Republicans Remain Slightly Favored To Take Control Of The Senate

NATE SILVER,FIVE THIRTY EIGHT

If Americans elected an entirely new set of senators every two years — as they elect members of the House of Representatives — this November’s Senate contest would look like a stalemate. President Obama remains unpopular; his approval ratings have ticked down a point or two over the past few months. But the Republican Party remains a poor alternative in the eyes of many voters, which means it may not be able to exploit Obama’s unpopularity as much as it otherwise might. Republicans usually have a turnout advantage, especially in midterm years, and their voters appear to be more enthusiastic about this November’s elections. Still, the gap is not as wide as it was in 2010.

The problem for Democrats is that this year’s Senate races aren’t being fought in neutral territory. Instead, the Class II senators on the ballot this year come from states that gave Obama an average of just 46 percent of the vote in 2012.¹
Democrats hold the majority of Class II seats now, but that’s because they were last contested in 2008, one of the best Democratic years of the past half-century. That year, Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by almost 11 percentage points. Imagine if 2008 had been a neutral partisan environment instead. We can approximate this by applying a uniform swing of 11 percentage points toward Republicans in each Senate race. In that case, Democrats would have lost the races in Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Oregon — and Republicans would already hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate.
It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that we continue to see Republicans as slightly more likely than not to win a net of six seats this November and control of the Senate. A lot of it is simply reversion to the mean.² This may not be a “wave” election as 2010 was, but Republicans don’t need a wave to take over the Senate.

However, I also want to advance a cautionary note. It’s still early, and we should not rule out the possibility that one party could win most or all of the competitive races.
It can be tempting, if you cover politics for a living, to check your calendar, see that it’s already August, and conclude that if there were a wave election coming we would have seen more signs of it by now. But political time is nonlinear and a lot of waves are late-breaking, especially in midterm years. Most forecasts issued at this point in the cycle would have considerably underestimated Republican gains in the House in 1994 or 2010, for instance, or Democratic gains in the Senate in 2006. (These late shifts don’t always work to the benefit of the minority party; in 2012, the Democrats’ standing in Senate races improved considerably after Labor Day.) A late swing toward Republicans this year could result in their winning as many as 10 or 11 Senate seats. Democrats, alternatively, could limit the damage to as few as one or two races. These remain plausible scenarios — not “Black Swan” cases.

GLOOMY FORECAST: GOP HAS A 55% CHANCE OF WINNING THE SENATE

NATE SILVER, five-thirty-eight

The Senate playing field remains fairly broad. There are 10 races where we give each party at least a 20 percent chance of winning,¹ so there is a fairly wide range of possible outcomes. But all but two of those highly competitive races (the two exceptions are Georgia and Kentucky) are in states that are currently held by Democrats. Furthermore, there are three states — South Dakota, West Virginia, and Montana² — where Democratic incumbents are retiring, and where Republicans have better than an 80 percent chance of making a pickup, in our view.
So it’s almost certain that Republicans are going to gain seats. The question is whether they’ll net the six pickups necessary to win control of the Senate. If the Republicans win only five seats, the Senate would be split 50-50 but Democrats would continue to control it because of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Joseph Biden.

Our March forecast projected a Republicans gain of 5.8 seats. You’ll no doubt notice the decimal place; how can a party win a fraction of a Senate seat? It can’t, but our forecasts are probabilistic; a gain of 5.8 seats is the total you get by summing the probabilities from each individual race. Because 5.8 seats is closer to six (a Republican takeover) than five (not quite), we characterized the GOP as a slight favorite to win the Senate.
The new forecast is for a Republican gain of 5.7 seats. So it’s shifted ever so slightly — by one-tenth of a seat — toward being a toss-up. Still, if asked to place a bet at even odds, we’d take a Republican Senate.

Of course, it can be silly to worry about distinctions that amount to a tenth of a seat, or a couple of percentage points. Nobody cares all that much about the difference between 77 percent and 80 percent and 83 percent. But this race is very close. When you say something has a 47 percent chance of happening, people interpret that a lot differently than if you say 50 percent or 53 percent — even though they really shouldn’t.³
It’s important to clarify that these forecasts are not the results of a formal model or statistical algorithm — although it’s based on an assessment of the same major factors that our algorithm uses. (Our
tradition is to switch over to fully automated and algorithmic Senate forecasts at some point during the summer.)



We usually begin these forecast updates with a broad view of the political landscape. Not all that much has changed over the past couple of months.

• President Obama remains fairly unpopular with an approval rating of about 43 or 44 percent. His numbers haven’t changed much since March (perhaps they’ve improved by half a percentage point). It may be that modestly improved voter perceptions about the economy are being offset by increasing dissatisfaction of his handling of foreign policy. Since the start of 2013, Obama’s foreign policy approval rating has dropped precipitously. And unlike his overall approval rating, it has shown no sign of recovering. It’s now more than 5 percentage points below his overall approval rating.

Over the past year and a half, the president has been bedraggled by foreign policy controversies, including his handling of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and their aftermath, the National Security Agency’s collection of data at home and abroad, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, and, most recently, the prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Both Democratic and Republican voters report lower levels of enthusiasm today than they did in 2010 (perhaps for good reason). But Republican voters are more enthusiastic than Democrats on a relative basis. That will potentially translate to an “enthusiasm gap” which favors the GOP, but not as much as it did in 2010.

Republicans’ recruiting of viable candidates is going better than in 2010 and 2012 although not uniformly so: they face potential issues in Mississippi and Oregon, for instance.

The quality of polling is somewhat problematic. Much of it comes from firms like Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports with dubious methodologies, explicitly partisan polling firms or new companies that so far have little track record. As a potential bright spot for Democrats, polling firms that use industry-standard methodologies seem to show slightly better results for them, on average. However, these high-quality polls are mostly reporting results among registered voters only, rather than likely voters. Thus, they aren’t yet accounting for the GOP’s potential turnout advantage.

Heavy Spending by Conservative Groups Tilts Senate Races.Obama, Citing New Laws, Says the G.O.P. Is Moving to Restrict Voting Rights

Clockwise from top left: Senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, all Democrats, are facing challenges from Republicans generously aided by outside conservative groups. Credit Clockwise from top left: Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images

N.Y. TIMES

Democrats in races that will help determine control of the Senate are rapidly burning through their campaign cash, whittling away their financial advantage over Republican opponents as they fend off attacks from conservative groups, according to figures released through Friday.

The spending on both sides underscores the critical role that outside conservative groups are playing as Republicans try to retake the Senate. In state after state, organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the nonprofit linked to the conservative billionaires David H. and Charles G. Koch, have kept Democrats on the defensive with a barrage of negative ads while establishment-backed Republican candidates raise money and navigate their way through primaries.

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Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, spent only about a third of what she collected through the end of March. But last month, Ms. Landrieu reserved $2.7 million of advertising time, according to strategists tracking both parties’ television spending, which will cut deeply into the $7.5 million she reported at the beginning of April.

“The spending totals so far show that a lot of Democratic candidates find themselves on the run,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democratic strategists say their candidates have faced a historic early onslaught of outside spending — about $33 million in all, most of it from Koch-linked groups — without squandering their coffers and while staying, for the most part, ahead of or even with their Republican rivals in the polls.

The Democratic counterattack is being led chiefly by super PACs, the groups legalized after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to allow big donors, unions and corporations to raise and spend unlimited contributions. By contrast, Republican super PACs, which have dominated fund-raising in the past two elections, appear to be collecting and spending less this time.

Instead, Republicans are relying heavily on nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors and whose political activities have come under scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service and congressional Democrats.

Several Republican challengers will need to spend more heavily in the weeks ahead to beat back rivals for the party’s nomination, or to introduce themselves to voters against Democrats who are already well known.

In the high-profile Senate race in Kentucky, neither Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, nor Alison Lundergan Grimes, his Democratic challenger, has released recent figures. But over the last six months, Ms. Grimes has steadily narrowed her financial gap with Mr. McConnell, who faces a primary challenge and attacks from conservative groups that are seeking to unseat him. In Republican-leaning Georgia, which has an open Senate seat, the Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn, posted consistently strong fund-raising numbers during the second half of last year.

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama deplored on Friday what he called a Republican campaign to deny voting rights to millions of Americans as he stepped up efforts to rally his political base heading into a competitive midterm campaign season.

Mr. Obama accused Republicans of trying to rig the elections by making it harder for older people, women, minorities and the impoverished to cast ballots in swing states that could determine control of the Senate.

“The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” Mr. Obama said in a hotel ballroom filled with cheering supporters, most of them African-American. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.”

Republicans in some swing states have advanced new laws that go beyond the voter identification requirements of recent years. Among other things, state lawmakers are pushing measures to limit the time polls are open and to cut back early voting, particularly weekend balloting that makes it easier for lower-income voters to participate. Other measures would eliminate same-day registration, make it more difficult to cast provisional ballots or curb the mailing of absentee ballots.

Over the last 15 months, at least nine states have enacted voting changes making it harder to cast ballots. A federal judge last month upheld laws in Arizona and Kansas requiring proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a passport, leading other states to explore following suit.

Sponsors of such laws have said they are trying to prevent voter fraud and argue that Democrats overstate the impact of common-sense measures in a crass and transparent effort to rile up their most fervent political supporters.

Mr. Obama said nothing about a compromise idea presented to him in Texas this week by Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former United Nations ambassador. Mr. Young proposed bridging the divide over ballot security by putting photographs on Social Security cards, which are issued to all citizens.

Former President Bill Clinton embraced the idea, but the White House did not. “We haven’t had a chance to review it,” said Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary.