Ashley Lopez

Their executive director and founder, his name is Nick Troiano.

He told me he's like, we're looking at a situation where we're walking into a midterm that is about to be the least competitive possible.

of our lifetimes.

And he thinks that means we are also about to have the least accountable Congress of our lifetime.

He goes as far as to say that voters will just have less influence in what their lawmakers are doing now.

Yeah, in some ways.

So unlike the House, senators don't have like little slivers of the state cut out for them that give them basically a foregone outcome in November.

They do have to, at least in a general election, appeal to independents and a statewide electorate.

But yeah, when you're looking at a primary, every senator's biggest fear is getting outflanked, is getting primaried from their left if they're a Democrat or getting primaried from their right.

And that is still the same electorate that is holding a lot of power here.

These base voters who don't look like the broader electorate are still having outsized power in how these senators think.

Now, you know, you do see this a lot in Senate races where, you know, they do try and fend off their left or right flank in a midterm and then pivot to, you know, trying to have a more palatable election.

set of policies for a group of voters that's going to look very different.

But yeah, those both audiences are really important.

And you can tell when it is primary season because lawmakers are acting kind of different.

They're acting like their main constituency are those primary voters and not the people they're going to have to face in November.

So incumbency power is particularly important during a November election, but it is less important sometimes during primaries because this is a smaller group of voters that have a little bit more influence and it is sort of easier to convince a smaller group of people if you're trying to outflank a sitting senator.

Now, there is a history of senators doing really well in primaries, like I think it was Dick Lugar who

who was like the last sitting U.S.

senator to get out primaried.