The first Senate race I covered was in 1986 for newspapers in Florida owned by The New York Times Company.

Bob Graham, a popular two-term Democratic governor, was running to unseat Republican Senator Paula Hawkins, a conservative beneficiary of the Reagan landslide that flipped the Senate to Republicans in 1980.

Though Ms. Hawkins was the incumbent, Mr. Graham was heavily favored, and I was assigned to shadow him. He was one of those politicians who truly enjoyed campaigning, enthusiastically glad-handing voters as he and a small band of reporters flew around the state. The governor and his aides became so confident that they allowed us reporters to talk them into an unscheduled detour to Key West, ostensibly to campaign but really just to chill and have lunch.

If only the scores of campaigns I have written about since had been so accommodating. I’ve covered every congressional campaign cycle for the past four decades — interspersed with presidential elections, special elections and disputed elections — and not one of them included a stop in Key West.

While congressional campaigns have changed enormously over the years, the way The Times covers them is fundamentally the same as it was nearly four decades ago: We focus on individual races, in pursuit of broader themes and ramifications for what is happening — or going to happen — on Capitol Hill and, more generally, in national politics. We look for trends resonating through elections, such as how the debate over abortion rights is influencing congressional races around the country.

In our reporting this year on Senate campaigns, our emphasis has been on whether Democrats can sustain their razor-thin majority given a map of races that favors Republicans. Two embattled Democratic incumbents — Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio — are running for re-election in states Donald J. Trump won in 2020 and is expected to win this year. Others are on the ballot in crucial, hotly contested swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.