Right, let's vacate all the seats up for grabs next year, except McCains due to vagaries of health.
This gives us 23 Democrats to 44 Republicans.
Orrin Hatch, Ted Cruz, Bob Corker and John Barraso will all win easily.
Arizona likely to stay Republican imo.
Now Ohio and Indiana have been trending heavily Republican of late, so those 2 as a pickup wouldn't be a surprise.
West Virginia is another rich Republican area.
Montana and North Dakota are again in areas Republicans tend to do well in.
Then you have the rust belt three - Wisconsin, Michigan, Penn.
All three swung to Trump in November. Who knows if they've swung back already?
After all, the economy has tanked yet, and those who voted for Trump seem happy with him so far.
At this point in time, all 3 might easily be in play.
This takes us to 58 Republicans, and still assumes that:
- Nevada is a gain for the Democrat
- Claire McCaskill continues to fight gravity in Missouri
- That the primarying of Gillibrand and Bernie and others doesn't happen, or isn't successful, and that if it is, it doesn't split the base enough.
The flipside of this is that the four (not by-elections) since Trump being President have shown a 9% swing on average to the Democrats.
Now, they've all been in safe seats, and there's the old adage of swing being larger in swing seats.
However, I dunno how much you can extend swing to US elections, and more pertinently, there's no proof of this pro-Democrat turn yet in any big vote. (chicken, egg, I know...)
All in all, not a great election outlook if you're a Dem.