If the late-night election results hold up, Donald Trump won’t just be returning to Washington — he’ll be bringing some important friends with him in the Senate.
Senate races are high-stakes affairs for five reasons. First, Senate terms run for six years, so senators elected now will still be in office until 2030.
Second, only a third of the Senate is up for re-election every two years, so if Republicans can build a majority with a few seats to spare, they can afford to have some setbacks in the 2026 midterms and keep control of the chamber — unlike in the House, where every seat is up for grabs again in two years.
They can also breathe a little easier about replacing J.D. Vance in Ohio, or aging members of their caucus such as Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley.
Third, the Senate controls confirmations of judges, so a president can put a longer-term stamp on the Supreme Court and the lower courts.
Fourth, the Senate also controls confirmations of the Cabinet and other executive branch offices, so a working majority means that Trump can get his team in place early and not waste a lot of time — which is especially important to a president who only has four years and can’t run again.
Fifth, there are shaky members of this Republican caucus, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and blue-state Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. The further Republicans get past 50 votes, the less they need to pull their punches to appease the least reliable members of their caucus.
On top of that, McConnell is stepping down as Senate majority leader, so more new senators means a stronger mandate for a fresh look at who leads the caucus.
Republicans were always likely to recapture a Senate majority this fall. The map of seats contested in 2024 leans heavily towards red states, but in 2018, 2012 and 2006, these races were all held in blue-wave conditions.
Democrats’ luck finally ran out.
The GOP went into the election with 49 Senate seats, and the Democrats’ best chances to gain a seat were in red states like Texas, Florida and Nebraska.
That didn’t happen.
Joe Manchin’s retirement made it a foregone conclusion that his West Virginia seat would go red, and Gov. Jim Justice won it by 40 points, with his faithful bulldog Babydog by his side.
Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown had survived a long time in a red and an increasingly red state, but Tester trailed all year, and a late charge by Trump-backed Bernie Moreno was too much for Brown.
That’s 52.
By the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Trump led in Pennsylvania by 2.6 percentage points, Wisconsin by 4.2, and Michigan by 6.3. All three states had tight Senate races, two against incumbents (Bob Casey in Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin) and one in an open seat (against Rep. Elissa Slotkin).
Casey and Slotkin have tried to build moderate reputations, although in Casey’s case mostly just because his dad was a pro-life governor. Baldwin hasn’t bothered.
Wisconsin has a Republican senator in Ron Johnson, but the other two states have frustrated Republicans, with John James losing closely twice in Michigan and Dr. Mehmet Oz losing to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania in 2022.
That’s been the missing piece of Donald Trump’s political resume: Getting his voters to give him reinforcements.
Republicans did well in 2016 and 2020 in the Senate largely because traditional Republican senators won voters who didn’t support Trump. In 2022, Trump-backed Senate candidates blew a bunch of winnable races.
But this time, he actually had coattails.
In all three states, the Republican Senate candidates were ahead early Wednesday: by 2 percentage points for Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, 2 points for Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, and 5 points for Mike Rogers in Michigan.
Hovde is a businessman and political novice; McCormick and Rogers have been in Republican politics since the George W. Bush era, and McCormick lost by a hair to Oz in the 2022 primary.
If all three win, Republicans would have 55 senators — their most since 2005.
Republicans haven’t had 56 senators since before the Great Depression. To get to that point, they’d need Sam Brown to win in Nevada. Brown, a burn-scarred combat veteran, trailed in polls all year — but so did McCormick, Hovde and Rogers.
And Trump and his party may have locked Democrats out of power in Washington for quite some time.
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review. Twitter: @BaseballCrank
