last night heated debates across the country the economy, crime, voting rights, now remember here, the senate is split 50-50 so every competitive race is crucial. cnn s political correspondent abby phillips joins us now. the senate and the big picture here. yeah, victor and erica, look, this is going to be a very close midterm cycle and every single race counts, here s why, take a look at where the balance of power stands here in the senate in terms of these are the races that are competitive in this cycle, look over here, just three seats, three seats are rated ass to-ups, that mean that are favored democrats likely to be in the democrat column or lean democratic and 20 are leaning toward the republican column likely or solidly republican and that s why you re seeing such focus on just a few of these races, let s talk about some of them, these are the three cnn rates as our toss-ups in the senate. the georgia race, incumbent senator raphael warnock going up against hersc
those seats but they are key battlegrounds, battlegrounds for a lot of different reasons, one of them being, some demographic changes, you have redistricting but you also have this overarching issue of the economy and just like in the united states senate the battleground here in the house is so incredibly narrow, 19 seats are rated by cnn as toss-ups, democrats are defending or favored in 205 seats, republicans in 211 seats and if you look at the balance of power in the house, democrats only have an eight-seat margin it s not going to take very much for republicans to gain an advantage in this chamber, one of the problems here for democrats in a midterm cycle like this they re the incumbent and typically when incumbent presidents are at his favorability level the party in power, loses two dozen seats and