There might even be more than 10 before election day.
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The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2020
(CNN)With the political conventions behind us and Labor Day approaching, it's the time of year when down-ballot
elections start to kick into high gear. At the start of the 2020 cycle, the Senate wasn't expected to be all that exciting, with Republicans largely on defense in red states.
But that's changed. With President Donald Trump
trailing in national polls,
Democratic challengers raking in millions and demographics shifting across the South, many of those Republican incumbents are sitting in states that don't look as red as they used to.
Democrats need a net gain of three seats to flip the chamber if they also win the White House -- since the vice president would break a tie -- or four seats if Trump wins reelection. Although those net gains are possible, Democrats' path is still complicated by the fact that they're likely to lose a seat in Alabama, where
Sen. Doug Jones tops CNN's inaugural ranking of the 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2020.
Still, eight of the top 10 seats on this list are held by Republicans. That the GOP is on defense is a reflection of their success in 2014. Half of the senators on this list are Republicans who were first elected six years ago. Two others are longtime incumbents who are facing their toughest challenges yet in South Carolina and Maine.
Besides Alabama, one other Democrat-held seat comes in at the bottom: Gary Peters of Michigan is the only other Democrat running for reelection this year in a state Trump carried, albeit narrowly, in 2016. But Peters is not raising major alarm bells for national Democrats, especially in a state that looks to be
moving away from Trump. It's possible this race drops off the list in subsequent rankings.
Related: See CNN's presidential ratings and make your own map here
Several other GOP-held seats could move onto the list in the future. Texas, for example, is a politically evolving state, and the presidential race there is closer than Republicans would like. But this year's Democratic Senate nominee doesn't have anywhere near the kind of money Beto O'Rourke did two years ago, while GOP Sen. John Cornyn isn't as disliked as Sen. Ted Cruz. The Lone Star State is worth watching, though.
So is Georgia. Sen. David Perdue's seat falls in the bottom half of our ranking, but the state's other seat is also competitive. Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler faces Republicans and Democrats on the same ballot in the November special election, which will likely go to a January runoff. With so many moving parts, it's too soon to tell whether this seat deserves to be on the list, but there's no question it's causing an extra headache for Republicans.
Two other Republican-held seats -- Kansas and, to a greater extent, Kentucky -- are generating buzz this year, too, but neither is likely to grace the top 10 list anytime soon. Kris Kobach could have jeopardized the open Kansas seat had he won the GOP primary, but national Republicans got the candidate they wanted. And in Kentucky, Democrat Amy McGrath is outraising Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose lead has dipped into single digits in
a recent public poll. The Bluegrass State elected a Democratic governor in 2019, but McGrath -- who has sometimes stumbled as a candidate -- is still fighting an uphill battle during a presidential year.
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