I have a confession: I think this is a great election. It’s way better than 2012. All around, it might be the best general election in a decade.
There are a dozen competitive and close Senate contests and, for good measure, there are another dozen competitive governors’ contests. Better still, these close Senate races add up to something meaningful and important: control of the Senate.
These contests might lack the drama of a presidential election — and there are plenty of signs of voter apathy in this cycle — but they make up for it with their diversity, collectively addressing some of the most important and analytically compelling questions in electoral politics.
The core question of this election remains unanswered: Is it a wave? Is the national environment extremely good for Republicans, or are they mainly poised to gain because the set of battleground states just happens to favor them?
The answer hinges in part on whether Republicans can win in blue states or presidential battleground states, like Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina. Republicans ought to fare well there if this is indeed a wave election year. It also hinges on whether Republican governors can win competitive contests in states like Florida and Michigan, where Republican incumbents have no business losing in a wave election.
If the G.O.P. doesn’t win the presidential battlegrounds now, what would it say about its chances in 2016, when Republicans won’t benefit from low turnout among young and nonwhite voters?
The election poses a different set of questions in red states. To have any chance of one day building a governing majority in the House or Senate, Democrats need to win and hold areas that the party has lost in presidential elections. Is this still possible in today’s polarized era? Can Democratic incumbents still outperform the national party among white Southerners by a large enough margin to win in red states?
This year’s contests might also be remembered as a milestone in the longer-term trend of growing Democratic strength in the Southeast, where in-migration and rapid demographic change are eroding the G.O.P.'s traditional advantage. How close is Georgia to turning blue? To what extent can Democrats mobilize their so-called new coalition in an off-year election in Florida and North Carolina, where Republicans have already lost their advantage in presidential elections?
And what about these ridiculous races in South Dakota and Kansas?
We’re about to find out.
