Oh, No! Election Day is Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010...

Good evening.
36 of the 100 US Senate seats will be on the ballots in 35 states this November. 18 of those seats are presently held by Dems and 18 are held by Repubs.
Most of the contests, but certainly not all, involve an incumbent seeking reelection. We have already seen a few incumbents not getting past a challenge from within their own party.
I thought what I would do today is lay the groundwork for where we perhaps are as of May 20th.
Larry Sabato is a political pundit at UVA here in Charlottesville. I am not a big fan of his, but he does put out his projections. If any of yall would like to cite someone else, please do so. Please.
As of 5/3, he had 18 of the elections in the Repub column ("Safe," "Likely" or "Leaning"). He had 9 heading toward the Dems and 9 Toss-ups.
His new analysis on 5/20 has 21 in the Repub camp to some degree with 8 going for Dems and 7 Toss-ups.

I will be back tomorrow morning with details.
Again, if there is some pundit you think we should be following, please let us know.

I googled and found Larry Sabato's page -- here's the link if anyone wants to see his analysis in more depth:

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/ljs2010012101/

For another view of the Senate races, I've always found Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight to be an objective source. He's a pundit that leans left, but if we average his analysis along with Sabato's, we may get closer to to reality.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

For instance, Nate provided an indepth analysis on the Senate races last month (4/23/10) and has the GOP picking up 4 seats, whereas I think I read on Sabato's blog that he's predicting a 7-seat pickup for the GOP. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. You can see Nate's info and some intelligent commentary, graphs and charts (where he breaks it down state by state) here:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/senate-forecast-update-little-chance-of.html

Might be fun to compare the results after November.

Thanks, Irishk, for the links to Larry Sabato and Nate Silver. I enjoyed reading Silver's commentary, although it is a month old.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of a baker's dozen of the 36 races.
(D) = Democrat
(R) = Republican
(LS) = Larry Sabato
(NS) = Nate Silver
(RJB) = Me

Arkansas (now held by a D): LS - Leans (R); NS - Likely (R); RJB - Likely (R).
California (D): LS - Tossup; NS - Leans (D); RJB - Leans (D).
Colorado (D): LS - Tossup; NS - Tossup; RJB - Tossup.
Connecticut (D): LS - Tossup; NS - Safe; RJB - Leans (D).
Delaware (D): LS - Leans (R); NS - Likely (R); RJB - Likely (R).
Florida (R): LS -Tossup; NS - Leans (R); RJB - Leans (R).
Illinois (D): LS - Tossup; NS - Tossup; RJB - Tossup.
Indiana (D): LS - Leans (R); NS - Likely (R); RJB - Leans (R).
Kentucky (R): LS - Leans (R); NS - Likely (R); RJB - Leans (R).
Nevada (D): LS - Leans (R); NS - Leans (R); RJB - Leans (R).
North Dakota (D): LS - Safe (R); NS - Safe (R); RJB - Safe (R).
Ohio (R): LS - Tossup; NS - Tossup; RJB - Tossup.
Pennsylvania: LS - Tossup, NS Leans (R); RJB - Tossup.

I probably should have added New Hampshire and Missouri. I will edit those in at some point.

Wow, you put a lot of work into that post, thanks.

In other news, the Miami Herald is reporting the results of a poll today that has Crist at 30%, Rubio at 27% and Meeks in the teens. MOE is more than 4% so I guess the Repub and the Independent are essentially tied. For more on the internals of the poll:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/22/1643508/poll-has-crist-clinging-to-lead.html

Excellent.
Recapping some of the FL poll (while readily acknowledging that the sources may have liberal tendencies and the results don't exceed the margin of error):
Charlie Crist (I): 30%
Marco Rubio (R): 27%
Kendrick Meek (D): 15%
Undecided/Other: a huge 28%

Crist gets support from 38% of those registered voters polled who describe themselves as Dems, 26% of Repubs and 39% of those who say they are independent.
This could, I say could, be looking good for Crist. I suspect he will get the majority of the undecideds and there may be Meek backers who will switch to Crist at the end.
Crist is getting criticized for bolting the Repub party when it became clear that he would not get the nomination. But he still gets good marks for his performance as Governor.

I will put aside my election notebook for tonight after this.

HAWAII HOUSE (5/23)
Republicans picked up a seat in the U.S. Congress when Charles Djou (R), a city councilman from Honolulu, won the seat vacated by a Dem who resigned to run for Governor.
Djou will have to face voters again in November to win a full 2 year term.
Republicans are crowing about winning a seat in the district where Obama grew up.. But there is a lot less here then meets the eye.
The vote:
Charles Djou (R): 67,610 (39.4%)
Colleen Hanabusa (D) - state Senate President: 52,802 (30.8%)
Ed Cage (D) - former member of the US House: 47,391 (27.6%)

The Dems in HI don't have a primary. The battle between Hanabusa and Cage was bitter. One of them will emerge as the opponent to Djou in Nov.

I'm not familiar with the track record of Ipsos either...but it appears they came in tied for 8th place in the '08 Presidential election. Rasmussen was #1.

Curious though that Rasmussen had Rubio up by 8 points in his poll of a week ago.

That Fordham study was incomplete - you can see that it was published the day after the election. After all the provisional, mail-in and military ballots were counted, Rasmussen tied with about 6 other pollsters for the top accuracy spot and Ipsos was right behind them.

Cycloptichorn

Aha, I see where I missed the words "initial report", thanks for the correction.

So, where did dead last Newsweek finally end up? Got a link?

Haha, I don't have a link on me, but their polling outfit sucks. The only one who is more reliably incorrect is Zogby...

Cycloptichorn

Simmons has dropped out of the CT Senate race on the Republican side. This is a huge gift for the Democrats in the state and makes it infinitely more likely that they will hold this seat, as the remaining Republican candidate - Linda McMahon - is a joke in many ways with a very checkered past and some pretty wild views.

If the Dems manage to avoid the 'wave' this cycle, it will be in large part because of stupid decisions such as this on the part of highly motivated, far-right wing activists to support candidates who are much harder to elect in the general.

Cycloptichorn

Connecticut Senate
Thanks for the breaking news about Rob Simmons (R) ending his campaign.
Back a page or so, I referenced a 5/18 poll from Rasmussen showing Blumenthal (D) leading McMahon (R) 48-45%; leading Simmons (R) 50-39% and leading Peter Schiff (R) 53-37%. That poll was taken a day after the NYTimes article revealing Blumenthal had padded his resume to suggest he was a Vietnam veteran.
Simmons is a VN veteran with 2 Bronze Stars according to his website.
There was a Republican Party convention this past weekend that endorsed McMahon. But there is still a primary in August to formally pick a candidate.
Simmons waffled a few days after the convention before saying today that he is pulling out. His name will still be on the primary ballot but he is shutting down his offices and terminating his staff.
It all comes down to (duh) - money.
McMahon has said she will spend $50 million, much of it her own money, on the race.

New FL Senate poll -



Cycloptichorn

It looks like that's the same one rjb analyzed a few posts above. Numbers are the same, anyway. Wouldn't it be something if Meeks won? lol

Haha, my numbers only add up to 95/100. I'll look closer before I copy and paste next time.

Cycloptichorn

My mistake. The Unsure number should have read Unsure/Other and would be the "plug" to make the total equal 100.
There are a couple of minor Dem candidates still in the race.

WISCONSIN (5/27)
Russ Feingold, the 3 term incumbent Democrat, is cooling his heals waiting for the Republicans to settle on a candidate.
There seem to be 3 Republican contenders. Feingold leads against any of them but by a statistically insignificant margin, according to Rasmussen's poll of 500 likely voters:
Russ Feingold (D): 47%
Dave Westlake (R) - businessman: 38%

Russ Feingold (D): 47%
Terrence Wall (R) - real estate entrepreneur: 41%

Russ Feingold (D): 46%
Ron Johnson (R) - businessman: 44%

Former Governor and HHS secretary Tommy Thompson (R) was the early favorite of the Repubs and he fared well in hypothetical match ups with Feingold. But Thompson, after a long period of contemplation, decided not to run.
The state's Commerce secretary, Richard Leinenkugel (R), was in the race until the end of last week when he withdrew and threw his support to Johnson, the surprise newcomer.
A Republican party convention last weekend voted on the 1st ballot (non-binding) to endorse Johnson. The Republican primary is set for Sept 19th.
Rasmussen considers the fact that an incumbent can't muster 50% support at this point a potentially significant event.
Feingold is viewed Very Favorably by 32% and Very Unfavorably by 26%. That 26% could be seen as reflecting the anti-incumbent mood of the electorate this year.
The 3 Repubs have Very Favorable or Very Unfavorable ratings in the single digits. That is not surprising since none of them have been in politics before and are pretty much unknown.
President Obama carried WI 56% to 43% and Feingold, back in 2004, won 55%% to 44%.
Nate Silver and Larry Sabato both have WI as being "Likely Dem" in November.

There are something like 13 primaries in total around the country next week and on June 8th!

Heard yesterday that here in Washington state Dino Rossi (r) is going after Patty Murray(d). Current polls put him 3 points down. Rossi has a long solid history in Washington politics. If this election becomes a broom for incumbents as I expect it will Murray is almost certainly a goner.

I'd lay money that Rossi loses this one, just like he lost the last one. He's not a great candidate.

Cycloptichorn

That matters less this year then that he is not the incumbent. Not being a D will help as well.