With 1 Mo Left, NYT Finds Republicans Maintain Edge in Senate Races. BUT It's Narrowing.

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, left, and the independent candidate Greg Orman before a debate last month in Hutchinson, Kan. Credit Charlie Riedel/Associated Press        

NATE COHN, N.Y. TIMES 

The fight for control of the Senate is stable and tight, with Republicans maintaining the inside track to a majority in the latest round of data from the New York Times/CBS News/YouGov online panel of more than 100,000 respondents.

The Republicans lead by at least four percentage points in enough races to finish with 50 seats — just one short of the 51 seats they need to overcome Joe Biden’s tiebreaking vote and take the Senate. The Republicans’ likely gains include six seats currently held by the Democrats: in South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alaska. If those leads hold up, Republicans have four opportunities to capture the 51st seat they need in Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa and Kansas.

Nonetheless, the data suggests that the Democrats retain a clear, if difficult, path to victory. Perhaps most notable, the data offers reason to question the conventional wisdom that Republicans have recently made substantial gains in Colorado and Iowa.

The Democrats maintain a lead of at least four points in only enough races to hold 46 seats, but they hold a nominal edge in three more states: North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa. If the Democrats sweep all three — an outcome by no means assured with such tenuous leads — Senate control could be decided by Kansas, where the Republican senator Pat Roberts is tied with the independent candidate Greg Orman. If Mr. Orman won and caucused with the Democrats, then they would hold the Senate.

 

In Georgia, the Republican David Perdue saw his lead fall to four percentage points against Michelle Nunn.

Ms. Nunn gained about a point among past respondents who switched from the undecided column, and also benefited from rising enthusiasm among black voters — who now represent 28 percent of likely voters, about the same as in 2010. Even so, Ms. Nunn faces the largest gap between the preferences of likely voters and registered voters of any Democratic candidate. Ms. Nunn is tied with Mr. Perdue among registered voters.

 

With so many close races and so few persuadable voters, turnout will be pivotal in many contests, including in Georgia. The Democrats have invested millions more than Republicans in building a strong turnout operation, and the effects of that effort are already evident in the YouGov data. More voters have been contacted by Democratic than Republican campaigns in every state but Kansas and Kentucky, where Republican senators fought competitive primaries. Whether the Democratic turnout machine can turn its advantage in voter contacts into additional votes on Election Day might well determine Senate control.

The Election is Six Weeks From Today. Here Are Six Things We Know About It.



CHRIS CILLIZZA, WASHINGTON POST

Six weeks from today, the country will vote. (Yes, I am excited!)
While there are still plenty of variables at play, I (and the political class more generally) do know some things -- both about where the races stand today and where they are headed. Here are six things I know.

Bruce Braley

1. The Senate is a toss up.   That, in and of itself, is a remarkable statement given how the map so heavily favors Republicans and how historical trends for second term midterms bode so poorly for the President's party.  And yet, all of the election models agree that control remains very much a close call -- although, at least right now, they also all suggest that Republicans have an edge  -- albeit it a slight one. [Not so slight if you look at the NYT Upshot or Nate Silver's blog, FiveThirtyEight. Respectively they give the Rebooblicans a 67% or a 60% chance to take the Senate. Doesn't seem so slight to Esco, but Esco's more than willing to accept the optimism of the Washington Post]  Make no mistake: If Republicans fail to take back the Senate with this map, the Democratic retirements that have come this cycle and President Obama's popularity problems, it will be a gigantic swing and miss. And, as of today, it remains a possible if not likely outcome.

Sen. Kay Hagan

2.  There are five races that will decide the majority. Alaska, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina are the four closest Democratic-held seats, according to the models I wrote about on Monday -- and the ones likely to be the deciding sixth GOP pickup if Republicans win back the Senate. (That assumes wins by Republicans in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana.) Republicans look best in Iowa followed by Alaska, Colorado and North Carolina. (Sen. Kay Hagan's remarkable resilience is a whole blog post of its own.) Then there is Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who has developed into the GOP's biggest headache in the final stretch of the race.  Roberts is in real danger of losing to independent Greg Orman -- especially now that Democrat Chad Taylor has been removed from the ballot. If Republicans win six Democratic seats and lose Kansas -- thus keeping them from the majority -- Roberts will be the most hated man in Republican politics. And rightly so since this race should never have been a race in the first place.





3. President Obama is a big problem for Democrats. B-I-G.  In a series of poll released last week in places like Arkansas, Kentucky and even North Carolina, President Obama's job approval rating never crested 40 percent. In the first two states, he was in the very low 30s. Ask any Democratic consultant what their side's biggest problem is heading into November and they will tell you Obama. Ask any Republican consultant what their side's biggest advantage is heading into November and they will tell you Obama. Bipartisanship! The reality is that for people like Pryor, Landrieu and Alaska's Mark Begich, overperforming the president of their party by 15 or more points is a very tough thing to do.  That's true -- to a lesser extent, but still true -- for people like Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Bruce Braley in Iowa and Mark Udall in Colorado.  The tough thing for Democrats is that it's getting dangerously close to being too late for a change in Obama's approval numbers to have a real impact on the political dynamic in their state.

Steve Israel is the Chairman of the DCCC. (Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

4. Democrats -- and Democratic-aligned super PACs -- are winning the spending war. This is perhaps the most under-told story of the election.  Here's the Wall Street Journal on the trend: "Since July 3, the largest super PACs aligned with Democrats have raised four times the money of pro-GOP super PACs, and have now spent $60 million to Republicans' $38 million, data compiled by The Wall Street Journal shows." And, it's not just on the super PAC side.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee doubled the fundraising haul of its Republican counterpart in August and had an almost $10 million cash edge heading into the fall. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended August with a $5 million lead over the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And, Republican strategists closely watching ad spending in key Senate races acknowledge that they are being outspent -- in some cases badly -- on TV. In Colorado, for example, Democrats and their allied groups dropped over $1 million on TV ads in the first two weeks of September; Republicans spent just over $300,000. North Carolina and, until recently, Iowa are other examples of where Democrats have used their spending edge to boost their candidates. And, that advantage will get even more important in October. Democrats' early money allowed them to reserve air time at lower rates while Republicans are just now doing that.

U.S. Senator Mark Udall, left, and his Republican challenger, Cory Gardner. (Denver Post file photos)

5. Republicans think the Islamic State is their winning issue.  Scott Brown (R) is up with a TV ad this morning attacking President Obama and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) as "confused about the nature of the threat" posed by the Islamic State. In Colorado, Rep. Cory Gardner (R) has hammered Sen. Mark Udall (D) on the issue; "The only person who doesn't believe [the Islamic State] is an imminent threat is Mark Udall," Gardner told the Denver Post last week. Less than four in ten Americans approved of how President Obama was handling foreign policy in an early September Washington Post-ABC News poll. That same survey showed a majority (53 percent) of people said that Obama had been "too cautious" on foreign affairs.  More than seven in ten self-identified Republicans felt that way.  Hitting Obama on his response to the Islamic State has become the new hitting Obama on the Affordable Care Act for the Republican base. It remains to be seen whether the ongoing airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria will alter than dynamic.

 

Gov. Tom Corbett (Pa.)

6. Governors are going down. Yes, there are a handful of very vulnerable Senate incumbents and a handful of sitting House members -- Mike Grimm, I am looking at you -- who won't be coming back for the 114th Congress. But, if you are looking for high-profile incumbents headed toward defeat, the 36 governors races on the ballot in 42 days time is where you should be looking. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania is a dead man walking and has been for at least a year. Maine's Paul LePage (R) has a chance but that's only because a third party candidate is splitting up the considerable anti-him vote.  Democratic governors in Illinois and Connecticut -- two states where Democrats start at the five-yard line and just have to get the ball in the end zone (see this post on political cliches ASAP) -- look to be in bad shape. And, in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is in serious jeopardy of losing after a first term in which his main accomplishment was to drive a massive wedge within the state's Republican party.  But, wait, there's more!  Govs. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Scott Walker (R-Wisc.), Rick Snyder (R-Mich.), John Hickenlooper (D-Co.) and Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) are all in serious races where no one would be surprised if they lost.

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P.S.:  As of 9/29/14,  All three major election forecasting models saw an uptick in the likelihood of Republicans winning the six seats they need to retake the Senate majority over the past week, movement largely due to the party's strengthened chances in Alaska, Colorado and Iowa.

Democrats Are in a Perilous Position in 2014 Senate Races

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, campaigns in Frankfort, Kentucky, in May.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

FIVE-THIRTY EIGHT

Can you predict Senate elections more accurately than a basic polling average? It’s something we at FiveThirtyEight try to do. For our official Senate forecast, we’ll include adjustments for fundraising, candidate quality, pollster bias (statistical bias, that is), the historical political leanings of each state, etc.
But the basic polling average still does pretty well. So before we launch our official projections, let’s take a look at what the latest polling shows and how that compares with FiveThirtyEight’s informal Senate forecast.

We’ll look at Senate races with at least one poll from the first six months of this year – only races without a major third-party contender. I took a simple average of polls, one from each pollster. For pollsters that published more than one poll in a state, I took average of their polls, then treated that as a single poll in the overall average. In races where it’s relatively unclear who will be the general election candidate, I simply averaged the contenders. (This is basically an offshoot of the model I presented in April.)
Here’s how the polls-only forecast sees things compared to our most recent FiveThirtyEight projection (from June):



If Democrats win all the states in which the polls now favor them, the party would lose four seats (Alaska, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia) and pick up Georgia. Add on a probable loss in the Senate race in South Dakota (which isn’t included here because it’s a three-way matchup), and Democrats will hold on to a 51-to-49 seat majority in the next Senate. Sum up the probabilities of each race, and Democrats end up with about 50 seats, on average, in the new Senate. That would be good enough for them to keep control of the chamber, with Vice President Joe Biden acting as a tiebreaker.

But notice that, according to the polls, there are a lot of tight races.

Democrats have between a 42 and 62 percent chance of winning in nine races. At least per the polls, we can probably call Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina all tossups. Note how, for the most part, the FiveThirtyEight forecast sticks relatively close to the polling average. There are three races for which the two disagree.

In Georgia, the FiveThirtyEight projection is far more pessimistic about Democratic prospects than the polls. Here’s why: No Democrat holds an elected statewide office in Georgia. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race in the state in 14 years. No Democrat has won a presidential race in the state in 22 years. The Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn, is probably benefitting from name recognition; her father, Sam Nunn, was a well-regarded senator from the Peach State. That edge may disappear once voters realize Michelle is not Sam. Moreover, Republicans may coalesce around the winner of the contentious GOP primary between Jack Kingston and David Perdue.

Kentucky is a similar case – the polls show a Democrat holding her own a in a deeply red state. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has all the fundamentals going for him: President Obama is deeply unpopular in Kentucky, McConnell is an incumbent, and Democrats haven’t won a statewide federal race in Kentucky in 18 years. They haven’t won a Senate race in 22 years. In May, I estimated that these factors knocked down Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes’s chances of winning by nearly 30 percentage points, from the low 40s into the teens.

AP Photo

In Arkansas, there has been talk about how Republican Rep. Tom Cotton, [above] as a candidate, hasn’t lived up to expectations. Still, Obama is also deeply unpopular in Arkansas, and there have been many Republican-sponsored polls in the past few months suggesting that Cotton is ahead by about 5 percentage points. Those polls are down-weighted in our average because no pollster is counted more than once. But it seems odd that Democrats haven’t responded with their own internal polls, as they had done earlier in the campaign.
But right now, let’s take the polls’ word for it; if Republicans sweep those nine close races (plus South Dakota), the GOP would pick up 10 seats, controlling 55 in the new Senate. If Republicans lost all of them (including Georgia, Kentucky and Arkansas), they’d pick up only two seats — holding 47.

In other words, the final outcome for the Senate could be anything from a minor Republican gain to a GOP romp. At the moment, the state of play seems manageable from a Democratic perspective, but the party’s position is perilous. A tiny shift could tip the canoe and spill a lot of Democrats overboard.