his image tarnished after reports of his extramarital affair were confirmed authentic. In the end, Cunningham lost the election by 1.8% — a painful and tauntingly-close loss, so close and yet so far.

TEXAS

Take a look at Texas, where Democrats had close to winning the state’s other Senate seat in 2018 when Beto O'Rourke came within 3% of knocking off Ted Cruz. Unfortunately, they were facing a much tougher opponent this time around: John Cornyn.

Where Cruz had forged a reputation as a obstructionist ‘troll’ during his first term in the Senate, Cornyn had spent his two-decade tenure rising through the ranks of the Republican caucus to his current 4th-ranking slot. The American public seems to appreciates experience, productivity, and even bipartisanship in their legislators — qualities which Cornyn exemplified far better than Cruz. Therefore, when Cornyn secured reelection by 9.6% in November, outperforming Trump and far overperforming Cruz, it was difficult to find anyone truly surprised.

MONTANA

A similar story in Montana, where Democratic hopes were swiftly and decisively dashed on election night. popular Democratic governor Steve Bullock ran for Senate. He was the incumbent Governor and had won two terms in a heavily conservative state. It seemed like Bullock had a real chance at beating Steve Daines and gaining that seat for himself, despite Montana being a fairly Republican state on the presidential level. Unfortunately, partisan tides caught up with Bullock, and Daines defeated the former governor by 10 points.

SOUTH CAROLINA & KENTUCKY

Go down south to South Carolina or Kentucky, two states where the circumstances (and outcomes) were similar. Two nationally-unpopular Republicans, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, had been thought of as potential targets for defeat despite the heavy conservative constituencies they represent.

Democrats nominated energetic candidates in both races who, among their other talents, were able to attract astronomical sums of money: both campaigns received more than $100,000,000 over the course of the election cycle and broke numerous spending records.

However, this statistic also reveals their fatal flaw. Both candidates treated their campaigns as national races: the vast majority of their donors were out-of-state and the two Republicans were far more unpopular nationally than they were in the states (albeit still unpopular). To beat a Republican in Kentucky or South Carolina, you’d need a perfect storm of circumstances, and neither Democrat benefited from them. In the end, Graham won by 10.5% and McConnell won by 19.5%.

COLORADO

Colorado was one of Democrats’ four pickups in 2020 — and it was by far their easiest.

Colorado, long a Republican-leaning state, had shifted left during the late 2000’s and 2010’s, when Barack Obama carried the state twice and Clinton continued this trend. In 2020, Biden won the state by an impressive 13.5%, cementing Colorado’s transformed political identity. Concurrently, Democratic Senate nominee and former Gov. John Hickenlooper won by a decisive 9-point margin over Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. Gardner was likely doomed for reelection from the get go, but his relatively pro-Trump stance probably didn’t help his chances.

ALABAMA

So, Democrats had a mixed showing on the offensive side of things, but did they actually lose any seats?

Yeah: but it was hardly a nail-biter of a race.

Incumbent Democrat Doug Jones had won the Senate seat in 2017 as the result of once-in-a-generation circumstances: an extremely anti-Republican environment in the wake of Trump’s ascendency and the nomination of the single worst political candidate of the 21st century: state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore. Moore, a far-right Republican who had gained fame (or notoriety) for attempting to erect a monument of the Ten Commandments at the state capitol, was a poor candidate to begin with. But during the election, Moore was exposed for sexual assault and molestation.

Thankfully, in a reaffirmation of the decency of the American electorate, Alabamans narrowly rejected Moore from office and sent Doug Jones to the Senate.

Unfortunately, this goodwill did not last long. Doug Jones was faced with a number of tough votes during his abbreviated tenure, including the trial of Donald Trump — where he ultimately voted to convict the president.

Therefore, it was nearly inevitable that Alabamans would sour on Jones — and indeed they did. In 2020, Republican nominee Tommy Tuberville bested Jones by a 20-point margin.

Alabama’s result was hardly a surprise, but it did act as the final nail in the coffin for Southern Democrats — a coalition which, similar to Northeastern Republicans, had survived on account of ticket splitting and ancestral support, and had become extinct as both forces gradually dissipated.

The Big Picture

So, after surveying the main battlefield, what can we conclude about 2020?

Well, the picture isn’t as black-and-white as it might seem.

It wasn’t a Republican underdog victory, as the general ‘vibes’ on November 5th might have suggested: just because they didn’t perform as badly as they were predicted to does not mean they actually performed well.

Looking at the topline results, Democrats won four Senate elections and gained three seats (thanks to an unfortunate but inevitable defeat in Alabama). Without considering the opportunities on the table or the numerous circumstances stacked in Democrats’ favor, a three-seat gain doesn’t seem too shabby.

Democrats’ main successes in 2020 came in the form of their candidates: in states ranging from Arizona, to Montana, to Georgia, Democrats nominated top-of-the-line candidates with broad appeal and enthusiasm support among their state’s voters. Had they nominated lesser candidates for these seats, we might have been looking at an even more disappointing election for Democrats.

That being said, the election wasn’t a Democratic blowout, either: a 3-seat net gain is healthy and impressive, but nowhere near mindblowing.

Considering the multitude of races that Democrats were seriously contesting, their final showing was nowhere near what most had expected and hoped for.

But therein lies the problem: they set their expectations too high — and this wouldn’t have been a problem, except that their hopes were often accompanied with massive sums of money, and when their hopes turned out to be misplaced, so were hundreds of millions of dollars — see South Carolina!

Races in Alaska, Kansas, and Kentucky were never actually going to be close for Democrats. Although polls had shown Democratic candidates coming within 10, or even 5, points of victory, the fundamentals told a different story: 2016 had exemplified a world of politics governed by partisanship tribalism, and this state of action was unlikely to reverse course within four years. In fact, polarization only reached new heights in 2020.

I don’t want to ridicule Democrats for investing in these seats: that would be hindsight bias at its worst. At the time, it was perfectly reasonable to invest in red states: two years earlier, Democratic senators had won reelection in states like Montana and West Virginia; the latter voted for Trump by over 40 points in 2016!

But our mistakes are only worthwhile if we learn from them in the future.

If Democrats adjust their expectations — and along with it, their financial decisions and the flow of money — perhaps they won’t be faced with another disappointing night.

If the past decade of politics have taught us one concrete lesson, it’s this: America will remain evenly and bitterly divided, and as a result, change will (nearly always) be incremental rather than substantial.

You won't see a gigantic shift in the balance of the Senate, regardless of what's going on, even if Kamala Harris or Donald Trump veers below 40% approval.

In 2026, Democrats should focus on the states where they actually have a reasonable chance of victory.

Now, how do we define “reasonable”?

We should take a look at the context. Unlike 2020, the 2026 Senate elections will be a midterm (where ticket-splitting is more prevalent) possibly under a Trump presidency (which would likely be extremely unpopular, judging by his first term). In this scenario, perhaps Democrats could compete in states like Alaska — where Rep. Mary Peltola, a strong candidate, seems to be waiting in the wings — or Texas, if Democrats can find a truly inspiring candidate.

But to get a clearer sense of the state of the race, all we can do is wait — for partisan control of D.C. to be decided in November, and for the 2026 cycle itself to really shape up.

Click to read Senate 2026: Part 3 - Safe for Democrats