A Structural Disadvantage

David Wasserman is a data cruncher at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site. He writes Democrats have real disadvantages in trying to regain control of the Congress.

Republicans don’t even need to win any “swing states” to win a Senate majority: 52 seats are in states where the 2016 presidential margin was at least 5 percentage points more Republican than the national outcome. By contrast, there are just 28 seats in states where the margin was at least 5 points more Democratic, and only 20 seats in swing states.

The GOP’s current 52-seat majority makes the Senate look tantalizingly competitive. But a look at the map reveals that the Democrats hold far more seats on borrowed time than Republicans do. The GOP doesn’t hold a single Senate seat in those 14 states that are more Democratic-leaning than the country overall. Meanwhile, Democrats hold six seats in the 26 more-Republican-than-average states, and all six are at risk in 2018.

All Republicans would need to obtain 60 seats would be to win every seat in the 30 states that Trump won — no Clinton states needed. That’s a plausible outcome over a few election cycles, thanks to today’s extraordinarily high rates of straight-ticket voting — if the basic contours of the nation’s political geography don’t drastically change in the next decade.

Conservatives deserve some good news occasionally, and get it rarely. This data-driven analysis is a welcome exception.