Democrats are banking on outperforming Biden in key Senate races
Democrats in tough races in the 2024 elections are hoping President Joe Biden's poll numbers after the debate won't hurt them in November.
DETROIT — When President Joe Biden held a rally here last week and soaked up the adoration of supporters, scores of prominent Michigan Democrats joined him — with one notable exception: Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the party’s top candidate in a must-win Senate race.
The rally came in the midst of a divisive intraparty spat about whether Biden should remain the Democratic nominee or step aside after a bewildering debate performance and polls saying he's narrowly trailing Donald Trump nationally and in key states. Slotkin has said only that it's Biden's decision to make; her campaign said she had a scheduling conflict and couldn’t attend.
“We’ve been saying since day one this would be one of the closest Senate races in the country,” Slotkin campaign spokesperson Antoine Givens said. “That’s why we’ve been building a grassroots campaign prepared to make the contrast clear between Elissa’s record of delivering for middle-class Michiganders and any of her Republican opponents.”
Slotkin's absence from the Biden rally comes amid an unease among down-ballot Democrats who party strategists believe will outrun Biden, yet worry that he could drag them down. But ticket-splitters — those who vote for a different party for president than for down-ballot candidates — are a shrinking breed. In dozens of contested Senate races during the last two presidential elections, only one state delivered a split result: Maine in 2020 voted for Biden and centrist GOP Sen. Susan Collins. Not a single state split the vote in 2016.
“There are definitely ticket-splitters,” said Abby Clark, a Democratic organizer and former campaign aide in Detroit, who is calling on Biden to exit the race. “But overall those tides rise and fall together. Michigan is always very tight. A real collapse in support for the top of the ticket will have a huge impact on all the other races.”
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