Republican Panic Recedes

Donald Trump has achieved two things besides locking up the Republican presidential nomination. The first is widely acknowledged: He now has a real chance of beating Hillary Clinton. Sean Trende, the best of the big-picture political writers, puts the possibility Trump will win the presidency at 30 percent. That sounds about right, for the moment anyway.

The second achievement is the effect Trump’s rise has had on the political environment. It's helped Republicans. GOP leaders had feared they'd lose the Senate overwhelmingly, maybe the House too, and lots of governors as a result of a Trump wipeout in November. But now that the Trump-Clinton race looks to be reasonably close, that fear has receded.

Let's look at the landslide anxiety before getting back to Trump. Until around the time of the Indiana primary on May 3, which Trump won in a blowout, Republicans feared the worst. Then Scott Reed, the political mastermind at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ordered an initial round of polls in six Senate races.

In nearly every state where incumbents face stiff challenges—Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire—polls found Republican incumbents doing as well as or better than expected. The same was true in Nevada, where Rep. Joe Heck is running for the open Senate seat. In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson polled slightly below the other Republicans but still in a competitive position.

All but Johnson were within the margin of error in the poll. And this was before the chamber spent $10 million in May on ads in the contested races.