Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday predicted that Democrats will keep holding on to the Senate through the 2024 presidential elections.
“I absolutely do, if we stick to our North Star, which is, help people with things that they need help with,” Schumer told NBC News.
Democrats fended off the Republicans’ hoped-for “red wave” during this year’s midterms and bucked the historical precedent of a sitting party losing big in the off-year elections.
The party kept the Republicans’ takeover of the House to a minimum and then expanded their majority in the Senate, bumping up their upper chamber advantage from the current 50-50 split to 51-49.
Schumer, who has been reelected to serve another term as Senate majority leader, told NBC that he was confident in the party’s 2024 prospects because of congressional Democrats’ recent legislative wins — and because of the clear contrast against Republicans.
While Democrats were working on advancing the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, Schumer said, Republicans appeared overtaken by the “MAGA influence.”
“The MAGA influence on the party will not go away very quickly. They’re very strong. They’re very active. They’re hard-right. … You put those two things together, and I think the election results in 2024 might be better than a lot of people are now predicting,” Schumer said in the interview.
The senator had predicted just before this year’s midterms that his party would hold on to the Senate “and maybe even pick up seats” — and later called the results a “vindication” for the party.