Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections
Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty and Lisa Kashinsky at POLITICO:Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.
In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.
After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.
In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.
Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.
One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.
“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”