These seven Senate seats most likely to flip party control in the 2024 elections

Senate Democrats face strong headwinds trying to hold the majority in the 2024 elections. With a slim 51-49 edge, the Senate campaign map puts Democrats largely on the defensive, with particularly tough political sledding in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia. Each are states where, in 2020, former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden by margins ranging from comfortable to overwhelming.

Still, the Trump era of politics has demonstrated the unexpected can and will happen. More than 15 months out from the 2024 elections, Trump looks like the favorite in the 2024 field to nab the GOP nomination and again run against Biden. So, that would have all kinds of unanticipated effects on down-ballot races.

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Ahead of the 2024 primary season, here are the seven Senate races most likely to change parties. It's a number chosen because at this point they're the most competitive, to varying degrees.

Senate Republicans need two seats to win the majority if Biden is reelected. Or, should Trump or another Republican win the presidency in 2024, the party only needs a single-seat pickup, with the GOP vice president breaking ties. As Biden’s understudy, Vice President Kamala Harris has done so numerous times since taking office on Jan. 20, 2021.

Several Senate races could still develop into competitive contests, including swing states that will be top presidential candidates. But for now, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, Democrats have the upper hand. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is a favorite in the Wolverine State, where her party has had strong electoral success from 2018 on. In Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) will be a Republican target. But he’s proven a reliable Keystone State vote-getter and is in good shape to win another six-year term for the Senate seat he first captured in 2006. Both race rankings could shift to the more competitive column.

1. West VirginiaSenate Republicans, in 2024 candidate recruiting efforts, took to heart the biblical admonition in Deuteronomy 16:20, “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” And they got their man. Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) is running for Senate, seeking the Republican nomination for the right to challenge Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

The 6-foot-7-inch Justice is running in a state where in 2020 Trump won all 55 counties, crushing Biden 69%-30%. Justice, among West Virginia’s wealthiest residents through family businesses and his own investments, nonetheless cuts a populist profile in the Mountain State, with his famous English bulldog, Babydog, by his side.

Over his 13-year Senate career, Manchin has sought to distance himself from national Democrats and their liberal policies. Each week Congress is in session yields new headlines about Manchin bucking his party on issues related to the environment, federal spending, and more.

But Manchin, West Virginia governor for six years before winning his Senate seat and a fixture of the state political scene since the early 1980s, is running in the now-deeply red state. Manchin's best political hope — and it’s a long shot — is that Justice loses the Republican Senate primary to Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV). That would set up a more competitive race between two longtime officeholders from West Virginia’s northern tier, its most populous region.

Still, polls give Justice a commanding primary lead, making him the favorite to defeat Manchin in November 2024 — if the incumbent Democratic senator even seeks reelection. Without Manchin on the ballot, West Virginia is as sure a Republican pickup as exists in national politics.

2. MontanaSen. Jon Tester's (D-MT) political success has frustrated Montana Republicans and their national party to no end. In 2006, Tester beat an incumbent Republican senator, and he held his seat in high spending, often highly negative 2012 and 2018 reelection bids.

Tester’s appeal in red Montana rests with his folksy demeanor, flat top haircut, and regular work on his farm in Big Sandy, in the state's remote north-central region. In other words, he comes off like a regular Montanan. Republicans contend that’s all a ruse to trick Big Sky Country voters, pointing out his voting record largely mirrors that of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and most other liberal, Democratic senators.

Montana’s population has grown rapidly over the last decade-plus, to the point that in January it gained a second House seat for the first time in 30 years. Some of that population growth has been in blue areas, such as the state capital of Helena and the college town of Bozeman. Still, Montana is a Republican state, where Trump in 2020 beat Biden 57%-41%.

Republicans think they have Tester’s number in his 2024 reelection bid. The state’s GOP establishment has rallied around retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, a decorated Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who is now an aerospace company CEO. But Sheehy is likely to face a GOP primary challenge from Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, made up of the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers. Rosendale lost to Tester in a 2018 Senate bid, when he was state treasurer, before winning his House seat in 2020.

3. OhioLike Tester in Montana, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is betting his personal political brand transcends Trump-era voting trends. Once a premier swing state, Ohio has moved decidedly to the right of late, with Trump beating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 by about 8 points each time.

Brown is a prominent left-wing populist and among the Senate's strongest supporters of labor unions. He’s held office most of the time since winning a state House seat in 1974 right out of college. Brown defeated an incumbent Republican senator in 2006 after 14 years as a House member, and he’s twice staved off well-funded GOP challenges to his Senate reelection efforts.

Several Republicans are now seeking the right to challenge Brown in November 2024. That includes state Sen. Matt Dolan, a part-owner of the Cleveland Guardians who can self-fund a campaign. So can Bernie Moreno, a wealthy auto dealer who has tied himself to Trump’s brand of MAGA politics. And Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined the GOP primary on July 17. More GOP candidates could still jump in.

4. ArizonaThe Grand Canyon State Senate race varies from the Democrat versus Republican dichotomy in most other places. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) hasn't said if she's seeking reelection to the Senate seat she won in 2018 after six years in the House. But there’s a catch — Sinema was elected to the Senate as a Democrat, only to become an independent in the latter part of her term.

Sinema’s switch hasn’t had a practical effect on the Senate’s partisan control since she still caucuses with the Democrats. But, assuming Sinema does run again, it creates waves of uncertainty about how the 2024 campaign will play out.

Democrats have long been frustrated with Sinema, who they contend has sided with corporate interests and generally bucked the party. Her most vocal critic is Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), running for Senate as a traditional liberal, though he is heterodox on several issues. The Republican nomination is up for grabs. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte who narrowly lost the 2022 governor’s race and still falsely claims she won, could run for Senate. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is already in the race, and more Republicans are likely to join.

Traditionally a GOP bastion, Arizona is now highly competitive. Biden in 2020 was the first Democratic nominee to win Arizona since President Bill Clinton in 1996. And party registration is moving in favor of independents, leaving many moving parts in the 2024 Senate race.

5. TexasIt’s no overstatement to say many Democrats loathe Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The 2016 GOP presidential primary runner-up to Trump, Cruz has long chastised and belittled Democratic lawmakers in a sneering manner. Democrats are excited about their likely 2024 Senate nominee against Cruz, Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX).

Yet despite gains by Democrats in recent years, Texas remains a red state, if one likely to take on a purplish hue in the coming years due to demographic changes. It’s unclear if Allred will have much more success against Cruz than the incumbent's 2018 opponent, then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who lost 50.9%-48.3% despite waves of glowing profiles in national media outlets.

Allred played Division I football at Baylor University and in the NFL as a linebacker. In four seasons for the Tennessee Titans between 2007 and 2010, Allred appeared in 32 games and recorded 46 tackles.

After his football career, Allred enrolled in law school, receiving his J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 2014. After practicing law for a few years, Allred in 2018 beat an incumbent Republican House member for a Dallas-area seat.

Cruz and allies insist Allred is far too liberal for Texas, which hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. Still, Texas is the Democrats’ best hope for picking up a Senate seat and are likely to ensure Allred has enough money to run a competitive race. Allred will first have to get through a Democratic primary challenge from state Sen. Roland Gutierrez.

6. NevadaSen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) is seeking reelection to the Senate seat she won in 2018, after a single, two-year House term. The former computer programmer and congregation president at Congregation Ner Tamid, a Reform synagogue in Henderson, Nevada, is likely to face Sam Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran.

Brown, a retired Army captain, ran in the 2022 GOP Senate primary but lost to former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is sitting out this election cycle. Laxalt lost the general election to incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV). For 2024, national Republicans are likely to back Brown in the GOP primary against Jim Marchant, a far-right candidate who has echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and failed in a 2022 bid for Nevada secretary of state.

On paper, Nevada looks competitive, with a fluid electorate due to the often transitory nature of the population in Nevada, a state heavily dependent on service industries that residents move in and out of frequently. And Gov. Joe Lombardo (R-NV) in 2022 beat a sitting Democratic chief executive. Senate races, though, have largely gone Democrats’ way in recent years, making the low-profile Rosen an early, but hardly overwhelming, favorite.

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7. WisconsinThe Badger State has the nation’s most ideologically disparate Senate delegation. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who won reelection in 2022, is a strong Trump supporter with a consistently conservative voting record. His home state colleague is Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), first elected to the House in 1998, who moved up to the Senate in the 2012 elections. In the House, Baldwin represented Madison, the state capital, a far-left bastion that's home to the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus. And her politics reflect it, with one of the Senate's more left-wing voting records.

Baldwin has had an impressive political career, first winning election to the Dane County Board of Supervisors at age 24 before moving to the state Assembly and then Congress. In the Senate, she’s from time to time been able to work with Republican colleagues on bipartisan legislation.

Moreover, Republicans lack an opponent to challenge Baldwin in Wisconsin, which promises to be a presidential battleground in the likely rematch between Biden and Trump. Possible GOP candidates include Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and wealthy businessman Scott Mayer.