Has it already been two years? Happy midterms, everyone! We’re back at it this year with our 2022 Senate Ratings and are excited to cover, rate, and analyze the upcoming Senate elections as always. We’re also announcing some changes to how we’ll issue ratings this cycle, and more!

Following the results of the 2020 election and the runoffs in Georgia in 2021, which delivered an evenly-split 50-50 Senate (with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie in favor of the Democrats), Republicans now need to net just one seat to win control of the Senate. Though Republicans would seem to have the upperhand as backlash to President Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress brews, Republicans are actually on the defensive once again. Of the 35 seats up this cycle (this includes one special election in Oklahoma), Republicans hold 21 of them and have their own incumbents retiring in six. Furthermore, they are defending two states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) that Biden narrowly carried in the 2020 election, while all 14 Democratic-held seats this year are in states Biden won.

If you followed our 2020 Senate race ratings and analysis last cycle, you may be familiar with what we’re doing again this year. But here is a quick refresher and update on some major changes to keep in mind as you look at our Senate map:

Earlier, Continuing, and Rolling Ratings

Our first major change this cycle is the most important one to keep in mind. You may notice that when you look at the Senate map, some of the states are shown in our trademark gold and listed as “Not Yet Rated.” That is because we’re handling the run-up to the election a little differently this year.

If you’ve followed our ratings in previous years, you may recall we typically release our ratings in the month leading up to the election. We’ve historically justified this because many primaries for these races take a long time to finish (some of them won’t be done until September!), but we’ve now opted to begin issuing ratings earlier, because what fun is it to say a couple weeks before election day how we feel the state will go when we can release ratings earlier and provide major updates when we think something should be changed? This means we’ll have ratings on some races earlier, provide updates when necessary, and that we’ll be filling in our beloved election map week-by-week and piece-by-piece.

So, every time we issue a rating (or change how we rate a race), you’ll find not just the updated map, but also a complementary piece on the site explaining the rating. This gives us more to do, gives you more value, and makes this exercise in reviewing the election more useful all these months in advance.

We’ve already provided ratings on some races, with their complementary articles to boot, but stay tuned both to the site and to the map over the next few months as we continue to build out the Senate races for a full picture of what the national race for control of the chamber looks like.

Ratings- and Individual-Focused

In our 2018 and 2020 Senate ratings, we focused on telling the individual stories behind the candidates — because candidates matter more in localized races, and less so on the presidential level — and every state’s Senate race is different, with different personalities and dynamics. We’re doing the same thing this cycle, aiming to capture the local quirks, personalities, and stories that make each individual Senate election unique with our characteristic tongue-in-cheek takes. Both of our editors are individually reviewing each race and will be keeping an eye on what matters in each state as we approach the November 8 election in case changes need to be made.

Each state will be rated on a scale as follows:

  • “Safe”: The party has over a 99% likelihood of winning the state. This is an all but assured state for that party, but be mindful that if you were to run the election hundreds of times, thus with hundreds of “Safe” states, you’d expect less than one out of 100 to flip; that’s a very low probability, but it does happen. Nonetheless, “Safe” means we are confident in a party’s odds in a given safe state.
  • “Likely”: The party has at least an 85% certainty of winning the state, so the other party has at least an outside chance of winning the state in 1% to 15% of cases. It would not be totally crazy if none of them flip, though the more there are, the more you should expect at least one to flip.
  • “Lean”: The party is slightly favored but is by no means safe; the other party has somewhere between a 15% and 40% chance of winning the state too. If we have five or six of these on the final map, it should actually be surprising if at least one of these states does not go the other way.
  • “Toss-Up”: The race in this state does not clearly favor either party over the other. Each party has between a 40% and 60% chance of winning the state.

We determine ratings at large based on polling data, demographic data, news events, historical trends, the electoral environment in similar states,Some states are highly correlated, like the midwestern states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Minnesota. If things take a dramatic turn in Wisconsin, you’d expect similar movements across these states based on their similar demographics, political histories, urbanization, population size, economic similarities, etc. Note that geography is not always the best determinator for these variables; for instance, Washington state and Colorado are also similar; as are Maine and Montana. the difficulty of voting in each state, and all sorts of other smaller variables. We then dive into the local conditions, biographies, and narratives in each state’s race to fine-tune our analysis. It’s slightly more scientific than a “gut instinct” but less so than an explicit statistical model. We’re aiming for something closer to the Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, or Inside Elections, with the intent to handicap the race, more so than our idols at FiveThirtyEight, though our various ratings are generally similar other than at the margins. All of our ratings are approved and determined by both the Editor-in-Chief, Michael Lovito, and yours truly, the Politics Editor.

Update-Oriented

If we decide a state rating merits adjustment, we will publish an update for that given state. For example, at the time of publication, we have the South Carolina race rated as “Safe Republican,” but if a few weeks from now the Democratic candidate has improved her numbers dramatically in the Palmetto State, we’d be inclined to revise our rating in South Carolina down to “Likely Republican”. We will provide a ratings’ history when you click on any given state which will include the date of the ratings revision(s) and an explanatory note or link to a larger piece justifying the change. This will make interacting with our ratings map a little more interesting, involved, and useful to watch as the race goes on and provide more context where necessary.

All ratings revisions will be approved by both of the editors on this project, and based on the same criterion noted above in terms of changes in polling, how the party’s candidates in each state are doing amongst certain demographics, state-by-state correlations, any relevant turns that may occur in these races, etc. We won’t change ratings if we believe they are likely to change by Election Day, since that would defeat the purpose of forward-rating these races, but we will change as often as we need to if compelling evidence points to better or worse prospects for the candidates in a given state.

The Overall Projection

Our projection of the final control of the Senate is not a prediction, it is a mathematical allocation based on the parties’ respective odds across the states. For example, we have South Dakota as “Safe Republican” so we count that as 0.99 seats for Republicans (as “Safe” we’ve determined means it’s at least better than 99/100 odds that the Republican wins that race), or 0.01 seats for Democrats. Meanwhile we’ve rated Colorado as “Likely Democrat”, so we would count that as 0.85 seats for Democrats and 0.15 for Republicans. “Lean” is multiplied by 0.6 and “Toss-Up” by 0.5. Once all states’ Senate races have been split in this way, we round down to the nearest full seat.

Remember that we’re not making predictions, we’re just providing an educated assessment on the state of the race in every state. So don’t write us a mean note after Election Day saying “you had it as likely Democrat in Colorado but then the Republican won by one percent, you blockheads!” No, we didn’t predict that Colorado will go for Democrats, we’re merely stating it’s much more likely than not to go for the Democrat, but the Republican still absolutely has a shot there. About a 15% chance, per the above. That being said, our overall projection on the final seat totals has consistently outperformed or matched The Economist and FiveThirtyEight, so our averages seem to do all right!

With all of this in mind, The Postrider is proud to present its own ratings and analysis on this year’s Senate elections.