Holding the Senate was always an uphill climb for Republicans this year because they are defending so many more seats than Democrats. But Donald Trump’s polarizing candidacy is converging with long-term shifts in voting patterns to make the hill even steeper.

Since the 1970s, the share of voters who split their tickets—supporting one party for president and the other in Senate races—has steadily declined. If that pattern persists in November, Republicans will likely lose their slim upper-chamber majority because the most competitive Senate races are clustered in blue or purple states where Trump faces the greatest resistance. To maintain control, Republicans will need either a dramatic Trump recovery in states such as Illinois and Wisconsin—or to convince more voters to split their ballots in Senate races than either side has typically persuaded lately. Neither will be easy.

In one respect, Democrats have helped Republican candidates to escape any Trump undertow. Although some individual Senate candidates have linked their opponents to the blustery nominee, Hillary Clinton has mostly chosen not to tie Trump to conservative thought but rather to define him as a fringe departure from it. Republicans are hopeful that will help conservative-leaning voters who can’t stomach Trump revert to their usual party loyalties in Senate races. “Voters are [receiving] multiple messages telling them that you can vote a different way down the ticket,” says Alex Lundry, co-founder of the GOP voter-targeting firm, Deep Root Analytics.

But those messages are competing against a long-term evolution in voters’ behavior that has made it tougher for all senators to survive in effect behind enemy lines—in states that usually prefer the other party for president. As party-line voting inside Congress has reached near-parliamentary levels, voters have responded by treating congressional elections less as a choice between individuals and more as a parliamentary-style referendum on which side they prefer to control the majority.

In yet another case in a rising trend of African-Americans losing their lives over nothing, a man in Las Vegas has been fatally shot. Mohammed Robinson, 31-year-old father of two, got into an altercation with a woman at a McDonalds for apparently failing to hear her request to hold the door open for her.

The woman then complained to her male companion, who promptly drew his weapon and shot Robinson dead.

He leaves behind a girlfriend and his fourteen-year-old daughter, who cannot comprehend why her father has been suddenly taken from her. “My dad would open the door and hold it for the lady but he probably didn’t hear her. I love him. I wish he was still here” mourned Miniya Sampson.

Robinson’s youngest daughter is just three months old and is suffering from a blood sepsis infection.

Colin Kaepernick made the decision to not stand during the National Anthem as a protest to the racial climate currently in the United States where he feels as if “black people” and other people of color are being oppressed.

The 49ers QB explained his actions Sunday saying, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. … If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

After seeing and hearing Kaepernick’s actions and words, other NFL players seem to have followed. One of those specifically, Eagles’ linebacker Myke Tararres. The rookie said Monday he planned to join the protest and will refuse to stand during the national anthem.

“We’ve got an issue in this country in this day and age, and I feel like somebody needs to step up and we all need to step up,” Tavarres said. “We’ve got that right. There’s just a lot going on that people don’t want to talk about, and I feel like us as athletes, we’re looked at as role models. And I feel like with Colin Kaepernick, he’s doing a great job for standing up in what he believes in, and most people may not like that, but that’s his opinion, he’s entitled to it, and I respect him for doing it.”

"White Lives Matter" members waving Confederate flags, bearing firearms and yelling through a bullhorn staged a rally outside the NAACP headquarters in Houston on Sunday.

White Lives Matter member Scott Lacy told Click2Houston.com that group chose the location because the NAACP is "one of the most racist groups in America."

Lacy also happens to be a member of the Aryan Rennaissance Society, a Texas-based neo-Nazi group that has described itself as "the leading force behind the WLM movement," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The ARS describes itself as a "network of dedicated White Separatists diligently striving to impart a New Racial Consciousness to Aryankind.” It hopes to create “an Aryan oligarchy based on genetic aristocracy” to “enhance the Race.” The overall idea, ARS says, is to protect threatened white people from genocide and the “bastardization of the white race” through interbreeding.