The 2024 Senate Forecast

Designed by Logan Phillips

The RacetotheWH Senate Forecast predicts the outcome of every Senate race in 2024 using a data-driven model that factors in the latest polling, historic trends, candidate quality, and fundraising. Every day, we simulate the election 50,000 times to get the best projection we can on how likely each party is to win the majority.

We’ve correctly predicted Democrat’s narrow Senate majority in the last two election cycles and came just one seat shy in 2022 of perfectly predicting the # of seats the parties would win in both Senate and the House, - which was closer than any election forecaster that cycle.

Background on the 2024 Senate Race

The contours of the 2024 election cycle will be defined by the Presidential Election, because the party that holds the White House secures a tie breaking vote in the Senate, meaning they will only need fifty seats to win a majority. The other party must win at least fifty-one seats.

Thanks to their current fifty-one seat majority, Democrats can afford to afford lose one seat provided President Biden successfully wins re-election. That advantage will be crucially important, because the ruby red state of West Virginia is all but certain to flip now that Senator Joe Manchin has announced his retirement.

Democrats could expand their pathway to victory if they can oust Republican Senators in either Florida or Texas. However, the real key to victory for Democrats will be to play defense, because the Republican party has the lion-share of offensive opportunities thanks to a friendly map where Democrats represent 23 of the 34 seats up for election in 2024.

Republicans are laser focused on defeating Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Senator Jon Tester in Montana, who both represent states Donald Trump won by more than 8%. They will also be targeting Democratic seats in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The GOP may have successfully put Maryland on the map as well, after successfully recruiting popular former Governor Larry Hogan.

After exploring our National Senate Forecast, you can focus in on the most important swing races, each of which has their own special interactive forecast: AZ, FL, MI, MT, OH, PA, NV & TX.

Update – April 2024: Fundraising is an important early indicator of a candidate’s ability to mobilize supporters and run an effective campaign, and it is now an active part of the forecast for over 20 of the 34 Senate races. You can track how much each candidate has raised in the new Fundraising section. We’ve added many new additional features on the page, led by a new section showing how the race changes depending on the winner of the Presidential Election.