With a little over two weeks to go, there are two Senate races in the “farm belt” part of the Midwest that are relatively close — Kansas and Iowa.

Kansas has been a pleasant surprise.  The Republican leadership in D.C. dumped a ton of money into the Republican primary to defeat Spawn of Satan Kris Kobach, and most people assumed that, having succeeded in getting Roger Marshall the nomination, the Republicans could go back to ignoring Kansas.  But a funny thing has happened.  Apparently, the divisions in the Republican Party haven’t healed.  While Trump looks likely to win Kansas, his numbers are rather low for a Republican in such a deep red state.  And if Trump only gets in the mid-50s, Roger Marshall can’t afford to bleed any support away.

Part of the problem for the Republicans is that Kansas is a geographically big state.  While about one-third of the state lives in close proximity to Kansas City, the other two thirds are pretty scattered.  And that means that candidates running their first state-wide race have to introduce themselves to a lot of people who have never heard about them before.  While both candidates face this problem, the Democratic candidate, Barbara Bollier had only minimal opposition in the primary which meant that she could run positive ads introducing herself as a former moderate Republican who only became a Democrat because the Kansas Republican Party had fallen off the far-right cliff.  Meanwhile, Marshall had to deal with a very nasty campaign in which many of his past sins were broadcast to the rest of the state for the first time.  In the end, Marshall won the primary because the party leadership told the voters that he was the only viable alternative to Kobach and that Kobach couldn’t win, not because Kansas voters liked Marshall.

With the race being very tight (and a large number of undecideds), the Senate Republicans have had to dump a lot of money into the race.  And, that means a lot of money in the Kansas City media market where half of the listeners are from Missouri.  Needless to say, the last three weeks have had a ton of negative advertising with Republicans trying to portray Bollier as somewhat to the left of Bernie Sanders and Democrats bringing out the rest of Marshall’s sins (those that will offend moderates rather than those that will offend Trumpsters).

My hunch is that, when all is said and done, Bollier will probably not beat Marshall.  At the very least, she will not be the fiftieth Democratic Senator in a 50-50 Senate.  For her to win, we need a wave that gets us to 54 or 55 Democratic Senators.  But Bollier has run a strong enough race to require the Republicans to spend heavily to defend this seat.  And that may make the difference in other races like the one in Iowa.

Senator Jodi Ernst won in a very good year for Republicans in 2014 taking the seat that had been held by Tom Harkin.  Even then, she got less than 53% of the vote.  Basically, her result in 2014 was about 1% better than Donald Trump did in Iowa in 2016.  And part of that difference can be explained by the higher turnout in presidential elections.  Right now, Iowa is a toss-up in the presidential race.  And that means that Jodi Ernst either needs every person who is going to vote for Trump to vote for her or she needs some Biden supporters.  And her record in the Senate as a loyal Trump soldier means that she is unlikely to get that many people splitting their tickets in her favor.    Right now, Ernst is polling about 2-3% worse than Trump.  Which means that, while Trump is a slight favorite in Iowa, Ernst is a slight underdog.

Again, Iowa is not likely to be seat number 50 (Maine and North Carolina are more likely to be seats 49 and 50, respectively), but Iowa is near the top of the list of states that could be seat 51 (the only other races likely to be decided on November 3 that could be seat 51 are Montana and South Carolina, but both are currently a little bit more of a longshot.)  The one thing that may help or hurt Ernst is that Trump is probably going to make several trips to Iowa as it is a must-win state for Trump.

Control of the Senate is very much up in the air heading into the election.  Fortunately, the Republicans are having to defend a lot of marginal seats.  And having to spend money in states like Kansas to avoid a total disaster is going to make it harder to hold seats like Iowa which could be crucial to which party has the majority.