Hello everybody. Welcome once again to StephenCLE's Ratings. In this episode, we take another look at the Presidential race, as well as the race for control of the US Senate.
In our last update on July 7, we had a 262-191-85 lead for Barack Obama in the presidential race, and a 50-50 tie in the Senate. How will this time shake out?
First to recap, in our last update, I had following distribution of electoral votes:
Safe D – 149
Likely D – 52
Lean D – 61
Toss Up – 85
Lean R – 35
Likely R – 42
Safe R – 114
In the last month, the race has definitely moved away from being a toss up contest into one in which Barack Obama clearly has the lead. Even the national pollsters (which the exception of Rasmussen’s flat-out ridiculous national tracker) now have Obama ahead, whereas at this time last month most were showing a tied race.
The Presidential Map:
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Here is the breakdown of ratings changes for this update (I only have 3, interestingly enough):
Connecticut – moves from Safe D to Likely D – I think Obama is showing a little bit of weakness in the Acela corridor relative to 2008, and a lot of that might be his Midwestern-geared attacks on Bain Capital and Romney’s economic plan in general, which has clearly ruffled feathers in the financial northeast. PPP showed Obama up by just 8 here last week, and while they might have gotten a bad sample, I definitely think this isn’t the runaway it might have been a few months ago.
Ohio – moves from Toss Up to Lean D – This might generate some controversy, but I’m moving the Buckeye state to lean. Polling has shown in recent weeks that Romney is taking it on the chin here, and that jives with what I’m seeing on the ground, especially in and around greater Cleveland and the Mahoning Valley. The aggregate is enough to put Obama’s lead to about 5-6 points or thereabout, and by my rating system that is a lean toward the democrat.
New Hampshire – moves from Toss Up to Lean D – The Granite State, just like Ohio, was very tight a month ago, but polling there has confirmed that Obama is starting to move ahead. I think the long term trend here is bad for Romney because he got his advantage here during the long and grueling primary when republican policies were in vogue for months on end. Now that Obama is back on the air, this advantage should continue to fade. I expect the same thing to happen at some point in Iowa too, even though it hasn’t happened yet.
So as of now, here’s the updated electoral vote board:
Safe D – 142 electoral votes – VT, MA, RI, NY, DE, MD, DC, IL, CA, HI
Likely D – 59 electoral votes – ME, CT, NJ, MN, NM, OR, WA
Lean D – 83 electoral votes – NH, PA, OH, MI, WI, CO, NV
Toss Up – 63 electoral votes – VA, NC, FL, IA
Lean R – 35 electoral votes – IN, MO, AZ, MT
Likely R – 42 electoral votes – SC, GA, TN, ND, SD
Safe R – 114 electoral votes – WV, KY, AL, MS, LA, AR, TX, OK, KS, NE, WY, UT, ID, AK
If the election were held today, Barack Obama would win 284 electoral votes, while Mitt Romney would win 191, with 63 votes up for grabs. In such a scenario, the question wouldn’t be whether or not Obama would be re-elected, it would be how big a victory.
Since we had our last Senate update in early July, the race for the Senate has taken a nice turn in the democratic direction. Before the speculation was that the Republicans had at worst an even-money shot of taking over the Senate. Now the question is quickly becoming whether or not they will even gain seats. As we move into August, here is the field of play.
The Senate Map:
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Maine – Safe D – No change. For the purposes of this analysis Angus King is considered a democrat since by all rights he will caucus with Dems.
National Score – Democrats +1
Vermont – Safe D – No change. Extremely safe.
Massachusetts – Toss Up/Tilt Democratic – No change. This race continues to be a barn burner and looks to be that way all the way up toward election day. Most polling shows it to be a very close battle between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. I still think that Brown has a very tough road as the undecided in most polls break for Obama by about 2-1 over Romney, but as popular as he is I’m not going to count him out. Warren is campaigning fairly well so far, and has weathered a non-scandal about her native American heritage.
National Score – Democrats +2
Rhode Island – Safe D – No change. Sheldon Whitehouse still leads convincingly here. Unless there’s something strange happening on the ground that I don’t see, he’s a lock for re-election.
Connecticut – Likely D – No change. I don’t know if Obama is underperforming in the Acela corridor, but some polls of CT and NJ seem to suggest it. Dem fortunes in Connecticut haven’t been good so far as governor Dan Malloy’s approvals are in the tank and a brutal intraparty battle is brewing in CT-5. That all being said, Linda McMahon still looks likely to win the R primary here, and Chris Murphy is a top shelf recruit for the democrats.
New York – Safe D – No change. Kirsten Gillibrand has pretty much always been an electoral juggernaut, and this year should be no different.
New Jersey – Likely D – No change. Bob Menendez has never really been all that popular, heck most NJ politicians aren’t, but polling confirms a low double digit lead here. R candidate Joe Kyrillos seems to be having an identity crisis as he’s not well known. Maybe that will help him pick up soft republicans later, but he’s still got a very uphill road.
Pennsylvania – Safe D – No change. Bob Casey is still showing leads in the 15 point range, with some polls showing him up by 18-20 points. The republican is still not as well known as most, but I’m not sure the race will close much here, since many of the undecided voters are liberals who are simply shaking their fist at Casey but would never vote R. Nothing to worry about.
Maryland – Safe D – No change. You have to wonder whether the republicans will really ever win this state in a federal election ever again.
West Virginia – Safe D – Moved from Likely D. Polling right now shows Manchin with a rather large lead, and by all rights he is one of the most popular senators in the country. Why WV continues voting democratic when they are so, so red in the presidential vote, I’ll never understand, but it certainly helps out Team Blue here.
Virginia – Toss Up / Tilt Democratic – No change. This race has been a really close one most of the way and probably will be until the late part of the campaign. Most of the independents are swingish, folks that voted for Bob McDonnell in 2009 but for Barack Obama in 2008 by roughly a 3-2 margin over McCain. Kaine is showing a very small lead in virtually all non-Rasmussen polling, so that keeps the seat in the blue column, barely.
Florida – Toss Up / Tilt Democratic – No change. This race worries me. Why Bill Nelson isn’t faring any better than Barack Obama, I don’t know. There’s one of two explanations, that Nelson is doing better in the north but is underperforming O in the cities, or that the dixiecrat north is starting to vote straight ticket R. In either case, Connie Mack has really done well in polling lately has the race down to low single digits. This will be a battle all the way, right now it stays in the blue column but in all honesty, I feel a LOT better about Virginia staying blue than I do Florida, both in the presidential and here.
Tennessee – Safe R – No change. Bob Corker’s opponent doesn’t know who he’s running against. That’s sad, and definitely doesn’t help the chances of this seat flipping.
Mississippi – Safe R – No change. Roger Wicker is looking strong here.
Ohio – Lean D – No change. This race is right on the cut line between Lean and Likely. I’m keeping it in lean just because republican third party interests seem hell bent on propping up Josh Mandel until they are flat broke. Honestly, I think they are throwing their money into a black hole as Sherrod Brown is a shrewd campaigner (and so is his wife as evidenced by her retort against a conservative blogger last month), and his popularity is still pretty much intact despite the ridiculous amount of outside spending against him.
Michigan – Likely D – No change. This race really hasn’t changed much ever since Pete Hoekstra’s ridiculously racist ad back in February. Stabenow continues to lead the race by double digits, and honestly, its going to take a major misstep for her to lose given the current trajectory.
Indiana – Toss Up / Tilt Republican – Moved from Lean Republican. A Rasmussen poll of all things, confirms that this race is very close. Richard Mourdock’s victory over Dick Lugar in the R primary put this race on the board, and Joe Donnelly appears to be campaigning well early on. This is going to be a very intriguing race all the way down to the end. Mourdock has to hope for a lot of straight-ticket voting at this point, but honestly, I suspect the presidential race here is a lot closer than most pundits think.
Wisconsin – Toss Up / Tilt Democratic – Moved from Lean Republican. I don’t really know what changed here. All I know is that for whatever reason, Tammy Baldwin is polling much better this month than last, and looks to be the favorite against any republican except maybe for former governor Tommy Thompson. At this point we have to see how the republican primary plays out, but in any case, I have this race back in the blue column based on polling and PVI.
Minnesota – Safe D – No change. This race is pretty much a joke. Amy Klobuchar is very popular and holds a gigantic lead.
Missouri – Lean R – No change. Claire McCaskill might be this cycle’s incumbent senator that is doomed to defeat no matter what she does. The simple fact of the matter is that her state is moving out from underneath her PVI-wise. The best she can hope for is that unpopular representative Todd Akin wins the primary instead of businessman John Brunner or former treasurer Sarah Steelman. In the end though she might not be able to win that either. Most polls show her down by mid single digits.
National Score – Democrats +1
Texas – Likely R – Moved from Safe R. This race moves nominally in the democratic direction thanks to true believer Ted Cruz’s primary win earlier this week, but it still isn’t a likely pickup by any stretch of the imagination.
Nebraska – Likely R – Moved from Safe R. With Bob Kerrey showing some more positive polling results, even though he’s still down lower double digits to Deb Fischer, this race looks like it might have some life to it after all. Kerrey has a ton of work to do though.
National Score - Even
North Dakota – Toss Up / Tilt Democratic – Moved from Toss Up / Tilt Republican. I actually considered moving this race to Lean D, but settled for the lesser move. Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is probably waging the single best campaign of the cycle so far, and is clobbering unpopular representative Rick Berg on the airwaves. Berg has been slow to respond. Maybe he thought this race would easy like his run for the House last year, but despite ND’s republican presidential lean, Heitkamp is personally very popular and is causing major headaches for republicans who thought they would be taking over the Senate. Polling shows her ahead by 3-6 points.
Montana – Toss Up / Tilt Republican – No change. I haven’t seen a lot of polling in this race, so its hard to tell where it truly is, but what little I’ve seen has Denny Rehberg just barely ahead of John Tester. I am certain that this contest will go all the way to the wire just like many of the others I’ve talked about. The difference here is unlike other republican congresscritters running this cycle, Rehberg isn’t unpopular. Tester is a shrewd campaigner, but this will still be tough.
National Score – Republicans +1
Wyoming – Safe R – No change. Next.
Utah – Safe R – No change. Next.
New Mexico – Lean D – No change. This race between two Albequerque-based congresscritters, rep Martin Heinrich and former rep Heather Wilson, remains pretty much where it always has been, a relatively competitive race but one in which Heinrich holds a mid to upper single digit advantage. Wilson finds herself in a similar spot as Claire McCaskill in that her state has moved a lot in the wrong direction politically. She’ll have to fight the growing blue tide in NM if she is to win, and she can’t count on Heinrich to make an unforced error. He won’t.
Arizona – Lean R – No change. I know many on DKE are hoping that Richard Carmona can beat Jeff Flake, and indeed there have been some recent polls that have been somewhat close. However, other polls show Flake with a solid lead. In most cases I’ve yet to see Carmona get out of the lower 40s, which doesn’t allow me to move this to toss-up status. Arizona right now is still a tough cookie for Dems.
Nevada – Toss Up / Tilt Republican – No change. To me, this might be the single toughest race to call in the whole country, outside of maybe Montana. Acting senator Dean Heller holds a small lead over representative Shelley Berkley in most non-Rasmussen polling. Berkley’s had some bad press so far this cycle, but remains in the race and should put up big numbers in Vegas, which is her base. Heller likewise will put up big numbers in the north of the state. What makes this race hard to sort out is that you have to take any R lead with a huge grain of salt, as most polls of NV have a rather large republican house effect. Right now though, I’m keeping the seat in the red column by the smallest of margins.
Washington – Safe D – No change. Maria Cantwell is relatively popular, and no polling thus far has indicated that she is in any real danger.
California – Safe D – No change. Dianne Feinstein is an institution in California, and although she’s got detractors on both sides of the aisle, polling shows her far ahead in her re-election bid.
Hawaii – Likely D – No change. The fact that anybody seriously thinks this race is close (I’m looking at you Charlie Cook!) just blows my mind. Hawaii is going to be one of the most democratic states in the 2012 presidential, and most all polling shows both Mazie Hirono and Ed Case with a sizeable advantage over former governor Linda Lingle. Lingle used to be very popular but isn’t really anymore, so I just can’t see her threading this nearly impossible needle.
Wrapup: The race for the Senate has definitely improved for the Democrats over the past month. Last month, I had the republicans picking up 3 seats, but now the national swing is just R+1. New opportunities for pickups have arrived for Team Blue, most notably Indiana, but possibly Arizona as well depending on whose polling you believe. There’s still the danger that the democrats could drop a bunch of seats if the national swing turns toward the republicans a la 2010, seats like Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, but that’s becoming a less likely possibility with each passing day, especially after August’s largely positive jobs report.
Bottom line, looking at the tossups, the best the Republicans can hope for is +6, and the best the democrats can hope for is +2.
Current Pickups:
Democrats pick up Maine and Massachusetts
Republicans pick up Missouri, Nebraska, and Montana
Hierarchy of Competitive (Non-Safe) seats: (listed by greatest likelihood of democratic victory)
1.Hawaii
2.Connecticut
3.Michigan
4.New Jersey
5.New Mexico
6.Ohio
7.Virginia
8.Massachusetts
9.North Dakota
10.Florida
11.Wisconsin
12.Nevada
13.Indiana
14.Montana
15.Missouri
16.Arizona
17.Nebraska
18.Texas