#down ticket

You probably have received your voter information guide in the mail by now. And you know who you want for the big ticket items, maybe you even know who you want down ticket for senate, etc..

And now you’ve come to the hard part, the props and measures. They can seem confusing, the language is hard to form an opinion from, one section is very facts and figures and hard to wrap your head around, one section is the pro, one is the con, and then there’s the arguments for and against the opposing view.

It’s okay, take a deep breath. I can help.

The easiest way to navigate them is just a series of steps. You don’t have to do all of them or do them in order, but if you do, it will help you come to a conclusion that you can live with.

First things first, take a look at them and separate them into two groups.

Group one consists of things that will affect you or could in the near future affect you. DIRECTLY.

Group two is things that can HELP or HARM your fellow humans. These things affect you indirectly.

Once you have both groups sorted, Deal with Group one like this:

Read through each prop and measure, just the cut and dried, meat and bones of the legislation, does it sound like it will benefit you without harming others? Is there a fiscal impact, and does the benefit outweigh the amount it would cost you? Will it make your life better or harder?

Now look at the argument for and the argument against. (pro and con)

Ignore the text, it’s all going to be biased partisan marketing nonsense,

Instead, look at the bottom where it tells you who WROTE each position and then go look that stuff up on Wikipedia, or using a non tracking browser.

“Citizens for a more enlightened approach to animal welfare who also love soup” might turn out to be a bestiality club,

Or you might find the person who is listed as an “educator” is a person of dubious moral character who occasionally teaches phrenology in a tent outside of the evangelical church.

Or you might not recognize the senator’s name and you find out it’s because this is not a person you ever in a million years would vote for.

Plus if any of the argument authors are corporate “citizen” front groups you’ll be able to find that out, since they do not have to disclose that when they write these up.

Next pick an organization you affiliate or agree with, like a Union you belong to, or one you trust. (for instance if you work retail or service industry, even if you workplace is not organized, you can go to the UFCW or SEIU websites and find voter information guides (not all UFCW’s have them up anymore, so you can also check the AFL-CIO website)

If you belong to a fraternal organization (or their sister organization) and you feel they have your community’s best interest at heart, check their website for a voting guide.

Often these guides will have a breakdown, a simple explanation of the measures, and what they recommend and endorse.

I like the SEIU guide, but you need to choose a guide based on what you want to accomplish with your vote. Worker’s rights? Strong benefits? Clean energy? Equality?

Here’s some helpful ideas on where to look (I am not linking or endorsing anyone, you gotta do this part yourself cause everyone is different and I don’t have that kind of time, also this is not everything, just enough places to give a general idea)

Lion’s club International

Southern Poverty Law

League of Women Voters

Human Rights Campaign

Charities you give to will sometimes have guides

Professional organizations such as Women in Animation or Science Voter Guide.

Or your college/university/ or campus groups will also often have guides

The party you belong to, and the guide for the party you align with.

They aren’t always the same thing, if you wish you could vote green party, vote green party ON THE PROPS AND MEASURES, don’t vote on their people.

We can’t afford it this time, but if you philosophically mesh with their views, follow their lead on the measures and props, you can have a little green as a treat, (and you will accomplish more impact for good change with that than with your whoever-is-the-“jill stein so you can vote for trump without voting for trump” this-cycle-vote.)

your most trusted newspaper will also have endorsements, but since the press is very seldom unrestricted and often has shareholders to not piss off now, I’d skip that.

The union or trade guild you would join if you worked in the industry of your dreams... trying to become a writer? Lay some groundwork for your future... use the WGA guide, wanna be an actor or a director? SAG and DGA will have your best interests. Wanna work in the video game industry? Game Workers Unite is hard at work making sure you eventually have some bargaining rights and a fair workplace... see what they have to say.

Now, none of these guides is going to cover EVERY prop and measure, you may have to look at a few guides, or you may have to just use the “who actually wrote the pro and the con?” trick.

This is downticket voting, this is voting for the stuff that most closely impacts your community.This is how you make it better.

Oh and those things in Group Two? Use your empathy, put yourself in Group Two’s shoes and do the exact same thing as you did for group one. Because your community is made up of ALL the people, so you have to vote for everyone to have a better life.

  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kisses a “Women for Trump” sign during a campaign rally, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, in Lakeland, Fla. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News’ complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors’ races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

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At this point, pretty much every Republican candidate in the country has been forced to take some sort of stand on Donald Trump.

But which candidates will come away from the whole debacle looking principled — and which candidates may not?

After the leak last Friday of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape showing Trump bragging to host Billy Bush that he can “grab” women “by the p****” simply because he’s “a star,” at least 15 leading GOP figures — including Arizona Sen. John McCain, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Nevada Senate candidate Joe Heck, all of whom will be on the ballot this fall — either withdrew their earlier endorsements or said they could no longer in good conscience vote for the Republican nominee. Another 40 or so went further, calling for Trump to step aside and let someone else take his place atop the ticket. Many others reiterated, when pressed, that they were still backing the Manhattan mogul for president.

And the whole cycle now seems certain to kick back into high gear after an avalanche of new reports appeared Wednesday in the New York Times, the Palm Beach Post, People magazine and Rolling Stone, alleging that Trump improperly touched five women in separate incidents going back decades.

As Ronald Reagan once said — and as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is overly fond of repeating — we seem to have reached “a time for choosing.”

During a typical election year, down-ballot candidates aren’t constantly asked whether they support their party’s presidential nominee, because the answer is obvious. Why wouldn’t they support their party’s presidential nominee?

But Trump is different. By repeatedly getting on the wrong side of one group or another — Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, POWs, people with disabilities, and now, with the “Access Hollywood” tape and the related allegations, women — he has put nearly all of his fellow Republican office-seekers in the uncomfortable position of having to declare whether or not they actually want the GOP standard bearer in the White House.

Many of these responses have been predictably political — the product of cold, hard calculations about how deserting or defending the Donald will affect each candidate’s chances of winning his or her state or district in November.

That’s why you have a bunch of blue-state Republicans in close Senate contests — Heck in Nevada, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Mark Kirk in Illinois — bailing on Trump, while a bunch of their redder-state counterparts — Richard Burr in North Carolina, Roy Blunt in Missouri, Todd Young in Indiana — stand by him.

Incumbent Republican Sen. John McCain, left, takes a few notes as Arizona Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick speaks to the debate moderators prior to their only scheduled debate Monday, Oct. 10, 2016, in Phoenix before next month’s general election. (Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Back when Ohio Sen. Rob Portman seemed to be running neck-and-neck with former Gov. Ted Strickland, Portman was pro-Trump, with some reservations. But now the senator is ahead by 14.5 percentage points, on average — and he has suddenly had enough of his party’s nominee.

The same goes for Arizona Sen. John McCain. Never mind that Trump insulted McCain’s Vietnam War service last July; the senator still spent much of 2016 sullenly repeating the same mantra: “I support the nominee.” It was only after McCain defeated his pro-Trump primary challenger — and amassed a 16-point lead over his general election rival, Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick — that he finally felt free to file for divorce.

All of these denunciations and exonerations may sound moral, but they’re mostly about math.

And yet the latest (and greatest) round of Trump-dumping got us wondering: Have any current Republican candidates broken from the pack and responded to Trump’s provocations in a particularly principled way? And what about the opposite: Who really seems to have left their principles behind?

Here, in no particular order, are Down Ticket’s top picks in both categories:

Principled

Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.-3): A second-generation Arab-American of Palestinian Christian and Syrian Greek Orthodox descent, Amash arrived on Capitol Hill in 2011 at the ripe old age of 30. Now 36, he’s always been a staunch, libertarian-leaning conservative — tea party, House Freedom Caucus, the whole nine yards.

Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., is seen during a congressional panel at the 2016 Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, in Mackinac Island, Mich. (Photo: Carlos Osorio/AP)

Like many of his ideological brethren, Amash opposed Trump during the primaries, saying he “presents a kind of threat to our [constitutional] system that is maybe, in some ways, bigger that what the Democrats present.” (Amash initially backed Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and later endorsed Cruz.) Unlike the other 38 members of the House Freedom Caucus, however — and unlike both Paul and Cruz — he refused to come around once Trump became the GOP nominee.

“Nothing better illustrates the phoniness of politicians than the ease with which they shift from blasting one another to praising one another,” he said at the time.

In March, Amash pledged not to vote for Trump on Election Day — not because of any particular scandal, but because he doesn’t consider the mogul a “constitutional conservative” — and he has stuck to his position ever since.

Here, for example, is what Amash tweeted right after Trump delivered his convention speech in July: “Governments have always used fear to curtail the rights of the people. And I will always defend liberty against fear-mongering politicians.”

And here’s what Amash tweeted after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out: “Character matters. @realDonaldTrump has been saying outrageous, offensive things the whole time. He should have stepped aside long ago.” Also: “As I’ve said all along, I’m not voting for @realDonaldTrump (or @HillaryClinton). It’s time for self-reflection from Trump and @GOP leaders.”

There’s no short-term electoral upside (or downside) for Amash here. His Grand-Rapids-area district leans Republican, but moderately so; he’s not facing a serious challenger this fall; and Michigan’s open primary system will make it difficult for a disgruntled Trumper to challenge him from the right in 2018. At best, Amash is burnishing his cherished “principled libertarian conservative” brand for a future Senate (or presidential) run — although it’s unclear whether that sort brand would actually help him win higher office in Michigan, a blue state or beyond.

The more immediate effect of Amash’s vocal opposition to Trump is that his relationship with the rest of the House Freedom Caucus — which, again, supports Trump en masse — will be likely be somewhat strained from here on out. To break with your closest allies in Congress — and to do it early, and never waver — takes more courage than most other Republicans have mustered.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.-16): Several retiring Republican congressmen dumped Trump long before the “Access Hollywood” controversy: Rep. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia, Rep. Richard Hanna of New York.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger discusses the party platform on immigration, national security and the challenges facing America’s borders at the RNC headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 20, 2016. (Photo: Eric Hanson for the Washington Post, via Getty Images)

Several Republican senators who are not currently up for re-election did too: Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Likewise, several GOP Senate and House candidates from blue states or districts — where electoral self-interest clearly points away from Trump — bailed early: Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

But it’s tough to find a Republican who a) dumped Trump pre-tape, b) will actually appear on the ballot in November and c) probably won’t benefit all that much, electorally speaking, from trashing his party’s presidential nominee.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois is one of the few.

Kinzinger had long been a Trump skeptic. In March, he criticized the mogul’s “fourth-grade rhetoric.” In June, he said he wouldn’t vote for Trump if the election “were today” — though he added that he was open to being persuaded. In July, he attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, hoping to change his mind. Then Trump told the New York Times that he would only aid NATO allies who paid their bills, and Kinzinger, a former Air Force pilot, dressed him down. “It’s utterly disastrous,” Kinzinger told Politico. But the breaking point was Trump’s post-convention feud with the Gold Star family of fallen U.S. solider Humayun Khan.

“Donald Trump is beginning to cross a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics,” Kinzinger told CNN on Aug. 3. “I’m not going to support Hillary, but in America we have the right to skip somebody. That’s what it’s looking like for me today. I don’t see how I get to Donald Trump anymore.”

Kinzinger is running for reelection unopposed. He isn’t desperate to win over swing voters. But it’s worth noting that Illinois’ sprawling 16th congressional district, which hugs exurban Chicago from the Wisconsin border to central Illinois east to the Indiana line, is not only Republican turf — it’s Trump territory.

In 2012, Kinzinger fought a tough primary battle against incumbent Don Manzullo, who was backed by the Illinois tea party. Two years later, he was primaried by Rockford tea party founder David Hale. Conservative websites (RedState.com) and conservative radio hosts (Mark Levin) regularly refer to him as a RINO, a Republican in name only. And the Club for Growth once listed him on its primarymycongressman.com website.

By opposing Trump early — and not out of electoral necessity — Kinzinger is inviting blowback from his constituents and a possible Trumpist challenge in 2018. That suggests some principles at play.

Rep. Martha Roby (Ala.-2): It’s a stretch to describe any of the Republicans who waited until last weekend to dump Trump as particularly brave. The nominee has said plenty of offensive things before; the only difference with the “Access Hollywood” tape is that he was talking about more than 50 percent of the electorate.

Rep. Martha Roby attends a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center, June 28, 2016, to announce the Select Committee on Benghazi report on the 2012 attacks in Libya in which four Americans killed. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/GEtty Images)

But if anyone deserves a little credit, it’s probably Alabama Rep. Martha Roby.

“Donald Trump’s behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president,” Roby tweeted at 7 a.m. Saturday morning, “and I won’t vote for him.”

In a statement attached to her tweet, Roby added that she has been disappointed with Trump’s “antics” throughout the campaign but wanted to support the GOP’s nominee for the good of the party and of the country.

“Now, it is abundantly clear that the best thing for our country and our party is for Trump to step aside and allow a responsible, respectable Republican to lead the ticket,” Roby said. “Hillary Clinton must not be president, but with Trump leading the ticket, she will be.”

The reason Roby stands out from the rest of the recent Donald defectors isn’t that her unendorsement was on the early side, though it was: She was the second member of the House to jump ship after the tape hit the Internet.

The reason Roby stands out is that, unlike most of the pack, she has nothing to gain electorally — she doesn’t have to tack left to win in November — and may, in fact, have something to lose.

Alabama’s second congressional district includes portions of the capital city of Montgomery, the suburban counties of Autauga and Elmore to the north, and the rural, agricultural-based Wiregrass counties to the south. In 2008, John McCain clobbered Barack Obama there by nearly 30 percentage points; four years later, Mitt Romney won by a similar margin. After Republicans recently redrew the boundaries to exclude some heavily African-American areas, it’s become one of America’s 50 most Republican districts.

Roby, meanwhile, is one of the Deep South’s less tea-party-oriented Republican House members. She was an aspiring alternative rock singer during her years at NYU; her Heritage Foundation score is a moderate 51. In this year’s primary, she was challenged by Becky Gerritson, a homeschooling mother and former Wetumpka tea party president who declared Roby “totally out of touch with her constituents.”

In the same primary, Trump won Roby’s district by massive margins. By ditching him now, she is risking another, stronger challenge in two years time.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.-1)

Democrats will say no way: Ryan still endorses Trump, after all, and has since June.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in his office at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 22, 2016. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sure, he’s been critical. And yes, in a series of recent conference calls with his fellow congressmen, the speaker warned that Democrats could now pick up the 30 House seats they need to take over Congress and announced “that he would never again campaign for Mr. Trump and would dedicate himself instead to defending the party’s majority in Congress.”

“Effectively conceding defeat for his party in the presidential race,” the New York Times reported, “Mr. Ryan said his most urgent task was ensuring that Hillary Clinton did not take the helm with Democratic control of the House and Senate.”

But he didn’t withdraw his endorsement! Democrats will repeat. How principled can he be?

Or as Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, said Wednesday of party leaders like Ryan, “There was a time when they could have spoken out against Trump. That time was this summer. Obviously, it is too late now.”

Many Republicans will also disagree that Ryan has come out looking good. It’s not brave to abandon your party’s nominee in his time of need, they might argue — especially when all you’re trying to do is preserve your reputation as a “serious conservative” and position yourself for 2020.

None of this is untrue. But consider the game Ryan is playing: a free-falling standard bearer; a majority to protect; and a legislative agenda that he wants to usher into law. It’s not checkers.

In response, Ryan has chosen to defy the Republican National Committee, which is still coordinating with Trump’s campaign. He has created his own, non-Trump electoral operation. And he is telling House Republicans to do whatever it takes to win — including running against the man at the top of the ticket.

It’s hard to argue that this won’t make Ryan’s life more difficult, at least in the short term. Corralling Capitol Hill conservatives is already enough of a challenge. Now many of them are furious.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma GOP Rep. Jim Bridenstine tweeted that he would no longer back Ryan for speaker. “Given the stakes of this election, if Paul Ryan isn’t for Trump, then I’m not for Paul Ryan,” Bridenstine said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Billy Long of Missouri has been calling top Republicans to complain that Ryan’s position could backfire on the House GOP Conference.

“If everyone backs away from our nominee for president, that’s going to spell disaster down ticket,” Long told the Springfield News-Leader. “No one’s seen anything like this election before. It’s a movement, and it’s been a movement since a year ago August.”

The bottom line is that it’s basically impossible for a Republican leader to reconcile his conscience, 469 separate House and Senate elections, and Donald J. Trump without making some difficult compromises. At least Ryan is trying.

Not so principled

Sen. John Thune, Rep. Bradley Byrne, Rep. Scott Garrett, Colorado Senate Candidate Darryl Glenn (Photos: Mark Wilson/Getty Images, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images, Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP, Brennan Linsley/AP)

Colorado Senate candidate Darryl Glenn, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Rep. Scott Garrett (N.J.-5), Rep. Bradley Byrne (Ala.-1): It’s one thing to take a stand against Trump in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” flap; it’s another to immediately take back that stand once the controversy looks as if it’s starting to die down.

By reversing course on Trump not once but twice over the past several days, Glenn, Thune, Garrett and Byrne have broken new ground in the ongoing GOP-wide contest to see who can respond to Trump is the most perplexing fashion.

Over the weekend, Byrne flatly said that “it is now clear Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States” — then he insisted to reporters on Wednesday that he had always said he would “be a supporter of the Republican ticket from top to bottom.”

“I’m a Republican,” Byrne added. “I don’t vote Democrat.”

On Saturday, Thune became the highest-ranking Republican to call for Trump to quit the presidential race when he tweeted that “Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately” — then, on Tuesday, Thune told reporters that, as Keloland TV’s Leland Steva put it, “he plans to check all the boxes of Republicans on his ballot.”

In New Jersey, Garrett also initially called for Pence to lead the party — then said on Tuesday that would still “vote Trump for president if he is the party’s official nominee come Election Day.”

Meanwhile in Colorado, Glenn, a conservative El Paso County commissioner who has embraced Trump in his campaign, at first described the nominee’s “Access Hollywood” remarks as “disgusting and unacceptable” and said over the weekend that Trump was “simply disqualified from being commander in chief.” Then, after Sunday’s presidential debate, Glenn told Fox News that “Trump did what he absolutely had to do,” arguing that he had “reset this campaign.” Finally, during a debate Tuesday with his Democratic opponent, Sen. Michael Bennet, Glenn further muddied the waters, saying that he had merely “suspended [his] endorsement” until Trump visits Colorado to “share his heart and win back my vote.”

Of these four candidates, only Glenn and Garrett are in danger of losing in November; both Thune and Byrne are safe. Either way, when you declare that your party’s nominee is so unacceptable that he should quit the race and then say that you’re going to vote to put him in the White House anyway, electoral math doesn’t really enter into it. That’s unprincipled, no matter how you cut it.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey: Like all endangered Senate Republicans, Toomey has struggled with Trump this entire cycle. But the way he has responded to the Manhattan mogul’s near-constant provocations has been unique. While McCain went for anonymity (I support the nominee) and Ayotte split hairs (I’m voting for Trump but not endorsing him) Toomey played the open-minded agnostic.

Sen. Pat Toomey arrives in the Capitol for the Senate Republicans’ policy luncheon on Tuesday, June 28, 2016. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

“As I have said repeatedly, I have not endorsed Donald Trump,” Toomey told reporters at an August press conference. “There are things that he has said, a number of things he has said and done, that give me great pause and I have significant concerns about, so I remain in a mode of waiting to be persuaded. I’ve not made a final decision on what I’m going to do. Hillary Clinton is completely unacceptable to me.”

For months, Toomey’s indecision was at least somewhat believable; as he put it in an April op-ed, “Like many Pennsylvanians, I’m not pleased with the two choices we have.” But you can only believe that a person is “waiting to be persuaded” if you believe that something — anything — could persuade him one way or the other. Otherwise, he’s not waiting — he’s running out the clock.

Toomey’s response to the Trump tape — a tipping point for dozens of other Republicans — finally makes it obvious that this is exactly what he’s trying to do: hoping that, by remaining agnostic all the way through Nov. 8, he can quietly glide past his Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty, without angering the GOP base or alienating the moderate suburban voters who tend to decide Pennsylvania’s elections.

“I am not endorsing him,” Toomey said Tuesday during a brief interview with reporters — “and I remain unpersuaded.”

The same day, the Philadelphia Inquirer tried to call Toomey’s bluff.

“This late in the game, should we just presume he’s never going to take a stand on Trump?” the paper asked in an editorial piece, then answered its own question: “’You shouldn’t make a presumption one way or the other,’ Toomey replied.”

On the stump, McGinty likes to tell Toomey to “man up.” Her campaign calls him “’Fraidy-Pat.”

They may have a point.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: When most Republicans act all wishy-washy on Trump, they at least have plausible deniability. They can say they’re not quite sure about him because it’s impossible to know how they really feel inside (even if you have your suspicions.)

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., talks with a reporter aboard the Senate subway after a vote in the Capitol, on Sept. 15, 2016. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

That is not the case with Rubio.

As you may recall, the Florida senator spent much of 2015 and 2016 running for the Republican presidential nomination. During that time, as the Washington Post has noted, Rubio called Donald Trump a “con man,” a “racist” and a “xenophobe” who was “dangerous” and unqualified to control the nation’s nuclear codes. He ridiculed the businessman’s manhood and warned he would “fracture” the conservative movement if he were the nominee. At one point, Rubio called Trump the “most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” By March — a few days before Rubio dropped out — the senator was saying, his voice breaking, that it was “getting harder every day” to envision supporting his rival.

Then, in May, Rubio endorsed Trump.

Since then, Rubio has criticized Trump again and again — but he has never broken with him. The “Access Hollywood” tape hasn’t changed that pattern.

On Friday, Rubio tweeted that “Donald’s comments were vulgar, egregious & impossible to justify,” adding that “no one should ever talk about any woman in those terms, even in private.” But on Tuesday he said in a statement that while “I disagree with [Trump] on many things … I disagree with his opponent on virtually everything.”

“I do not want Hillary Clinton to be our next president,” Rubio concluded. “And therefore my position has not changed.”

Rubio’s official position is only different from other Republicans’ in one way: He has already done the difficult work of telling voters how he really feels about the possibility of a Trump presidency. Whatever his reasoning — he’s worried about losing his lead over Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy if Trump fans stay home in November? He wants to play all the angles for a possible 2020 presidential run? — the fact that Rubio is still pretending to be pro-Trump when everyone knows otherwise only reinforces the idea that he’s an overly cautious shape-shifter who’s afraid to stand on principle.

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The best of the rest

The Trump effect: Could the House really flip? https://t.co/tEErFFJ0JW

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) October 13, 2016

Inside Clinton’s fragile relationship with fellow Democrats https://t.co/gRpYxeXLqF via @ShaneGoldmacher & @gdebenedetti | AP Photo pic.twitter.com/llGaAzANZu

— POLITICO (@politico) October 13, 2016

NEW w/@BresPolitico: RYAN SOUNDS ALARM ON TRUMP, warns of potential for big House losses on call with top donors https://t.co/kFNtzQK20B

— Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) October 13, 2016

Trump is the new Jim Trafficant? https://t.co/OWT4mmYPKF

— Ben Goodman (@BenGoodman) October 13, 2016

This is what'll happen if the Senate splits 50-50 next year: https://t.co/hEV1johavN pic.twitter.com/FBIWYW5Ob0

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 13, 2016

A Democratic Senate majority would end up giving the Warren/Sanders wing huge leverage on appointments https://t.co/yOBKm2YscY

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 12, 2016

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Countdown

Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Monday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (Photo: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News’ complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors’ races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

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Down-ballot Republicans are finally dumping Donald Trump. The question now is whether divorcing the Donald will help them win in November — or doom them at the ballot box.

In an election as crazy and unpredictable as this one, either outcome is possible.

The exodus began in earnest last weekend after a leaked “Access Hollywood” video showed Trump bragging that he can “grab” women “by the p****” simply because he’s “a star.”

At least 15 leading GOP figures — including Arizona Sen. John McCain, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, and Nevada Senate candidate Joe Heck, all of whom will be on the ballot this fall — either withdrew their earlier endorsements or said they could no longer in good conscience vote for the Republican nominee; another 40 or so went further, calling for Trump to step aside and let someone else take his place atop the ticket.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte at the Seacoast Republican Women Chilifest in Stratham, N.H., last month. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

“I thought about years from now when my daughter, Kate, is old enough to know what is in those tapes and understand what he is talking about,” embattled New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte told reporters. (Ayotte previously tried to have it both ways on Trump by saying she would vote for him but not endorse him, and it’s worth noting that none of his previous remarks about Muslims, Mexicans or other groups provoked such a definitive rebuke — perhaps because, unlike women, Muslims, Mexicans and other groups make up far less than 51 percent of the New Hampshire electorate). “I want her to know where I stood. I want my daughter to know that that is more important to me than winning any election.”

Ayotte went on to say that she would write in the name of Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, on Election Day.

Some conservatives were hopeful that Trump’s brash, base-pleasing performance in the second presidential debate on Sunday — a performance marked by conspiratorial accusations, physical intimidation and authoritarian impulses — would stanch the bleeding.

But then House Speaker Paul Ryan — easily the party’s most influential voice — spoke up. Fresh off disinviting Trump from a Saturday rally in his small-town Wisconsin district, Ryan, who has repeatedly tussled with Trump despite technically supporting his candidacy, spent Monday morning on an hourlong conference call with his fellow House Republicans.

His message? “That he would never again campaign for Mr. Trump and would dedicate himself instead to defending the party’s majority in Congress,” according to the New York Times.

“Effectively conceding defeat for his party in the presidential race,” the Times continued, “Mr. Ryan said his most urgent task was ensuring that Hillary Clinton did not take the helm with Democratic control of the House and Senate.”

A Trump supporter holds up a sign and heckles House Speaker Paul Ryan at the annual Fall Fest in Elkhorn, Wis., on Saturday. (Photo: Anthony Wahl/The Janesville Gazette via AP)

To be sure, Monday wasn’t all terrible news for Trump. After dodging phone calls, halting the party’s pro-Trump mailings, and reportedly telling staffers to “do what’s best for them,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus reemerged on a closed conference call Monday evening to “make it very clear that the RNC is in full coordination with the Trump campaign and we have a great relationship with them.”

“Nothing has changed with regard to our relationship,” Priebus added.

Even so, Ryan’s repudiation will likely carry more weight with down-ballot Republicans than Priebus’ recommitment. Every candidate wants to win — even if it means disavowing the party’s presidential nominee. Ryan just gave the rest of the Republican roster permission to do just that. As a result, the remainder of the down-ballot campaign will probably devolve into an every-man-for-himself free-for-all, with individual Republicans weighing the conditions in their own states or districts when deciding how best to handle Trump.

Will it work? Can the party preserve its majorities in the House and Senate with a patchwork approach to its own standard-bearer? Or will Democrats capitalize on Trump’s downfall to take back control of Congress?

It’s hard to say. America has never seen anything quite like this before.

The closest we came was in 1996, when the GOP was stuck with a presidential nominee, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, who clearly wasn’t going to be the next president. In July of that year, according to a Gallup Poll, Dole trailed incumbent Commander in Chief Bill Clinton 39 percent to 57 percent — a hopeless 18-point deficit. Exactly one month later, nothing had changed. By the beginning of October, Clinton’s lead had ballooned to 22 points. On Nov. 5, Clinton wound up clobbering Dole by 220 electoral votes.

That year, however, the Republican Party made a fateful decision in the final weeks before Election Day: They ditched Dole and focused on rescuing down-ballot Republicans instead.

Bob Dole, left, and Jack Kemp at the Republican National Convention in San Diego on Aug.15, 1996. (Photo: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

On Oct. 23, 1996, the New York Times reported that Republican operatives were now instructing “their party’s Congressional candidates to cut loose from Bob Dole and press voters to maintain a Republican majority” in order to “deny a re-elected President Clinton a ‘blank check’”; the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) went on to launch a $4 million ad blitz designed to deliver the same message to 50 hard-fought congressional districts.

“The liberal special interests aligned with Clinton desperately want to buy back control of Congress,’’ the NRCC ad claimed. “If we give the special interests a blank check in Congress, who’s going to represent us?”

The strategy wound up working: Republicans retained control of the House and actually picked up two seats in the Senate that November.

Ryan & Co. are clearly hoping the same thing will happen again this year. But they shouldn’t count on it. There are a few big differences between 1996 and 2016 that could make it tougher for the GOP to save Congress by shunning its nominee.

For one thing, split-ticket voting used be fairly common; today, it’s exceedingly rare. Hillary voters will be harder to peel off than Bill voters.

There’s also the nominee to consider. In mid-October 1996, 53 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Dole; only 37 percent saw him unfavorably. He wasn’t tarnishing the GOP brand.

Trump is. In fact, his current ratings are almost the exact opposite of Dole’s: 36.4 percent favorable versus 59.1 percent unfavorable. Those are the worst numbers in the history of presidential-election polling — and the GOP’s stats are even worse.

Finally, Dole, while disappointed, accepted his party’s decision. He didn’t attack the House speaker as “weak and ineffective.” He didn’t threaten to jail his opponent if elected. He didn’t revive decades-old scandals or recite fever-swamp conspiracy theories. He didn’t promise to punch back even harder. Most importantly, he didn’t rail against the GOP establishment and rally the far right to his side, alienating crucial swing voters in the process.

Trump supporters cheer during a rally on Monday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Trump has. As a result, he has put down-ballot Republicans in an impossible position. To win toss-up House and Senate races, Republicans need to turn out right-wing Trumpers and pick off a few moderate, independent types. But now, thanks to Trump, they can no longer do both at the same time. So do they dump the Donald and move to the center, thereby risking the support of Trump’s reinvigorated base? Or do they stick with an emboldened Trump and his ever-defiant fans — and go down with what appears to be a sinking ship?

On Monday, some GOP operatives argued for Option 1. Stop cowering in fear of a backlash from Trump supporters, they told Down Ticket. There isn’t as much downside as you think.

“If I’m running in a swing district or a blue or purple state, I’d take the gamble on losing some hard-core Trump voters versus getting crushed with independents,” said Liesl Hickey, who ran the House Republicans’ campaign arm two years ago and is now working as a consultant on a handful of races.

Most Republican voters tolerate — or even dislike — Trump, Hickey explained. The reason they’re supporting him, she continued, is because they loathe Clinton. Which means that as long as Hillary is still on the ballot Nov. 8, they will still show up to vote.

Mike Murphy, a veteran GOP consultant who ran the super-PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s presidential candidacy, agreed.

“Break their hearts,” he said of the Trump loyalists. “Save the party. And most will still vote [Republican] in November, down-ballot.”

Yet the calculus for each candidate is different. In Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey, the Republican incumbent, has done a good job of shoring up his standing with swing voters in the highly populated Philadelphia suburbs, so he hasn’t felt compelled to reject Trump altogether. (Toomey condemned Trump’s comments from the 2005 video and says he’s still “waiting to be persuaded” to support him.)

Sen. Pat Toomey, who condemned Trump’s comments from the 2005 video but hasn’t rejected the GOP candidate altogether, campaigns in Villanova, Pa., on Tuesday. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire — where Ayotte, Toomey’s counterpart, has bailed on Trump — the GOP candidate for governor, Chris Sununu, is sticking by his party’s presidential nominee even as he describes Trump’s remarks about women as “repugnant, unacceptable and offensive.”

Both candidates have their reasons. Ayotte doesn’t need to rally the base; her ground game is strong, and her support among conservatives is solid. She’s more worried about independents flocking to her Democratic opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” scandal. Sununu, on the other hand, doesn’t have a great field operation and isn’t trusted on the right. He needs all the fired-up Trumpers he can get.

Finally, in Nevada, Republican Joe Heck pulled an Ayotte on Saturday and revoked his Trump endorsement. “I can no longer look past the pattern of behavior and comments that have been made by Donald Trump,” the three-term congressman said in Las Vegas. “Therefore, I cannot in good conscience continue to support Donald Trump.”

The decision makes sense mathematically. Twenty-seven percent of Nevada voters are Latino — not Trump’s best demographic group. The state twice voted for Barack Obama. And Heck has led in every poll since the start of September. The Republican likely figured that he could afford to anger a few Trump fans in order to avoid losing the center. But the repercussions have been real: right-wingers have been booing Heck at his rallies, and Democrats have been relentlessly hammering him as a political opportunist.

“Congressman Heck’s reversal is nothing more than a pathetic, desperate attempt to salvage his career as a Washington politician,” says Sarah Zukowski, a spokesperson for Heck’s Democratic rival, Catherine Cortez Masto. “Where the heck was Congressman Heck when Trump was calling women fat pigs, slobs and dogs, Mexicans rapists and criminals, and mocking a disabled reporter? Still standing by Trump’s side. Well Congressman Heck, it’s too little, too late. Nevadans know this is not leadership, it’s just a Washington politician trying to save his career.”

From left, Mitt Romney, Rep. Cresent Hardy, Rep. Joe Heck, Sen. Dean Heller and Nevada Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, posing with campaign volunteers at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, all say they can’t support Donald Trump. (Photo: Michelle Rindels/AP)

In the end, however, it may not matter what individual Republicans do. As Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight has shown, the races for the Senate and the White House have been moving in lockstep.

“Seventy-six percent of the variation in the 2016 Senate polling averages can be explained by the presidential vote,” Enten recently wrote, noting that the number in previous cycles was identical. “There’s no sign at all that the strange presidential race is upsetting the recent trend of voters supporting the same candidate in both Senate and presidential races.”

What that means is that if Trump plummets in the national polls — and Clinton surges — down-ballot Republicans will likely suffer as well.

Even before the “Access Hollywood” brouhaha, Democrats were well-positioned to take back the Senate. To do so, they need a net gain of four seats, assuming Clinton wins the presidency. The FiveThirtyEight model gives them a 54.8 percent chance of success; the New York Times Upshot model gives them a 50 percent chance; the Princeton Election Consortium model gives them a 63 percent chance. And again, that’s only taking pre-tape polling into account.

The House will be harder. To win control, Democrats need to pick up 30 seats; currently, the Cook Political Report rates only 14 Republican-held seats as toss-ups and only an additional 12 as “Lean Republican.” That’s 26, total; Democrats could sweep them all and still come up short. Political science has also shown that the more of a lock one party’s presidential nominee becomes, the more voters tend to gravitate toward the other party’s down-ballot candidates in the name of “balance.” Theoretically, Clinton’s coattails could boost House and Senate Democrats up to a certain point — and then, if she seems certain to win, the balancing effect could come into play and counteract some of those gains.

Still, a stretch isn’t the same thing as an impossibility, as we’ve written before. Swings of 30 or more seats aren’t unprecedented — even in this era of rampant polarization and partisan gerrymandering.

“A change of this size has happened in two out of the last five congressional elections: a 31-seat gain for Democrats in 2006 and a 63-seat gain by Republicans in 2010,” notes neuroscientist Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium. “In the modern era of polarization, 1994-2014, a change of that size has happened in 3 out of 11 elections. Since 1946, it has happened in 10 out of 35 elections.”

The Freshman class of House members gathers in front of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2010. (Photo: Harry Hamburg/AP)

So what would it take for Democrats to pull off a similar feat this time around?

The answer is pretty simple: They will need a wave election, which is what happens when some overarching, nationwide dynamic tips down-ballot races in a particular direction.

Like Trump’s implosion, for instance.

Size matters here. Pollsters like to ask voters what’s known as the generic congressional ballot question: Which party’s House candidate do you plan to vote for? The final results tend to come within 3 percentage points of November’s actual nationwide congressional vote, so analysts have some sense of what this year’s tipping point — the coast-to-coast margin that propels 30 or more of the party’s House pick-up candidates to victory — should be.

The consensus? To gain 30 seats, Democrats will need to lead on the generic congressional ballot question by at least 7 percentage points — and possibly by as much as 13, thanks to redistricting.

So far, there’s only been one national poll taken since the “Access Hollywood” tape came out. But it’s a doozy. According to NBC and the Wall Street Journal, Clinton is now trouncing Trump by 14 percentage points — 52 percent to 38 percent — in a head-to-head matchup, and by 11 percentage points — 46 percent to 35 percent — in a four-way contest with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. And when likely voters were asked whether they’d prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats or a Congress controlled by Republicans, 49 percent said Democrats — and only 42 percent said Republicans.

That’s a 7-point gap — right on the low end of tipping-point range. Last month, Democrats led by 3 points on the generic congressional ballot question; in June, Democrats and Republicans were tied. If the numbers keep moving in the right direction, Nancy Pelosi & Co. could have a chance of recapturing the House — no matter how their Republican rivals react to Trump.

House Speaker Paul Ryan receives the gavel from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill in Washington last October. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

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The best of the rest

GOP candidates running for seats currently held by Rs but most at risk of a D victory are evenly divided on Trump https://t.co/21Ds0fqKwm pic.twitter.com/9tWUteiMy6

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) October 11, 2016

INSIDE TEAM RYAN — He is still eyeing completely walking away from his endorsement of Trump before election day https://t.co/SZ3l0ATgdA

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 11, 2016

5 key moments from the John McCain-Ann Kirkpatrick debate https://t.co/BB6AmySb5v #AZ #Chandler

— Phoenix Local (@PhoenixN3WS) October 11, 2016

Hiding from the press and Trump, Rubio is still winning Senate race in new poll https://t.co/3PgG2jBDy7

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) October 11, 2016

As some in GOP sever ties with Trump, McConnell ignores him https://t.co/jmDUr64hYL

— Adam Beam (@adambeam) October 10, 2016

To endorse or not to endorse the presidential nominee, that is a question N.C. candidates have grappled w/before https://t.co/rkv0P0DtLC pic.twitter.com/L9wT0o5yxn

— Wake Forest News (@WakeForestNews) October 11, 2016

When questioned, @EvanBayh campaign failed to reveal meetings with Apollo https://t.co/7fYOUuiXWu #INSen

— Tony Cook (@indystartony) October 11, 2016

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Countdown

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Democratic candidate Jason Kander, left, spars with Republican incumbent Sen. Roy Blunt during the first general election debate in Missouri’s race for U.S. Senate. (Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News’ complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors’ races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

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  Missouri’s Jason Kander can assemble a rifle blindfolded. Can he hit the bull’s-eye for Senate Democrats?

Democrats know that they can regain control of the U.S. Senate only if they pick up at least four seats in November — and whenever they daydream about that possibility, they tend to obsess over a few seats in particular.

There’s Wisconsin and Illinois, where everyone pretty much agrees the party is on track to sink a pair of Republican senators.

There’s New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where GOP incumbents Kelly Ayotte and Pat Toomey seem shaky.

Then there’s the open, formerly Republican seat in Indiana, which has been tilting toward former Democratic Sen. and Gov. Evan Bayh ever since he entered the race at the eleventh hour.

Win those five, and the Dems don’t have to worry about losing Nevada (where Sen. Harry Reid is retiring after 30 years and GOP nominee Joe Heck is slightly ahead) or any of the other former tossups that have drifted in a Republican direction during the past couple of months, including Florida (where Sen. Marco Rubio, another late entrant, holds a solid lead) and Ohio (where Sen. Rob Portman is clobbering Democrat Ted Strickland).

Lose any one of them, however, and those Democratic dreams will almost certainly fall flat. There’s no margin for error.

Except what if, suddenly, there is? In recent weeks, it’s started to look like the Democratic Party might have another path to Senate dominance — a path that runs through the increasingly red state of Missouri, to the surprise of many Beltway observers.

Donald Trump greets supporters at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis last March. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

Very few people predicted that the battle between GOP incumbent Roy Blunt and Democratic challenger Jason Kander would prove pivotal this fall. Barack Obama nearly carried the Show Me State in 2008, but since then, its politics have drifted rightward; Mitt Romney trounced the president by 10 percentage points in 2012. Today, six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House members are Republicans, and the GOP enjoys comfortable majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.

Making matters worse for Missouri Democrats is the name at the top of the ticket: 64 percent of the state’s voters have an unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, according to the latest poll, compared with only 51 percent for Donald Trump — the opposite of their national numbers. As a result, Trump is currently positioned to win Missouri’s 10 electoral votes by an even larger margin than Romney — and by all rights, Blunt, the Republican incumbent, should be positioned to return to the Senate. (Sitting senators almost never lose re-election when their party’s presidential nominee wins statewide.)

And yet, on Friday, Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report — the best in the business when it comes to analyzing congressional elections and Down Ticket’s partner for the rest of the cycle — changed the status of the Blunt vs. Kander contest from “Lean Republican” to “Tossup.”

Here’s what’s happening on the ground.

First and foremost: Kander, 35, is a strong, telegenic challenger. A graduate of Georgetown Law, he enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. He went on to serve a tour of duty in Afghanistan and rise to the rank of captain. In 2008, Kander was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives, where he worked with a Republican colleague to pass the state’s first major ethics reform bill since 1991. Kander won re-election two years later with 70 percent of the vote; in 2012, he narrowly defeated a leader of the Missouri GOP to become secretary of state. He’s never lost a race.

Jason Kander, Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

Kander’s been running a clever campaign against Blunt. The Democrat’s approach has been two-pronged: (1) weaken his Republican rival — a 66-year-old who spent seven terms in the House before winning an open Senate seat in 2010 — by portraying him as a self-serving creature of the Washington establishment; and (2) bolster his own red-state brand by emphasizing his more centrist — and culturally conservative — credentials.

And so Missouri voters have been treated to a torrent of Democratic television ads pointing out that Blunt’s wife and three children all work as lobbyists (“the family business”); that Blunt has voted to raise his own pay 12 times; and that the senator has repeatedly backed legislation that would slash taxes for big corporations — such as Kraft Foods, his wife’s employer.

Kander & Co. needle Blunt for never serving in the military — the Republican received three deferments during Vietnam — and attack his record on veterans’ issues. On the stump, the Democrat repeatedly asks voters to raise their hands if they approve of the job Congress has done; few hands go up. It’s an anti-establishment year, so the goal is to make Blunt look like part of the problem: an old, business-as-usual politician.

Kander, in contrast, is touting himself as a different kind of Democrat — one who has bucked his party by supporting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, opposing the Iran deal and rejecting the president’s executive actions on immigration. Oh, and in case you haven’t caught one of the most viewed and talked-about political spots of the cycle, Kander is also the kind of Democrat who can assemble an AR-15 rifle with a blindfold on.

“It’s a very clear choice between somebody like myself, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who is focused on a new generation of leadership,” Kander said at a rally last month, “and someone like Sen. Blunt, who has been in Washington for 20 years doing what special interests want to him to do.”

Blunt and his GOP allies have begun to fight back. Their main line of attack is that Kander is “too liberal for Missouri”: a national co-chair of Clinton’s campaign who backed the (locally unpopular) Affordable Care Act, voted for sales and income tax hikes as a state legislator, and once backed an energy tax. They also note that Blunt is a skilled dealmaker who has crossed the aisle to craft legislation with Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Chris Coons of Delaware and Patty Murray of Washington on various issues, from manufacturing to mental health.

Sen. Roy Blunt greets supporters at the Missouri State Fair in August. (Photo: Orlin Wagner/AP)

Still, as Kander recently boasted, “the momentum is really clearly with us.” Early on, Blunt, a well-known quantity in Missouri politics, led in every single poll — often by as many as 7 percentage points. But his support never topped the magic 50 percent mark. Now, the only survey released in the past month shows Kander ahead for the first time, with 42 percent of the vote to Blunt’s 40 percent — and private polling from both parties indicates a similarly close race. Meanwhile, Kander’s AR-15 ad has been viewed 998,000 times on YouTube. Blunt’s response, an ad reminding voters that Kander received an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association, has been viewed 15,500 times.

As a result, big money has started to pour into Missouri. From Aug. 3 — the day after Kander won the Democratic primary — until the end of September, Blunt and his allies (the NRA, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund) spent about $2.7 million more on advertising than Kander and his friends (the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). But that could change over the next 34 days. The DSCC, sensing an opportunity, just reserved an additional $2 million, and other groups (End Citizens United, Vote Vets) are beginning to chip in as well.

“I think Jason Kander is a marvelous candidate—one of the best I’ve ever seen,” Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the chairman of the DSCC, told reporters last month. “I think that he’s going to do very well in November.”

Whether Kander delivers on that promise remains to be seen. One poll doesn’t constitute a trend line; we need to see more data before we can assess how close the race really is. Right now, the statisticians at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight expect Blunt to beat Kander by 2.4 percentage points; their counterparts at the New York Times’ Upshot give Blunt a 72 percent chance of winning.

Still, as other Democratic Senate candidates fade, Kander’s chances of playing a tiebreaking role on Election Day are rising. Stay tuned for more.

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  Kelly Ayotte says Trump is a good role model — then says she “misspoke.” Oops.

  “I think that certainly there are many role models that we have, and I believe he can serve as president, so I absolutely I would do that.”

Embattled New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, answering a question about whether she would tell children to “be like” Donald Trump and “point to him as a role model” during Monday night’s debate against her challenger, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Ayotte’s awkward position on Trump — she says she will vote for him while refusing to endorse him — has been a major theme of the close N.H. Senate contest.

“I misspoke tonight. While I would hope all of our children would aspire to be president, neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton have set a good example and I wouldn’t hold up either of them as role models for my kids.”

A statement released by Ayotte’s press office at 10:42 P.M. the same night.

Predictably, the Internet went wild — at least according to the Hassan campaign.

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  Charlie Crist: Still a fan of fans

As you may have heard, Florida Democrat Charlie Crist — former Republican, former independent, former governor, former Senate candidate — is challenging GOP incumbent David Jolly this year in the Sunshine State’s 13th Congressional District. But while Crist has changed parties several times — and sought every major office in the state — one thing about him, at least, has remained constant: his well-documented love of fans. (And by that we mean the electric kind that blow air on you.)

Don’t believe us? Check out his latest ad:

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The best of the rest

Spotlight: No Sign of a Wave Right Now via @KyleTrygstad https://t.co/rz1yNH8mZL pic.twitter.com/MiubV1UICR

— NJ Hotline (@njhotline) October 3, 2016

NRSC cutting independent expenditures in WI SEN race, still planning to spend coordinated funds w/ Ron Johnson – https://t.co/td8orM0YAq

— Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) October 3, 2016

~ @KellyAyotte giving out free Trojan rubbers at UNH really ticks off her rivals. #NHpolitics story: https://t.co/pZi7FJNQzu

— Dan Tuohy (@tuohy) October 3, 2016

Will Charlotte’s riots hurt North Carolina Democrats?: https://t.co/sJnm5fYkka pic.twitter.com/iqC66xIz4a

— National Journal (@nationaljournal) October 3, 2016

Portman has no plans to back off massive ad buys even though he's handily beating Strickland. Wants to run up score https://t.co/0YA3NQ8VGA

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 4, 2016

Republicans' Senate hopes may rest on a dying breed: ticket-splitters https://t.co/gqgezYsD40 ????

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 4, 2016

Ryan will be crisscrossing the country this month to save not just a GOP House, but the Senate too. W @rachaelmbade https://t.co/Rh5QWGc0fQ

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) October 3, 2016

_____

Countdown

Joe Heck and Catherine Cortez Masto. (Photos: David Becker/AP; Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal/AP)

It’s clear from even the quickest glance at the latest headlines — the “audio issues,” the stiffed piano merchant, the whole “Miss Piggy” controversy — that Donald Trump has transformed the 2016 presidential election into a spectacle unlike anything in recent U.S. history.

But what has Trump done to down-ballot politics?

Last Friday, Down Ticket traveled to Las Vegas to check in on the race to succeed retiring Sen. Harry Reid former majority leader, current minority leader, and, with nearly 34 years of Capitol Hill maneuvering under his belt, the second most powerful Democrat in the country.

We chose Nevada because, more than any other marquee 2016 contest, it seemed like the perfect place to explore the deeper forces that define American politics today.

For starters, it’s one of the few open Senate seats at stake this cycle. No incumbent means no incumbency advantage, no out-of-the-gate favorite. A level playing field is helpful when you’re trying figure out what’s actually happening on the ground.

Second, both contestants represent bigger trends in their respective parties. Republican Rep. Joe Heck, a physician and a brigadier general in the Army Reserve who has served three tours of active duty, is precisely the kind of candidate the RNC was calling for when it declared, in its autopsy of Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss to Barack Obama, that Latinos “will close their ears to our policies” if they “think we do not want them here.” Heck’s Henderson-area congressional district, NV-3, is 15.4 percent Latino, and in his 2014 reelection bid, he won 40 percent of the Latino vote, besting Romney’s 2012 performance by 13 percentage points.

Sen. Harry Reid arrives for a press interview in Las Vegas last August. (Photo: David Becker/Reuters)

Meanwhile, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, the state’s two-term attorney general, is Latina herself — the granddaughter of an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico. If elected, she would be the first Latina in the U.S. Senate.

Then there are the overall demographics of Nevada to consider: 28 percent Hispanic, 9 percent black, roughly 10 percent Asian-American or Pacific Islander (a community that’s growing faster in the Silver State than anywhere else in America). With non-Hispanic whites now reduced to 50 percent of the population, Nevada has already morphed into the kind of multi-ethnic melting pot that the rest of the country will soon become as well. The fact that it’s also a purple state makes it something of a bellwether — a glimpse of our political future.

Last but not least: The contest between Heck and Cortez Masto is too close to call. Both candidates reminded Down Ticket of what they constantly remind voters — that Nevada could determine which party will rule the next Senate.

“When you look at the first four seats ranked as most likely to flip parties, they are Republican seats going Democratic, which puts us at 50-50,” Heck told Down Ticket. “This is number five, which puts us back at 51.”

“Right here in Nevada is the pathway for Democrats to take back control of the Senate,” added Cortez Masto.

Translation: everybody is bringing their A-game.

These were the reasons we went to Nevada. What we found, however, was less emblematic of American politics writ large than of how Donald Trump is distorting American politics.

Both sides insisted that all they wanted to talk about was “the issues.” What they were actually talking about was whether Cortez Masto was Hispanic enough.

*****

The quarrel started last Thursday with Tom McAllister, a longtime Heck consigliere who was, until recently, his official political director. Reacting to a Washington Post story in part about Cortez Masto and her Mexican-American roots, McAllister tweeted that “Catherine is about as Mexican as I am. It’s relevant when applying for scholarhsips [sic] … or running for #nvsen.”

Rep. Joe Heck at the Capitol last year, during the vote to elect the speaker of the House. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

Next up was Heck’s former campaign manager, Mark Ciavola, who seconded his old colleague on Twitter with some quips about how Cortez Masto doesn’t speak Spanish. Finally, McAllister took to Facebook to complain that Cortez Masto is “going around Nevada hyping up the fact that she could be the first female Hispanic ever elected to the U.S. Senate.”

“Don’t believe her BS,” McAllister warned. “Hispandering at its finest.”

Cue firestorm. “To try to erase [Cortez Masto’s] family’s provenance, to equate being Mexican with being Hispanic, to use the term “Hispandering,” a sneering insult: This is outrageous. This is nasty. This is borderline racist,” wrote Jon Ralston, Nevada’s most influential political reporter. “And it is just plain dumb.”

It was also distinctly Trump-like: an identity insult with echoes of the candidate’s trademark tirades against Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren and Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

“This is Donald Trump’s America, where you can say almost anything you want about minorities,” Ralston wrote. “Just as Trump thinks it’s fine to call [Curiel] Mexican, so, too, McAllister and Ciavola think it’s fine to try to erase Cortez Masto’s heritage because they worry about her having success at winning Hispanic votes.”

As for Cortez Masto, she could, theoretically, have let the issue drop. After all, neither Ciavola nor McAllister are currently affiliated with Heck’s campaign, and Heck doesn’t agree with their remarks.

“We have a lot of questions for my opponent, but her ethnic heritage is not one of them,” Heck told Down Ticket in his first public comments on the controversy. “Those are former aides. … One left the campaign four months ago, one six months ago. There’s a reason why they’re no longer with us.”

But no surprise: That wasn’t enough for Cortez Masto.

Guadalupe Arreola, civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, Catherine Cortez Masto and an unidentified supporter address campaign volunteers in Arreola’s Las Vegas home, Sept. 15, 2016. (Photo: Dalton Bennett/Washington Post via Getty Images)

By Friday morning, her campaign had organized an event at the Hispanic Museum of Nevada, a small storefront space in Las Vegas’ Boulevard Mall. A podium was positioned in front of a high white wall hung with oil paintings by Carlos Porfirio and Samy Gana; nearby stood a mannequin bedecked in traditional Bolivian garb and a table arrayed with Guatemalan handicrafts. Two dozen Hispanic Cortez Masto supporters holding orange-and-blue campaign signs emblazoned with the slogan “¡Una de las Nuestras! Cortez Masto Para el Senado” slowly shuffled behind the podium. A family friend reminded the news media in attendance that Cortez Masto’s late father, Manny Cortez, was a local legend; immigration activists demanded that Heck apologize.

“If they’re attacking her because of that,” said Jose Macias, “that means they’re attacking the whole community.”

Finally, Cortez Masto stepped to the microphone in a bipartisan purple pantsuit.

“For longtime aides of Congressman Heck to attack my Mexican heritage, claiming that it is only useful for a college application, is disgusting,” she said. “It’s offensive not only to me, my father and my grandfather, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico, but it is insulting to all Mexican-Americans who make America strong.”

“Attempts to diminish their contributions go to the heart of what people like Donald Trump and Joe Heck are thinking,” Cortez Masto continued. “They think America is weaker because of our differences and that our diversity is something to be criticized and feared. Let me tell you: they are wrong.”

In an interview after the Hispanic Museum event, Cortez Masto was even more indignant.

Donald Trump speaks as his sons Donald Trump Jr., second from left, and Eric Trump, third from left, look on during a caucus night party in Las Vegas last February. (Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“It starts with Donald Trump, his message of hate, racism and discrimination,” she told Down Ticket. “People need to stand up to that type of rhetoric and just call it what it is. And Donald Trump” — here Cortez Masto paused, catching her mistake — “excuse me, Congressman Heck, by not even being willing to stand up, by not saying anything, then he’s complicit in perpetuating that type of divisive rhetoric. That’s not somebody who should be representing the state of Nevada, or our country in general.”

*****

Cortez Masto’s calculus here is simple. In Nevada, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 80,000. Lots of Nevada Democrats are Hispanic. Cortez Masto doesn’t need crossover voters; if her base turns out on Nov. 8, she will win. What better way to get Nevada Democrats fired up than by accusing Heck of being just as anti-Hispanic as Trump — even if you have to stretch the transitive property to its limits (ex-staffers = Heck = Trump) to do it?

As one Nevada Democrat excitedly told Down Ticket, “word of mouth has more resonance here, where people work all-night shifts and don’t tune into the evening news. This is something that people will talk about. People who don’t pay attention to politics will be like, ‘Holy s***, that’s quite the accusation.’ People can connect with this.”

A reminder for people to vote at a primary election polling site in Las Vegas. (Photo: John Locher/AP)

Or at least that’s what Democrats hope. For months now, the Cortez Masto campaign has been trying to portray Heck as a Trump clone, reminding voters that, unlike many other GOP Senate candidates — and unlike his fellow Nevada Republicans, Sen. Dean Heller and Gov. Brian Sandoval — Heck has endorsed the Manhattan mogul for president. Cortez Masto has described Heck and Trump as “ideological soul mates.” Reid — who selected Cortez Masto to succeed him and says he is “devoting a huge amount of [his] time” to the race — has referred to his protégée’s rival as both a “parrot” and “Joe ‘I’m Really Trump’ Heck.” Democratic attack ads have pilloried Heck for saying he has “high hopes” that Trump will win; that he “completely supports” Trump; that he trusts Trump with America’s nuclear codes.

And yet the polls appear to be moving in Heck’s direction. In August, Heck and Cortez Masto were basically tied; the largest gap between them in the RealClear Politics polling average was 0.3 percentage points. Since the start of September, however, Heck’s lead has grown: first to 1 point, then to 1.2 points, then to 1.5 points, then to 2 points, and now to 4 points. One of the most recent statewide surveys shows Heck up by seven; another puts him ahead by three. In contrast, the same poll shows Hillary Clinton beating Trump by six.

Sen. Dean Heller, with his wife, Lynne, after his win over challenger Rep. Shelley Berkley in 2012. (Photo: Julie Jacobson/AP)

Democrats argue that a transient population, odd work hours, and lots of cell phones, especially among younger minorities, make Nevada notoriously difficult to poll. They point out that existing polls tend to underestimate Democratic turnout; in 2012, the Republican Senate candidate, Dean Heller, won by a much slimmer margin (1.2 points) than his average polling lead predicted, and in 2010, Reid defeated Republican Sharron Angle by a solid 5.6 points even though he’d trailed her in 14 of the last 18 public surveys. They say Reid’s powerful political machine will give them an edge over the state’s notoriously sloppy GOP on Election Day. They blame a multimillion-dollar ad blitz by the Koch Brothers — who are determined to embarrass Reid, their archenemy — for depressing Cortez Masto’s numbers. And they believe that last week’s “Hispandering” flap will help turn the tide.

Maybe so. Or maybe not. We’ll find out soon enough.

Political operatives saying offensive stuff — that’s nothing new. Neither is the outrage machine that their rivals like to rev up in response. But something about the recent Heck vs. Cortez Masto contretemps felt … symptomatic. The eagerness to insult an opponent’s ethnic identity. The eagerness to capitalize on these insults for electoral gain. Even Heck’s stiffness when discussing the subject. (He simply repeated, verbatim, his press shop’s official line on the subject: They have a lot of questions for Cortez Masto, but none about her heritage.)

One side seems terrified that white working-class voters will turn on them if they aren’t sufficiently Trump-like. The other side seems convinced that trashing their opponents as bigots-by-association is the best way to voters’ hearts. It’s a vicious circle that’s becoming even more vicious in the Age of Trump.

*****

This is unfortunate, because Heck and Cortez Masto actually have some ideas worth discussing. During an interview at the Democratic Party’s Las Vegas headquarters, Cortez Masto empathized with Nevadans “still struggling” in the wake of “the worst recession I’ve ever seen,” when “literally 77,000 homeowners were at risk of losing their homes”; she recalled that, as one of the few state attorneys general with the power to write legislation, she “introduced over 40 bills — 40 — that passed out of the legislature with the support of Republicans and Democrats, and were always signed by a Republican governor”; she spoke about writing the state’s “first sex-trafficking law,” creating its “first domestic-violence fatality review team ever,” and “filing suit against one of the biggest banks in the country because they weren’t doing right by the homeowners here.”

Catherine Cortez Masto, running for Minority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate seat in 2016, speaks with supporters last February. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, at his field office in Summerlin, Heck made it clear that he doesn’t agree with many aspects of Trump’s divisive immigration platform, pointing out, with a laugh, that “it’s logistically and fiscally impossible to find and deport 12 million people,” and that “there are areas on the border with Mexico where physical obstacles just won’t work.”

“You put up a 10-foot wall and I’ll show you a 12-foot ladder,” Heck said. “Or I’ll show you the tunnel.”

Heck’s history on immigration is nuanced. Democrats insist he’s all talk, no action — and that he has voted against both DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) — but the truth is that he’s also broken with the GOP herd on several occasions. (Heck’s congressional district begins just south of the glitzy hotels and casinos of the Vegas Strip and stretches into the neighboring suburbs that many of the Latino and Asian immigrants who staff those hotels and casinos call home.) In 2013, Heck read all 1,200 pages of the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, and though he objected to portions of it, he planned to work on a House version. When House Republicans eventually decided to kill the legislation, Heck released a statement saying the situation was “extremely frustrating and very disappointing.” He spent six months drafting a GOP version of the DREAM Act. And he says that he would continue to push for bipartisan immigration reform as a senator under President Trump.

Demonstrators outside Heck’s office in Las Vegas in 2014. (Photo: Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Astrid Silva/AP)

“You’ll get to a comprehensive solution through a series of individual bills,” Heck told Down Ticket, noting that he recently partnered with progressive Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona on a career and technical education bill that passed unanimously in the House. “These days you’ve got folks that want to go off into their respective corners and just argue at each other. But if you take the time to build relationships and get simpler things accomplished, that builds a level of trust to then be able to go out and tackle the more difficult issues.”

At the moment, however, the race to replace Reid couldn’t be more polarized.

Last Saturday, while Cortez Masto repeated her applause lines about Heck and Trump at a Hillary Clinton “Glassbreakers” summit in North Las Vegas, Heck was 70 miles west in the desert town of Pahrump, a libertarian outpost in the middle of one of the largest but least populous counties in the United States. He’d come for the annual Fall Festival parade.

Men circled on horseback, American flag bandanas knotted around their necks. An activist in full Revolutionary War regalia, long rifle included, was holding a sign that read “VOTE NO ON QUESTION ONE” — the November ballot measure that would institute background checks for gun purchases. “Life is Short, Death is Sure, Sin the Curse, Christ the Cure!” read a banner lashed to the side of church float. Billboards for the Chicken Ranch Brothel lined the road. (Prostitution is legal in Pahrump.) Nye County Commissioner Donna Cox — decked out in a suede-fringed poncho, turquoise jewelry, a cowboy hat and a pistol on her hip — pulled her blond grandson in a wagon; Cox’s husband walked beside her, a pitchfork in his hand. Beneath his denim overalls was a bright red T-shirt: “101% TRUMP.”

For a mile and a half, Heck (in Wranglers and a white, tightly tucked polo) and his wife, Lisa (in cowboy boots and pink plaid), meandered down Route 160 in the low morning sun, waving to onlookers. They walked a few feet behind the Nye County Republican Party float that featured bales of hay, a “Make Liberty Great Again” scroll and a life-size cardboard cutout of Donald Trump.

Contrasted with Cortez Masto’s event at the Hispanic Museum, the parade in Pahrump was a vivid illustration of the cultural divide has driven Trump’s campaign — and that threatens to define the Nevada Senate race. The Silver State may be diverse — a preview of America’s majority minority future. But as many studies have shown, diversity and resentment — particularly on the part of a previously privileged group — go hand and hand. Everything is a little hotter in a melting pot.

Heck during a roundtable event in Henderson, Nev., in June. (Photo: David Becker/AP)

“Dr. Joe Heck!” shouted Heck’s outreach director. “Running to replace Harry Reid in the U.S. Senate! Dr. Joe Heck!”

“’Bout time!” the people of Pahrump shouted back. “Give ‘em Heck!” “Praying for you, man!” “Hooray for that guy!” “You gonna take out Nancy Pelosi too?”

“Good morning,” said Heck, still waving. “Good to see you.”

There were a few Hispanic locals lining the parade route. They largely remained silent.

_____

The best of the rest

Congressional leaders in both parties anxious as they lower expectations for "knock-down" elections ahead. https://t.co/eF02eFG78Z

— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) September 29, 2016

In Ohio, it's the Rob Portman machine that is boosting Donald Trump https://t.co/2kg7rpdxTA

— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) September 29, 2016

Can you go home again? Evan Bayh, running for the Senate once more, will soon find out. https://t.co/7ay9oKYTQd pic.twitter.com/bs3kctBBjb

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) September 30, 2016

Good read by @alexanderbolton on how election-year politics infecting the Senate. https://t.co/4M0QTvkowE

— Bob Cusack (@BobCusack) September 29, 2016

NEW: Here comes the Republican Senate super PAC blitzhttps://t.co/4rSGNlL9JR

— Matea Gold (@mateagold) September 30, 2016

_____

Countdown

Republican candidate Jason Lewis and Democrat Angie Craig vie for Minnesota’s Second Congressional District. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News, photos: Jim Mone/AP [2], AP [2])

ST. PAUL, Minn. — As you may have heard, there’s a race this year between a well-organized and well-financed centrist Democratic woman (with an Arkansas background) and a political newcomer, a Republican who ran against the party establishment with some far-right views and a long history of controversial, even offensive, statements. We are talking, of course, about the congressional race in Minnesota’s Second District between former talk-show host Jason Lewis, 61, a sometime substitute for Rush Limbaugh, and health-care executive Angie Craig, 44, who if elected would be the first openly gay member of Congress from Minnesota.

And you won’t be surprised to learn that the race is close. Internal polling acquired by the Pioneer Press in late August gave two widely different pictures, with the Lewis campaign’s survey giving Lewis a 12-point lead while Craig led in her own poll by a one-point margin. It is one of the most competitive House races in the nation, in a district that covers the southern part of St. Paul, a large suburban swath with farmland to the southeast. Republican John Kline, who is retiring, has held the seat since 2002, but the district voted for Obama twice and supported Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar in their last two elections, while giving the edge to Republican challenger Jeff Johnson, who lost to Gov. Mark Dayton in 2014. If you want to attempt to divine anything from the low-turnout caucuses earlier this year, Marco Rubio won 37 percent of the Second’s support, compared with 30 percent for Ted Cruz and 20 for Trump. On the Democratic side, Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton 58 percent to 41.

No two campaigns are ever exactly alike, and despite the many parallels with the presidential race, there are large differences, both political and stylistic. Neither Lewis nor Craig made an endorsement in the state’s March 1 caucuses. Lewis has a strong libertarian streak — after leaving his decades-long career as a radio host in 2014, he helped found a libertarian social media network called Galt.io, named for the main character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” — that puts him at odds both with the Republican hierarchy and some of Trump’s positions. He leans toward a noninterventionist foreign policy and opposes the war on drugs, which he told Yahoo News has had an especially harsh effect on communities of color. He wrote an entire book on the importance of states’ rights, and while it contains some arguments that could be generously viewed as not mainstream — such as proposing a constitutional amendment to allow states to peacefully secede from the union — it shows a philosophical side that hasn’t been much in evidence in Trump’s campaign.

In a minor irony, Craig, the Democrat, is running on her business background and outsider status, which she says will enable her to work with both sides of the aisle. She often quotes Klobuchar’s saying that political courage is the ability to work with those you disagree with to accomplish what you do agree on. Her positions include opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, support for veterans and fighting opioid abuse.

What can we learn from all this that will help make sense of Clinton vs. Trump?

Perhaps the most interesting question is how voters will view Lewis’ long history of colorful on-air remarks, including calling the victims of Hurricane Katrina “whiners” and denouncing an entire section of the electorate, young women, for caring only about abortion, gay marriage and “The View.” He has claimed America’s “white population” is “committing cultural suicide” by not having enough children, and his views on gay marriage involved a strained comparison to slavery — admittedly, long before he knew he would be in a race against Craig, who is married to a woman. His views were denounced by the deputy chair of the state Republican Party and by Kline, the outgoing congressman, who endorsed businesswoman Darlene Miller instead. But Lewis won the endorsement of the GOP convention in May following the sixth ballot and won the primary in August, defeating Miller and another candidate with nearly 50 percent of the vote.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are introduced during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Sept. 26. (Photo: David Goldman/AP)

Much of this record has been gleefully mined by his opponents. Lewis told Yahoo News that he believes all of the attacks have been taken “grotesquely out of context,” and in the case of the first ad put out by the Craig campaign, a local Minnesota news station at least partly agreed. But at times he has seemed to want to have it both ways. He has said that being provocative was part of his job description as a radio host, whose success depended on ratings. But he hasn’t backed down from any of his comments, either. “What my opponents don’t understand is that I actually believe this stuff,” said Lewis in a December 2015 edition of his podcast. “I say things and I write things because I hold them near and dear, I’m not about to walk away. When your opponents say you said this or Mitt Romney said the bottom half of taxpayers aren’t chipping in enough, they’re betting that you will run away from your heartfelt positions. I won’t, and that’s the difference in this campaign.”

But as provocative as he can be on the issues, as a candidate Lewis has avoided personal attacks. He has called Craig “a good person” but “misguided.” Members of his party haven’t been as considerate. In a Facebook post promoting a GOP fundraiser, a Goodhue County Republican official shared a photo of Craig’s family that referred to her wife as a “female marriage partner.” The photo was next to images of the families of Republican candidates. Lewis told Minnesota Public Radio that family and private lives should be off-limits.

Craig was raised by a single mother in an Arkansas trailer park. She graduated from the University of Memphis, and after a stint as an education reporter at the Commercial Appeal, she entered corporate communications. She moved to Minnesota in 2005 to join the St. Jude’s Medical Group, rising to head of human resources before stepping down to focus on the election. She announced her campaign even before Kline’s retirement and had cleared out the primary field early with a series of endorsements and fundraising successes. Her campaign has enjoyed high-profile support and joint appearances with Klobuchar and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer.

Lewis has called Craig’s positions “radical” for the Second District, citing her endorsement by the Congressional Progressive caucus, but her platform is fairly mainstream for a Democratic politician in 2016. The New Democrat Coalition, a group that describes itself as fiscally responsible and moderate, also endorsed her.

“The New Democratic Coalition basically understand that the private sector business is where jobs are created,” said Craig in an interview with Yahoo News. “That’s who I am from a fiscal point of view. On the other hand, the Progressive Caucus is very focused on issues like equality; that’s who I am. So I believe it’s the perfect fit for a purple district like this, where the preponderance of voters are more socially progressive but they’re fiscally responsible.”

How will all this play in November? “The district has changed enormously since John Kline was elected,” said Larry Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. “He was able to get mostly reelected by comfortable margins — not always, but mostly — based on his personal reputation and bond with voters. The district has become much more evenly balanced. When you look at the largest county in the district, it’s Dakota County, and that has seen an influx of voters who are college educated; it’s a more diverse electorate, and we’ve started to see Democrats doing well.”

When Lewis won the primary, the Cook Political Report moved the race from the “tossup” category to “lean Democrat.” Jacobs also sees Craig as a better fit.

“Jason Lewis is quite smart, and he’s quite provocative. He’s a great guy to have a conversation with,” said Jacobs, “but he is much more conservative than that district. While the Republicans have put up a candidate who’s not a good fit for a district that’s become more moderate, the Democrats have put up a candidate who’s from the business community, running on issues of fiscal prudence, socially liberal. She’s a much better fit for that district.”

So far Craig has released three ads, two biographical and one a compilation of some of Lewis’s controversial statements. National Democratic groups have already sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising in the district to get the former talk radio host’s words back on the air.

For his part, Lewis thinks attacking him on his old quotes could backfire on the Democratic campaign.

“Lord knows I’m no Ronald Reagan,” said Lewis, “but there was an expectation created of him in 1976 leading up to ’80 that he was this horrible ogre, commentaries on the radio, they dug up those. And people would see him and say, ‘He seems like an OK guy to me.’ We’re seeing a lot of that. They tried to paint this caricature, but people know me, I’ve been on the radio here. Then when people who don’t know me meet me, they ask, ‘Where are the horns?’ I think we’re getting a little benefit from that.

“I think if you look at the desperation of the opposition’s campaign ads, they think we’re up. We’re in a good position, but they’re going to outspend us.”

There are two factors that add to the difficulty in projecting this race. Minnesota doesn’t register first-time voters by party, so there’s no way to tell which way new voters of the Second are leaning. And this is just the second congressional election following Minnesota’s adoption of no-excuse, absentee voting, which lets anyone vote early by mail. This would in theory increase turnout, which would in theory help Craig, but it’s impossible to tell for sure. The Craig campaign said it has partnered with the local Democratic-Farmer-Labor (the official name of the Democratic Party in Minnesota) office on the early get-out-the-vote-via-mail efforts, while the Lewis campaign is relying on the local Republican Party for that work. In addition to the fundraising advantage, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told Yahoo News that the Craig campaign’s ground game has been one of the best in the nation this cycle.

There are variables at work: The candidates will have at least one debate, and there’s the possibility that even more offensive comments will surface from Lewis’s radio archive. There’s also the chance Craig, running her first campaign and a relative novice candidate, will make some sort of blunder, but that would be a departure from her consistently polished performance thus far.

“It’s a tight race,” said Craig. “I won’t allow myself to believe that I’m the favorite in this race, because I think this race is going to come down to a two- or three-point race. I think it’s going to be a close race. I hope I’m wrong and voters give me this job by a wider margin, but I want to behave as if, and I believe this is going to be a close race.”

So now you know everything about the campaign in Minnesota’s Second District, except the two things that matter most: who will win — and what that result will tell us about the bigger campaign that’s also going on in America right now.

_____

  How Clinton’s big debate win could actually wind up hurting down-ballot Democrats

Clinton at the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. (Photo: Julio Cortez/AP)

By Andrew Romano

Every poll taken after Monday’s big debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump came to the same conclusion: Clinton won. According to CNN, 62 percent of voters declared Clinton the winner versus only 27 percent for Trump — a 35-point margin. A separate postdebate survey from Public Policy Polling gave a Clinton 52-40 advantage. And even Breitbart, whose former executive chairman now runs Trump’s campaign, found that Clinton outperformed the Republican nominee.

According to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, Clinton’s big win suggests that “she’ll gain in head-to-head polls over Trump in the coming days.”

But how will the Hofstra debate affect down-ballot races?

As of Tuesday morning, reactions and responses from House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates locked in tight contests were few and far between. House Speaker Paul Ryan wanly praised Trump’s “energy.” But most other Republicans — especially the electorally imperiled ones — have been mum. Nothing from New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Nothing from Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey. Nothing from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. And so on.

The bottom line is that there are very few GOP candidates who want to talk about Trump, even on one of his good days — and yesterday was not one of his good days.

Down-ballot Democrats have been more vocal, but only slightly. Keystone state Senate challenger Katie McGinty posted a series of #debatenight tweets attempting to link Toomey to the GOP ticket-topper; Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic Senate candidate in Nevada, warned of the “threat of a @realDonaldTrump presidency” and retweeted Elizabeth Warren’s remark about Trump “ranting and raving” on the debate stage.

But other Democrats, such as Ohio’s Ted Strickland and Florida’s Patrick Murphy, have yet to weigh in. Not every Dem is making his or her race a referendum on Trump; others probably prefer to wait for the conventional wisdom to fully crystallize before jumping into the fray. Plus it’s still early: Expect more reactions later Tuesday, once reporters start questioning the candidates at their public events.

A word of caution, however, for Democrats — and encouragement for Republicans. According to the latest research on presidential coattails, Clinton’s commanding victory could wind up hurting down-ballot Democrats more than it helps them. Here’s how. Robert Erikson, a  professor of political science at Columbia University, is an expert on public opinion and elections; in a recent paper, Erikson looked at the U.S. House vote in the 17 presidential election years, from 1948 to 2012. He found that for every percentage point that a presidential candidate gains in the two-party vote, his or her party’s down-ballot candidates gain almost half a point themselves. This suggests that if Clinton rises in the postdebate polls, down-ballot candidates will rise as well.

The only problem? Erickson also discovered a countereffect called “balancing.”

“The idea here is that in down-ballot contests, some voters may tilt toward the opposite party of the candidate they believe will win the White House,” Erickson told the Washington Post. “They may do this to balance the ideological makeup of government. If the president’s going to be a Democrat, for instance, maybe a Republican Congress can help keep them in check.”

Like the coattail effect, balancing can be quantified. By looking at the effect on the House vote of the preelection odds that the Democrat would win the presidency, Erickson found that, as the odds went up, the Democratic House vote declined. “Being seen as a certain winner rather than a certain loser,” he concluded, “actually penalizes down-ballot candidates by about 3.5 points.”

Controlling for other factors, this suggests that the more confident voters are that a Democrat will become president, the more likely they are to vote for down-ballot Republicans. In other words, Clinton’s win might boost down-ballot Democrats a little bit. But if it makes her look like she’s got a lock on the White House, it could ultimately boost down-ballot Republicans more.

_____

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Craig supported an increase in Syrian refugees to the U.S. The Craig campaign supports the Obama administration’s current policies.

  The best of the rest

#Florida #Senate @FLChamber Poll:

Rubio (R) 46% (+4) Murphy (D) 42%https://t.co/II5YAKEbh7

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) September 26, 2016

West Virginia Governor Race, JWS/ @wvgop Poll:

Justice (D) 44% (+2) Cole (R) 42%https://t.co/5JGhLJcp7b

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) September 25, 2016

North Carolina (High Point University)

PRES Clinton 43 Trump 42 Johnson 10

SEN Burr 45 Ross 43

GOV Cooper 50 McCrory 41

— Luke Brinker (@LukeBrinker) September 26, 2016

Harper Polling Pennsylvania

Senate

McGinty (D) 42% Toomey (R) 42%https://t.co/AWCTUIBEPo

— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) September 26, 2016

Here are all the 14 statehouses Democrats think they can win in November https://t.co/n2IoS2wPFC pic.twitter.com/3OBMIgJYgs

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) September 25, 2016

NV USSEN (Fox News): Cong Joe Heck (R) 43%, ex-Atty Gen Catherine Cortez Masto (D) 36%

— Politics1.com (@Politics1com) September 23, 2016

_____

Countdown

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Estero, Fla., Sept. 16. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News’ complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors’ races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

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Trump’s coattails are giving Republican Senate candidates a bumpy ride

What a difference two weeks can make.

On Sept. 6, Down Ticket kicked off the fall campaign with an analysis of where things stood in the battle for the Senate — and it was all good news for the Democratic Party.

“[Democrats] simply need to win the five states where the fundamentals favor them, and where they’re currently leading in the polls: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin,” we wrote. “That’s enough for a new Democratic majority.”

Then we unplugged from the grid and went on vacation.

The landscape we’ve returned to this week is noticeably … altered. Now the pendulum seems to have swung in the GOP’s favor — not just in one or two states but across the battleground map. If the election were held today, in fact, Republicans would stand a 50-50 chance of retaining control of the Senate.

A podium where Senate Democrats and Republicans were scheduled to talk to the media after their policy luncheon meetings at the Capitol in Washington. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

What changed? Why? And is the shift likely to last? The fact that nearly every tossup Senate race has moved in tandem over the past two months — first toward the Dems and then toward the GOP — suggests some sort of larger, national force at work. To identify this force — and to quantify how powerful it really is — is to get at one of the key questions of the entire election:

Who will rule the Senate next year?

A few notes before we proceed. As we wrote earlier this month, the basic playing field is still tilted in the Democrats’ favor. All the Republican freshmen who rode the tea party wave of 2010 are up for reelection in November, which means the GOP started out having to defend nine tossup Senate seats (FL, IL, IN, MO, NH, NC, OH, PA, WI). The Dems, meanwhile, have to defend only one (NV). Republicans have almost zero chance of gaining seats on Election Day. Democrats are virtually guaranteed to gain some.

Sen. Marco Rubio introduces his family at a primary election party in Kissimmee, Fla., on Aug. 30. (Photo: John Raoux/AP)

That initial playing field, however, has shrunk. At first, Florida looked like a prime Democratic pickup opportunity. Then incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio reentered the race — despite promising to steer clear — and ever since, his lead over Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy has been growing. (The average gap between them was 3.8 percentage points on Sept. 6; now it’s 6.4 percentage points.) In Ohio, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland led, narrowly, in nearly every survey taken before the start of the summer. But incumbent Sen. Rob Portman has run a near-perfect campaign, and as a result he seems to have left Strickland in the dust. (Current polling puts the Republican ahead by a staggering 13.4 percentage points, on average.)

At the same time, Democrats have transformed a few tossups into likely wins as well; according our expert partners at the Cook Political Report, Democratic challengers in Illinois (Rep. Tammy Duckworth) and Wisconsin (former Sen. Russ Feingold) currently have a clear edge over their GOP opponents, incumbents Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson, respectively, who have both trailed in every single poll released this cycle.

So only a few states appear, at the moment, to qualify as true tossups, with five percentage points or less separating the polling leader from his or her rival: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada, Indiana, North Carolina, Missouri.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth celebrates after her Democratic primary victory in Chicago on March 15. (Photo: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)

And the thing is, over the past two weeks, nearly all of them have been trending Republican.

In Pennsylvania, incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Toomey trailed Democrat Katie McGinty, a former state and federal environmental policy official, in all but two polls taken during July and August. Of the two polls released so far this month, however, one shows Toomey tied with McGinty and the other shows him ahead. (The latter is by Quinnipiac, which previously had Toomey losing by three percentage points.)

In New Hampshire, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan led incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte by 4.7 percentage points, on average, at the end of August — but both September polls show Ayotte ahead (one by as much as eight percentage points.)

Only one poll was released in Nevada in August, and it showed a tie between Republican Rep. Joe Heck and Democratic state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. Both polls released this month, however, show Heck in the lead — one by two points, the other by three.

In North Carolina, incumbent GOP Sen. Richard Burr looked to be in trouble as recently as August 22, when his average lead over challenger Deborah Ross slipped to one measly percentage point. It has since grown to a less perilous 3.3 points.

And while there’s been less data this month out of Indiana and Missouri, only the Show Me State has delivered good news for the Dems: the first poll of the cycle to give Democrat Jason Kander an edge over incumbent Roy Blunt. In Hoosier country, the most recent survey awards former Democratic Governor and Sen. Evan Bayh a smaller lead over GOP Rep. Todd Young (+4 percent) than the survey before it (+7 percent).

Sen. Pat Toomey greets teenagers at a campaign stop in Johnstown, Pa., July 19. At left is Jackie Kulbak, chairwoman of the county’s Republican Party. (Photo: John Rucosky/Tribune-Democrat via AP)

As a result of this overall shift to the right, the New York Times’ election model on Monday gave the Republicans a 51 percent chance of winning the Senate. (It has since shifted to a 51 percent chance for the Democrats.) Until recently, the model hadn’t favored the GOP since the beginning of August — a month that saw the Democrats’ chances of victory climb as high as 65 percent.

Partisans are likely to over-interpret these numbers. Polling isn’t predictive; every one of these races has fluctuated before, and they’re all likely to fluctuate again. The fact that Pat Toomey beat Katie McGinty in the latest Quinnipiac poll doesn’t mean he’s going to beat her on Election Day.

But there is a telling detail here: This year’s pivotal Senate races seem to be moving en masse. If one or two states were shifting at a time, you could attribute the changes to local dynamics: attack ads, candidate gaffes, etc. But all (or most) of them at once? That’s because of something bigger.

The evidence points to Donald Trump.

Some analysts have argued that because Trump is a sui generis celebrity candidate — a party of one — voters won’t let their feelings about the GOP ticket-topper sway their down-ballot behavior. To a certain extent this is true: In the key battlegrounds of Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina, Trump is running an average 2.7 percentage points behind the local GOP Senate candidate. This means that at least some Clinton voters are planning to pull the Republican lever for Senate.

Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate Katie McGinty walks onstage to speak before President Obama at a campaign event for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on September 13 in Philadelphia. (Photo: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

But when it comes to the shifts we’re seeing in these Senate contests — the way that swing voters gravitate toward a Democratic candidate this week and a Republican candidate the next, propelling one past the other in the polls — it’s likely that Trump’s own performance is producing some sort of down-ballot ripple effect.

Because guess what else has happened over the past two weeks, as GOP Senate candidates in pretty much every crucial contest have picked up a couple of points in the polls? Trump has picked up a couple of points as well. On Sept. 6, the RealClear Politics polling average showed Clinton ahead of the Manhattan mogul by 3.1 percentage points; today, Clinton leads by less than one.

Whether this tightening is attributable to Trump’s slightly more disciplined demeanor or Clinton’s top-secret pneumonia — or something else — is for other columnists to pontificate about. For us, the down-ballot impact is enough. When Trump stumbled after the conventions, Republican Senate candidates sank in the polls; now that the Donald appears to be holding it together, his down-ballot ticket mates seem to be doing a little better.

(Also worth noting: Discomfort with Trump among the GOP donor class is triggering a massive surge in down-ballot “dark money” spending, which also appears to be boosting Senate Republicans. “I think it comes down to the money,” the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, recently told Bloomberg Politics. “We can’t keep up with the Koch brothers.”)

 The Trump effect should scare Democrats and Republicans alike. Assuming a Clinton victory — still the most probable presidential outcome — a net gain of four seats would flip the Senate to the Democrats. Wisconsin and Illinois seem likely to change hands. An additional six seats are currently too close to call. And more than anything else — more than anything that any of the candidates say or do — the difference between a Republican Senate and a Democratic Senate may come down to whether Trump, a notoriously volatile and unpredictable element, performs two percentage points better or worse on Nov. 8.

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  Rob Portman shakes his tail feather

Sen. Rob Portman leaves the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon in the U.S. Capitol on May 17. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Here are some things you may not know about Ohio Sen. Rob Portman:

He speaks Spanish. (For proof, check out his new, Spanish-language campaign ad, a rarity in Ohio politics, which ends with the phrase “Soy Rob Portman y apruebo este mensaje.”)

He met his wife on a blind date. She was a Democrat.

He is a lifelong Shaker enthusiast. In 2004 he even published a book about the 19th-century Shaker community at Union Village, Ohio.

Oh, and he knows how to do everyone’s second-favorite Oktoberfest activity: the chicken dance.

Because there’s nothing like a 13.4-point lead in the polls to “loosen” a politician up,

here’s a reluctant Portman being goaded into shaking his tail feather with a couple of Cincinnati Enquirer staffers:

. @senrobportman does the Chicken Dance #OktoberfestZinzinnati @Enquirer @KatharineVogel @carriecochran @Enquirer pic.twitter.com/9ABLzU5x8z

— Liz Dufour (@ldufour) September 16, 2016

You’re welcome.

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  Follow the money

AP

$270,000: The amount that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is spending on its first ad buy supporting incumbent GOP Sen. Roy Blunt in Missouri. The move comes days after an independent poll showed Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, leading Blunt for the first time.

$3.5 million: The amount that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is planning to spend on the Missouri contest.

***

$20 million: The amount that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has already given to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super-PAC linked to George W. Bush svengali Karl Rove and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

$20 million: The amount that Adelson is expected to give to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a similar super-PAC focused on the House of Representatives.

$5 million: The amount that Adelson plans to give to pro-Donald Trump organizations. He gave $30 million to Mitt Romney’s super-PAC in 2012.

***

$1 million: The amount that Sen. Chuck Schumer is planning to transfer to the DSCC Tuesday.

$2 million: The amount that Schumer transferred earlier this month.

$3.2 million: The amount that Schumer transferred to state parties over the past week. All told, Schumer has (in September alone) transferred $6.2 million of the $27 million he has on hand to help Democrats take back the Senate. Worth noting: The New Yorker is next in line to become majority leader.

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The best of the rest

THE JUICE: Conservatives say NRCC is in cahoots w/ GOP establishment against conservatives. Won't pay member dues. https://t.co/0ejcY3ADyS

— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) September 20, 2016

.@CharlieCrist, @DavidJollyFL spar right out of the gate in #CD13 debate by @TB_Times reporter @CharlieFrago: https://t.co/q0wcb84FDz

— Jamal Thalji (@jthalji) September 20, 2016

OPINION: Winds are wild this year, and turbulence has been increased by Burr’s slowness to recognize vulnerability https://t.co/VBWzdRtK2V

— The News & Observer (@newsobserver) September 19, 2016

Problems for Burr in NC: Unpopular guv, HB2 hurting biz, Trump getting outspent 7-to-1 by pro-Clinton forces https://t.co/BR7J8JJ8T3

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) September 20, 2016

This year’s most consequential Senate race https://t.co/fv93BJqft2

— George F. Will (@GeorgeWill) September 18, 2016

California's congressional Republicans may prefer @LorettaSanchez for Senate, but they're staying out of it https://t.co/1tqX64JsnH #CASen

— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) September 19, 2016

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Countdown

  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid talks to reporters during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in January. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Down Ticket is Yahoo News’ complete guide to the most fascinating House, Senate and governors’ races of 2016. Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8. What you need to know today.

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Labor Day is done. The summer is over. The fall campaigns have (finally!) begun.

To kick off Down Ticket’s general-election coverage — the 62-day sprint from now until Nov. 8 — we’ve decided to take stock of where things currently stand and preview what to expect in the weeks ahead.

For today’s overview — and for the rest of the cycle — we’ll be getting an assist from our expert partners over at the Cook Political Report, who know more about down-ballot races than anyone else in the business.

Short version: Democrats have a better chance than ever of taking back the Senate. The House will be much more challenging — but a shift in control is no longer unthinkable. And while Democrats definitely won’t win a majority of governors’ mansions this year, they are preparing to pick up a few.

Here’s the lay of the land in race for the Senate. House and gubernatorial cheat sheets will follow on Thursday.

Senate

Current breakdown: Republicans, 54 seats; Democrats, 44 seats; Independents, 2 seats. Both Independents caucus with the Democrats.

In play: 10 Democrat-held seats (CA, CO, CT, HI, MD, NV, NY, OR, VT, WA); 24 Republican-held seats (AK, AL, AR AZ, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MO, NC, ND, NH, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, UT, WI)

To change control: Democrats need a net gain of four seats if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency — in that case, VP Tim Kaine could break any ties — or five seats if Clinton loses to Donald Trump.

Tossups: One Democrat-held seat (NV, where Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is retiring); eight Republican-held seats (FL, IL, IN, NH, NC, OH, PA, WI)

The big picture: All of the Republican freshmen who rode the tea party wave of 2010 are up for reelection in November, which means the GOP has to defend more than twice as many seats as the Dems do. In short, the deck is stacked against Senate Republicans this cycle — and the historically unpopular mogul at the top of the ticket isn’t helping matters.

That said, August wasn’t all bad for the GOP.

Marco Rubio greets supporters at his victory party in Kissimmee, Fla., after winning the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in August. (Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images)

Earlier this year, Florida looked like a prime Democratic pickup opportunity. Incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, then campaigning for the Republican presidential nod, had vowed not to run for reelection to the Senate; the Republican field was fractured; and the likely Democratic standard-bearer, ambitious 33-year-old Rep. Patrick Murphy, seemed to have all of the momentum. But then Rubio reneged on his pledge and reentered the race, and Murphy’s bitter primary fight against firebrand liberal Rep. Alan Grayson — a battle that raised questions about whether Murphy had inflated his resume — left the young congressman bruised and battered. Both Rubio and Murphy easily won their Aug. 30 primaries, but it was the Republican who finished the month with a healthy 5.7 percentage-point lead in the general election polls. GOP insiders are increasingly confident that Rubio, a skilled campaigner, will be returning to the Senate in January.

Sen. Rob Portman arrives at the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, during the second day of the Republican convention. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

They feel the same way about Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Once upon a time, the race between Portman and former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland seemed destined to be a nail-biter; Strickland led — narrowly — in nearly every survey taken before the start of the summer. But no longer. Boosted by $18.2 million in outside spending, a massive fundraising advantage, and several key union endorsements, Portman has run what Republicans describe as a pitch-perfect down-ballot campaign, reaching out to split-ticket swing voters while refusing to let Trump define him. (Like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, he declined to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.) As a result, Portman took the lead in June, and he’s only pulled further ahead since then; average together the August polls and he’s currently clobbering Strickland by 9.75 percentage points. In a sign indicating where this contest appears to be headed, Democratic groups recently canceled more than $2 million they had planned to spend in Ohio — and the Koch brothers did the same.

Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, center, laughs while speaking with people at a campaign event in Las Vegas. (Photo: John Locher/AP)

Nevada is another Republican bright spot. As we’ve noted, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto should be the favorite. She is Reid’s handpicked successor, which means she is backed by the minority leader’s powerful political machine and a Nevada Democratic Party that is much more organized than the state’s notoriously sloppy GOP. As the granddaughter of an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, she would be the first Latina senator in U.S. history — a leg up in a state with a large Latino population (28 percent) that votes heavily Democratic. And in general, Democrats — who enjoy a statewide voter-registration advantage over Republicans — tend to benefit from presidential-year turnout patterns in Nevada. Yet Cortez Masto hasn’t led in a single poll since May; in fact, Republican Rep. Joe Heck is slightly ahead at this point, according to the RealClear Politics average. Why? Because Heck is the more talented candidate.

The problem for Republicans, though, is that the good news basically stops there.

Russ Feingold, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks to reporters in Madison, Wis. (Photo: Scott Bauer/AP)

At least three of this year’s official Senate tossups don’t look much like tossups right now. In Wisconsin, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold is leading incumbent Ron Johnson by an average of 9.7 percentage points (though a recent Marquette survey — possibly an outlier — shows a closer contest); Feingold is even ahead in the dash for cash. In Illinois, where polling is less plentiful, Rep. Tammy Duckworth seems to hold a similar edge over incumbent Ron Kirk, who has been sprinting away from Trump in an attempt to woo swing voters in a state that Clinton is likely to win by 20 points. And the same thing seems to be happening in Indiana, where the former senator and governor Evan Bayh, one of the biggest names in Hoosier politics, entered the race in mid-July and promptly opened up a big lead over Republican Rep. Todd Young.

Meanwhile, the true tossups appear to be trending toward the Dems — and races that leaned Republican are now threatening to become tossups.

Senate candidate Katie McGinty waves to delegates before speaking during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

In the first category: Pennsylvania, where the lackluster Democratic candidate, former state and federal environmental policy official Katie McGinty, has led incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Toomey in all but two of the surveys released since the start of July, and New Hampshire, where Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan has topped incumbent Kelly Ayotte in every poll taken over the same period. Neither Toomey nor Ayotte has embraced Trump, but because the Donald is performing poorly in both states — he trails by 6.5 points in Pennsylvania and by 9 in New Hampshire — he still seems to be dragging them down.

Even more worrying for the GOP are Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina, which weren’t even supposed to be competitive. Cook Political Report has already moved the Tarheel State into the tossup category; GOP incumbent Richard Burr has run a sluggish campaign, and bolstered by Team Clinton’s aggressive in-state spending, Democratic challenger Deborah Ross has come from behind to take the lead in a pair of recent polls.

Democrats hope, and Republicans fear, that her counterparts in other “Lean Republican” states could be next. Arizona Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is mounting the strongest general-election challenge of John McCain’s career; thirty-five-year-old Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander is within striking distance of incumbent GOP Sen. Roy Blunt; and self-funding Georgia Democrat Jim Barksdale is starting to gain traction in the polls.

North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Deborah Ross reacts to the crowd before speaking at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C. (Photo: Chuck Burton/AP)

The bottom line: Senate Democrats probably won’t win Georgia, Missouri, or Arizona. But the mere fact that we’re watching to see whether they turn into tossups as well just goes to show how tenuous the GOP’s grip on the Senate is becoming.

A lot of it comes down to Trump. If he tanks this fall, triggering record minority turnout in states such as Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, then all bets are off.

But even if nothing changed between now and Election Day, Democrats would still be favored to win the Senate. New York Times forecasters currently give them a 55 percent chance; DailyKos, 57 percent; PredictWise, 64 percent; Princeton Election Consortium, 77 percent.

Why? Because they don’t need to win Georgia, Missouri or Arizona. They don’t need North Carolina. They don’t need Florida or Ohio. They don’t even need to hang on to Nevada. Assuming they lose the Silver State, they simply need to win the five states where the fundamentals favor them, and where they’re currently leading in the polls: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. That’s enough for a new Democratic majority.

Which isn’t to say it’s a lock. Just that, when it comes to the battle for the Senate, Democrats are starting the fall campaign on offense — and Republicans are on their heels.

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The best of the rest

Gun control groups back Republicans who voted for restrictions, scrambling the politics. https://t.co/HSV7F2KN5y pic.twitter.com/DhsGSdildh

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) September 5, 2016

NEWS: @freedomcaucus candidate Biggs in Ariz. seizes ahead of GOP-estab candidate by 9 votes! Recount expected https://t.co/ZLO37MBly9

— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) September 3, 2016

My latest: Charlie Crist's run for Congress is his last shot. He knows this is win or go home, friend says. More: https://t.co/juBlHBdfbb

— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) September 3, 2016

WATCH: GOP senator launches ad arguing he is still a Washington outsider https://t.co/oHhtgKeOPv pic.twitter.com/1RadGmrAFD

— The Hill (@thehill) September 6, 2016

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Countdown

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