Battle for the Senate: A Ten State Roundup

Control of the Senate is important for many reasons, including the majority party’s control over the agenda and its power to launch investigations. Given that the Republicans are in such a strong position in the House, it matters even more than usual which party controls the other chamber. The parties are far apart on many issues, notably including environmental and energy policy.  This is the last in a series of blog posts on the critical races.

Previous posts have looked at ten key Senate races that are likely to decide the balance of power in the Senate. It’s been an interesting process. I’ve learned, for instance, that some campaign websites have almost no discussion of issues while others features well-articulated policy stances. I’ve also been struck by the number of lawyers (or at least law school graduates) among the candidates. In terms of environmental stances, the Democrats are uniformly more environmentalist than the Republicans. The difference is often extreme, but in a few states – most notably Illinois—the Republican’s views are more moderate.

Just to pull everything together in one place, here are the links to the posts about individual states:

Florida

Illinois

Indiana

Nevada

New Hampshire

Missouri

North Carolina

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Wisconsin

You might also be interested in looking back at the initial, overview post in this series.which contains a more extensive discussion of why Senate control matters so much.

We’ll know two weeks from now how it all comes out. Either way, this turbulent election year should soon be coming to an end. In the meantime, don’t forget to vote!