Republican strategists predict that Republicans will return home on Election Day and support Senate candidates and lower-seed Republicans in key states, even though recent numbers show their candidates are at a disadvantage.

“Many Trump voters simply haven’t decided on the Republican candidate yet,” said one veteran Republican strategist.

However, these voters are expected to “come home” and “vote Republican.”

In Pennsylvania, one of the battleground states, Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick trailed Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) in a New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month. Half of the state’s registered voters chose the incumbent Democrat, with only 36 percent saying they would vote for McCormick.

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“He has a little bit of a name recognition problem,” the strategist said of McCormick. “He’s running against an incumbent who bears the name of a family that has been involved in Pennsylvania politics for a very, very long time. And Casey doesn’t come up very often.”

His challenge, the strategist said, is to “link Casey to the unpopular aspects of the national Democrats.”

However, he expressed his confidence in McCormick’s ability and praised his campaign so far. “He’s running a great campaign,” the strategist said. He added that the Republican also has all the financial means he needs to pull it off.

“If he can’t win this race, it’s just not possible to overthrow an incumbent,” the veteran Republican strategist noted.

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McCormick’s campaign team did not comment to Fox News Digital.

Wisconsin Republican candidate, businessman Eric Hovde, also lagged behind Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) in the same poll, but to a lesser extent.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Hovde spokesman Zach Bannon said: “Senator Baldwin, a 38-year politician, has done nothing but fail the people of Wisconsin by rubber-stamping the Biden-Harris administration’s reckless spending spree and radical open borders policies. The people of Wisconsin are ready for change and will hold Senator Baldwin accountable for her decades of failure this fall.”

Republican candidates in Arizona and Nevada, Kari Lake and retired Army Captain Sam Brown, are also considered disadvantaged in their races, a leading nonpartisan political analyst found. Along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the races in Arizona and Nevada are rated “leaning Democratic” by the Cook Political Report.

Brown’s campaign team did not provide Fox News Digital with a comment prior to publication.

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According to the veteran GOP strategist, Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona in 2022, “has a problem that arose during her last run with moderates in Arizona. And she is working to win them back.”

In some Republican circles, strategists are predicting that Trump will need to win a decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona to “pull her up.” But that could prove difficult, as Trump won the state by less than four percentage points in 2016 and lost it by less than one percentage point in 2020.

Lake’s campaign team did not provide Fox News Digital with a comment prior to publication.

According to the veteran strategist, the expectation is that the Senate election “will play out similarly to the presidential election,” especially given the significant decline in split-ticket voting in recent years. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was the only senator elected in the 2022 midterm elections to run differently from her state’s presidential primary. All 34 other Senate elections went according to the will of their respective states.

The strategist further claimed that Democrats appeared to have “put on their jerseys,” or thrown their weight behind the party’s Senate candidate, relatively early in the campaign, as a result of the enthusiasm that followed President Biden’s suspension of the campaign and his replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.

GOP strategist David Kochel echoed this sentiment, saying, “Kicking out Biden was the best thing the (Democrats) could have done to reverse their lackluster performance. They have real enthusiasm that they have lacked throughout the campaign.”

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According to Republican strategist Doug Heye, part of the problem these candidates face may be former President Trump himself. “Trump has low potential,” he explained.

He added that “many of these Democrats were held back by Biden’s extremely low probability of success” before the president dropped out of the race.

But there may be more to it, argues Jim Kessler, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “For a significant number of voters, the Republican Party is simply unattractive,” he said. “And that includes the traditional party bigwigs.”

He claimed that many aspects of the party in the Trump era have been discouraging for these “traditional” members of the GOP, and they hope for a “return to ‘normalcy'” in the post-his leadership era. “But to win the nomination, these GOP Senate candidates had to kiss Trump’s ring and that turns off so many voters that they underperform,” he added.

In addition, “Dobbs is a real problem for Republicans. Women and young people are not happy,” Kessler claimed, suggesting that the overturning of the Roe vs. Wade ruling will continue to cause problems for Republicans in election campaigns.

Republican strategist John Feehery attributed Republicans’ difficulties in part to the difficult nature of running against incumbents, as well as “the confusion at the top of the ballot.”

He pointed out that Republican challengers have not yet aired many of their television ads, which could be a significant turning point for them.

As for the race for the Senate seat in Montana, the veteran strategist said, “Many Republicans are very confident” that former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy has a chance of ousting Senator Jon Tester (Democrat of Montana) from office.

But even the Montana race and the toss-up in Ohio are not sure-fire wins for Republicans, even though both states voted for Trump twice. That’s because of “the strength of the two most vulnerable Democrats – Tester and (Sen. Sherrod) Brown – who are just outperforming on the partisan ballots in Ohio and Montana,” Kochel said. “They’re really good politicians.”

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Campaign officials for Sheehy and Ohio Republican candidate Bernie Moreno declined to comment to Fox News Digital.

Kessler added: “The Democrats in these swing states have always done better than a normal Democrat because that’s the only way to win at all. They had to be exceptional candidates to win the first time around, and they learned how to survive to stay in office.”

One race that has emerged as a major opportunity for Republicans is the Senate battle in Michigan, a key swing state. With the incumbent’s retirement, Democrats have lost a crucial advantage. The veteran GOP strategist claimed: “What I’ve seen shows that Michigan is extremely competitive.”

In the New York Times-Siena College poll, the Republican candidate, former Rep. Mike Rogers, was at 41%, just one percentage point behind his opponent, Democrat Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, at 42%.

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Chris Gustafson, spokesman for the Rogers campaign, said in a statement: “The fact is that Biden and Harris have crippled the economy with outrageous spending, their policies have flooded our streets with drugs and criminals, and Slotkin has been with them every step of the way. Michigan voters know that Mike Rogers has their back and will let the failures of the last four years go.”

Philip Letsou, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement: “The NRSC has recruited political outsiders who continue to make names for themselves and narrow the gap with career Democratic politicians who have been in office for decades. Participation numbers will drop significantly if Republican candidates campaign more heavily.”

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