Good morning. Forty-eight days out.

Wednesdays at The Caucus are for the Senate. Each week we go through the Republican-held seats Democrats would need to take the chamber and tell you where they stand on our board.

Here’s a way to read everything below. Democrats need to flip four Senate seats, and seven of the eight we rate as in play are in states Donald Trump carried in 2024 (Maine is the exception). 

So the question for Democrats this fall isn’t just whether the national mood has soured against Republicans. It’s where the extra votes for Democrats come from. There are two usual answers. 

One is simple enough: win back people who voted for Trump last time. 

The other is less straightforward: to find voters who were never part of either party’s old coalition, often people who’ve moved into places with a political identity they don’t share.

Most campaigns are betting on some mix of the two, and today’s newsletter has a bit of each. 

Our Senate rankings show where the math is closest, and Aleigha Cavalier’s column looks at a 98-vote state House win outside Pittsburgh that may offer a hint about where new swing voters are turning up: the newer, denser parts of fast-growing suburbs inside otherwise Republican counties. 

That second group, in my opinion, gets far less attention than it deserves — mostly because it’s a harder group of people for pollsters to reach.

Scroll down for more about our latest Senate rankings, the three new names on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) target list, and to read Cavalier’s excellent new column.

— Elias Isquith

North Carolina is the only one we rate D Advantage. Former Governor Roy Cooper led Republican Michael Whatley 50 to 43 in July polling, and Senator Thom Tillis is retiring.

The DCCC is the House Democrats’ campaign arm. Its Red to Blue program is its list of challengers it thinks can flip Republican seats. Candidates on the list get strategic advice, staff, training and help with fundraising. In other words, what it says matters.

On Tuesday, the DCCC added three new challengers, bringing the list to 40. Most interestingly, one of them isn’t a Democrat.

Bill Hill is running as an independent for Alaska’s only House seat, against Republican Representative Nick Begich. Hill is a Dena’ina Athabascan commercial fisherman, a union construction worker and a longtime educator. He’s running as a pro-choice, pro-gun candidate. 

Political strategists call a party’s willingness to back candidates who don’t fit its usual mold a “big tent” approach, and this is about as big as it gets: a candidate who won’t run under the party’s name and whose positions don’t line up neatly with either party’s.

The other two additions are from the Midwest. In Michigan’s 7th District, Lansing community organizer Will Lawrence is challenging first-term Republican Representative Tom Barrett, in a race we rate a Toss Up. In Wisconsin’s 1st District, emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman is taking on Republican Representative Bryan Steil, who won by nearly 10 points in 2024. Of the three, that’s the hardest seat for Democrats on paper.

To find out how Lawrence is tying his race to Michigan’s fight over data centers, read our full story at The Caucus.

In August, Pennsylvania held a special election for the state House’s 12th District, a seat in Pittsburgh’s outer suburbs. A special election is one held to fill a seat that opens up in the middle of a term, and this one opened when Republican Stephenie Scialabba resigned. President Trump carried the district by 18 points in 2024. But the Democrat, Brandon Dukes, beat the Republican, Scott Timko, in a squeaker: by 98 votes.

In November, Dukes will face Timko again. The question that could decide the rematch is simple: what explains Dukes’ narrow win, and can he repeat it with a midterm electorate, when far more voters turn out?

Aleigha Cavalier, a Caucus columnist who started her career in western Pennsylvania politics, thinks the answer is in where Dukes won. Scialabba, the Republican, carried all eleven voting precincts in Cranberry Township in 2024. Dukes won most of them, and his biggest gains weren’t spread evenly. They were concentrated in the township’s newer, denser western precincts.

Cavalier thinks that pattern points to a kind of voter Democrats haven’t figured out how to reach yet. She also thinks Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who campaigned for Dukes, has a stake in the answer that goes well beyond his own re-election.

To find out who those voters are and why Cavalier calls Cranberry the possible “first visible edge” of a new Democratic coalition, read her full column at The Caucus.

— Senate Republican leaders’ super PAC, which spent millions to help Senator John Cornyn beat Paxton in the primary, has now reserved more than $51 million in TV ads to help Paxton win a Texas seat Republicans usually don’t have to pay this much to defend. (Texas Tribune)

— The Supreme Court left in place a lower court’s block on a Trump administration rule that would have let the Postal Service refuse to deliver ballots to voters missing from state-submitted lists. It isn’t a final ruling, but mail voting this November will work as usual. (NPR)

— A new super PAC funded by Trump’s MAGA Inc., called No Going Back PAC, has started spending to defend House seats Trump won comfortably in 2024. Those include Kentucky’s 6th and Texas’s 35th, two of the races we moved toward Democrats this week. (The American Prospect)

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