Donald Trump’s tumultuous August has increased Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate, with a dozen states potentially in play — including previously uncompetitive races in North Carolina and Indiana.

GOP operatives still believe their incumbents and candidates can prevail against imperfect Democrats in states ranging from Pennsylvania to Nevada. But protecting the 54-seat Republican majority will require a near-sweep of competitive states that is looking increasingly unlikely.


“I think we’re in remarkably good shape considering the top of the ticket,” said Rob Jesmer, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “But the X factor is Trump, so I don't know if our current position translates into holding the majority.”

In Indiana, former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh’s re-run suddenly added a new state to the map in July. Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats’ strength in North Carolina has Republicans pouring late money into the state to save Sen. Richard Burr. And some Democrats believe Trump’s unpopularity could help push Senate candidates forward in below-the-radar states like Arizona and Missouri — and maybe even beyond those — this fall.

To be sure, Marco Rubio’s surprising un-retirement in Florida and GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s strong performance in Ohio have made Republicans feel more comfortable in those traditional battleground states. But the new states on the competitive map have given Senate Democrats a much wider view of their path to the majority. Democrats are set to clear Labor Day tied or leading the polls in enough places to win the majority, and they lie within striking distance in even more, including states some strategists all but wrote off a year ago.

Democrats have long been favored in Illinois and Wisconsin, and polls now show them with steady if slim advantages in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, as well as larger leads in Indiana. A sweep of those states would give them control of the Senate, though Democrats also have growing concerns about keeping retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada — both because of its symbolism and because it could decide the balance of the Senate.

Many Republican Senate candidates still run ahead of Trump in the polls — an absolute necessity for defending blue- and purple-state seats up this year. But that wasn’t enough to keep strong incumbents like Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte from trailing consistently during Trump’s August doldrums.

August polls showing college-educated white voters turning against GOP senators alarmed Republicans, who feared it presaged major and increasing Trump drag on their Senate candidates down the ballot. Candidates in battleground states have meanwhile watched millions of dollars in anti-Trump attack ads and hundreds of Clinton field staffers pour in, leaving Republican Senate candidates defending themselves against not only their Democratic opponents but also, indirectly, Clinton as well.

Trump’s lack of a traditional campaign infrastructure is increasingly worrying Republicans, who say Senate Democrats are poised to benefit from Clinton’s investment in the battleground states.

In Ohio — where the Republican National Committee originally promised to have more than 250 field operators on the ground by July but hasn’t come close to delivering those numbers yet — Portman has for months been building his own ground infrastructure as he defends himself against Democrat Ted Strickland. (The RNC on Friday announced a deployment of 392 new field staffers to 11 states, including Ohio.) The Portman campaign will soon have 11 field offices and expects more than 1,000 volunteers to carry out at least one shift each week this fall.

Boosted by a big infusion of outside money, Portman has been running a pitch-perfect campaign, Republicans say, and the polls back that up. Along with Rubio, who only just joined his race, Portman may have been the only Senate Republican whose numbers actually looked better in August. Democratic groups recently canceled more than $2 million they had planned to spend in Ohio, a sign they may no longer be willing to bet big money on Strickland’s candidacy.

But even as Ohio looks better for Republicans, the GOP is fighting Trump-fueled fires in new states.

Senate Leadership Fund, the Mitch McConnell-allied GOP super PAC, announced just last week that it would pour more than $8 million into North Carolina TV ads to protect Burr.

But that’s because few expected former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Deborah Ross to be running neck-and-neck with Burr in the polls at this point. Clinton and her super PAC, Priorities USA Action, have already spent $21 million in the state to pro-Trump forces’ $2.5 million. Clinton and Democrats have also opened 30 field offices there. And Burr, the two-term Republican senator, has run a much quieter campaign than Portman and other incumbents who have known for months that they would have tough 2016 races.

"It’s a candidate problem. You can’t fire the candidate,” said one national Republican strategist, who detailed "seven or eight" attempts to get Burr to run a more energetic campaign. (The Burr campaign said the senator had been actively campaigning for months.)

Senate-focused Republicans in Washington cringed when a Democratic ad, featuring a Gold Star mother talking about her son’s death and Trump’s sparring with the family of deceased soldier Humayun Khan, went up on North Carolina TV with little response.

“We are just getting killed on the airwaves” in North Carolina and other presidential battleground states, one national GOP strategist said. “It’s not just affecting Donald Trump. If you’re running an ad in North Carolina, which has a huge military operation, talking about Gold Star families, [the ad] just doesn’t have to say ‘Richard Burr.’ It still hurts.”

Those advantages have Democrats thinking the year’s unusual politics could lead to victories in minority-heavy Arizona or even Georgia, a state that is slowly growing more diverse but was until recently considered to be under Republican lock and key. Yet self-funding Democrat Jim Barksdale is starting to gain traction in polls that also show Clinton in a tight battle with Trump. Barksdale won’t say how much he’s prepared to spend fighting for Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat, but he has joked he’s a “tightwad” who wouldn’t shell out more than $20 million.

“Georgia can turn blue very easily,” Barksdale said in an interview. “The things Trump has said have been very alarming, and I don’t envy [Isakson’s] situation. He’s trying to play it in a way where he doesn’t lose Trump voters.”

Mostly, though, Republican incumbents across the country are in better financial positions than their challengers, and they’ll benefit from spending by the Koch brothers network and other outside spenders as well.

But the deluge of cash that was expected to flow to Republicans as donors abandoned Donald Trump hasn’t come to the NRSC, at least not yet: The NRSC has raised $35 million thus far in 2016, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has raised just under $50 million.

"There’s this notion out there that we’ve been hit with this influx of cash because donors don’t want to give to the presidential, and that’s just not true,” one NRSC aide noted.

But Republicans are down, and not at all out, in their quest to keep the Senate.

The party secured a big win when Rubio entered the Florida Senate race, making it difficult for Democrats to pick up the seat. And they insist that Indiana is not lost despite Bayh’s comeback. It will be the site of heavy GOP spending this fall, according to multiple Republican strategists, that will focus on Bayh’s support for Obamacare, his residency and his post-Senate legal and corporate work in Washington.

If there’s one state that could save Republican chances, it’s Nevada. Trump and GOP Rep. Joe Heck are both polling well there, and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto hasn’t led Heck in a public poll so far.

“Nevada is going to be a key race — maybe the key race — to decide who controls the Senate,” said Senate Leadership Fund spokesman Ian Prior. “And we fully expect Harry Reid to continue to come unglued and unhinged trying to get Cortez Masto across the finish line.”

But Democrats think Republican bullishness on Nevada is horribly misplaced and that the state President Barack Obama carried by 7 percentage points will come home in the fall. They note Nevada is notoriously difficult to poll: Ahead of Reid’s 2010 reelection, polls had him trailing by an average of 3 points. He ended up winning comfortably on the back of record Latino turnout — something anti-Trump sentiment could prompt again.

“Assuming Trump continues to upset [minority] groups, it will likely have massive spillover effects in favor of Cortez Masto on Election Day,” said Edward Vargas, a pollster for Latino Decisions, which does Democratic and nonpartisan work. “Heck has this invisible vote he needs to worry about.”