The Republican Party's two-year run in the majority of the US Senate is at serious risk and may well end on November 8, senior congressional aides said on Wednesday, blaming Donald Trump as a drag on down-ballot Republican candidates.
With 13 days to go before elections, several Senate aides from both parties privately warned of trouble for Republicans.
"Things are not good ... the Senate is gone," said one Republican aide who asked not to be identified in order to candidly discuss the turbulent outlook for the 2016 campaign.
Citing opinion polling, the aide said Republicans could lose Senate seats in six battleground states: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Missouri.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday and conducted from October 20 to October 24 found that 41 per cent of Republicans now expect Clinton to win the election, versus 40 per cent for Trump.
That is a sharp decline in confidence from last month, when 58 per cent of Republicans said they thought their party's nominee would win, versus 23 per cent for Clinton.
Republicans now hold 54 of the Senate's 100 seats. Democrats must snatch four seats to win a majority, provided their presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, beats Trump.
That would make Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, the tie-breaking Senate vote since the vice president votes in order to break a tie.
On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicted Democrats would gain five to seven seats. Such a result would leave them short of the 60 votes needed to easily get things done in the Senate, but it would provide a majority.
A less pessimistic Senate Republican aide said Senate control still "could go either way" but sketched out problems.
In Pennsylvania, the aide said, Senator Pat Toomey has to "fight off dead weight at the top of the ticket," referring to Trump. In Missouri, he said, Democrat Jason Kander, who is trying to unseat Senator Roy Blunt, is "a great candidate."
Nationally, "the reason we don't hold the Senate, if we don't, is because of Donald Trump," the aide said.
