The Senate Republicans’ political arm raised $4.9 million in March as they move to build a war chest to defend their majority in 2016.
They’re going to need it. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee brought in $5.3 million. The DSCC finished the first quarter of the year with more than $7.1 million in the bank and $13.7 million in operational debt left over from last cycle’s brutal midterm election that cost the Democrats nine Senate seats. The NRSC, the campaign committee operated by Senate Republicans, closed the first three months of 2015 with $5.3 million in the bank and $6 million in debt.
Just shy of four months old, the Senate Republicans’ 54-seat majority is vulnerable in the next election in part because the electoral map favors the Democrats much in the same way the playing field favored the GOP in 2014. The NRSC, formerly the National Republican Senatorial Committee, raised $10.9 million during the first three months of 2015; their total for March bested what they raised in March of 2013 by almost $2 million. But the DSCC raised $14 million during the same first-quarter period.
Last cycle, at least half dozen Democrat-held Senate seats were up for election in states that lean Republican. The GOP ended up flipping nine seats controlled by the Democratic Party on their way toward turning a six-seat minority into a four-seat majority. This cycle, Democrats are targeting at least three GOP-held seats that are up in states friendly to them, particularly in presidential elections, and at least three more that are up for election in swing states.
Democrats need to win a net of five Republican seats to retake the majority in 2016.
