2018 Missouri Senate - Hawley vs. McCaskill

9/13/18 -- This race has lived up to its billing as one of the closest in the country. Neither Josh Hawley nor Claire McCaskill has had a lead of more than four points in a single poll for the entire year, placing this race well within the margin of error.  The undecided voters are likely Trump supporters, but it is hard to say which way they’ll go in this volatile election.

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The state of Missouri can be divided into five basic political divisions. The Democratic base is in central Kansas City and St. Louis.  Republicans run strong in the rural southwest, which has long been Republican, as well as in the band of counties stretching up the Missouri River from St. Louis to Kansas City, which were settled by Germans in the 1800s. The fourth division is found in the Republican-tilting suburbs, while the fifth division is basically the rest of the state, which is essentially a salient of the South jutting into the heart of the state. Democrats' successes are normally dictated by how well they run in these latter two areas.

The fifth division historically voted Democrat, and kept the state in the Democratic column. But in the 1970s, three Republicans remade the state's map: John Danforth, John Ashcroft and Kit Bond.  In 1970 Bond was elected the first Republican state auditor in 40 years.  He was elected governor two years later, and Ashcroft succeeded him as auditor.  Six years later Ashcroft succeeded Danforth as attorney general, who had likewise been the first Republican elected to the position since the Great Depression.  Both Danforth and Bond would go on to be United States senators.  Ashcroft, once again following Danforth, won the latter's Senate seat after his retirement in 1994. 

The seat has since been subject to wild swings.  Ashcroft was engaged in a tight battle with Gov. Mel Carnahan in 2000 when the governor was killed in a plane crash.  Carnahan was elected posthumously, and his widow was appointed to his seat.  She was defeated by Republican Jim Talent in 2002, who in turn lost to Claire McCaskill in 2006.  McCaskill looked on track to lose in 2012, but the GOP nominated Rep. Todd Akin, who later claimed in an interview that a woman could not get pregnant as a result of "legitimate rape." 

This time, McCaskill’s luck may run out.  The state has swung dramatically toward Republicans over the course of the past decade; Barack Obama narrowly lost the state in 2008, while Donald Trump won by twenty points. McCaskill has a solid opponent in Attorney General Josh Hawley.  With that said, if the national environment remains poisonous for Republicans, she may survive another term.