8:11 AM PT: CT-Sen: I guess we're not out of the woods quite yet in Connecticut. Quinnipiac's latest has Democrat Chris Murphy trailing Republican Linda McMahon 48-47, a much less optimistic than the 48-42 Murphy lead that PPP found just a week ago. However, Quinnipiac had McMahon +3 at the end of August, so at least the numbers aren't moving in the wrong direction. Still, not good, though it would be nice if some other reputable pollsters would actually go into the field here (almost all public polling has been conducted by the letters P & Q).
8:27 AM PT: NH-01, -02 (PDF): The House portions of UNH's latest New Hampshire poll are finally available. In the 1st District, Democrat Carol Shea-Porter leads GOP Rep. Frank Guinta by an enormous 47-38 margin (including leaners). That's up from a 45-43 CSP edge in August. The race in the 2nd is much tighter, with Democrat Annie Kuster holding a slim 42-41 advantage over Republican Rep. Charlie Bass. But before you start fretting that Kuster's unfortunate tracker incident is dragging her down, let me point out that this, too, is an improvement for her, seeing as Bass led 42-37 in August. Of course, I've griped about UNH's issues for many years, so I'd be much more inclined to trust PPP here.
8:44 AM PT: MA-Sen: A poll by Opinion Dynamics for the consulting firm Mass Insight Global Partnerships has Elizabeth Warren beating GOP Sen. Scott Brown 48-44. For some reason, though, the survey is of registered, rather than likely, voters. The same firm's January poll gave Brown a hefty 52-42 lead; the latest data also gives Obama a monster 60-34 edge over Romney.
9:09 AM PT: MO-Sen: I'm only posting this (and—ugh—linking to the Washington Examiner) because we wrote about a Claire McCaskill internal the other day. So, for what it's worth, Todd Akin is out with a poll of his own, from Wenzel Strategies—best known as the pollster for the-sky-is-purple wingnut organ WorldNetDaily. Anyhow, Akin claims he's up 49-47, and that Romney's leading by an actually-plausible 50-40. McCaskill's survey had her up 50-41 but did not provide presidential toplines.
9:36 AM PT: SC-07: Here's a race I didn't expect to see polled, and with good reason: Republican Tom Rice is predictably crushing Democrat Gloria Tinubu 49-36 in a new survey from Winthrop University. Winthrop actually polled the primaries a bit, so I guess it's not too surprising to see them giving the general a go. But Tinubu, who twice ran for mayor of Atlanta (Georgia!) on the Green Party line, is a spectacularly bad fit for this conservative district, and we moved this race to Safe R quite some time ago.
9:42 AM PT: WI-Sen: Heh, give `em credit for trying. Now or Never PAC, the super PAC that once upon a time was devoted to helping Sarah Steelman beat Todd Akin (hahahah) in the Missouri GOP primary, has spread its wings and has lately been involving itself in races all over the place. Recently, a false ad of theirs got knocked off the air by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in IL-08; now, they're messing about with a new poll in the Wisconsin Senate race. Sadly for them, their survey (from WPA Research) shows Republican Tommy Thompson losing to Tammy Baldwin 48-45, which they furiously try to spin as being "within the margin of error." Maybe that works if you're some unknown House candidate, but when you're a former governor with 100% name recognition... well, it's gonna be more like "never" than "now."
10:15 AM PT: KY-06: It's about the thinnest polling memo you can find—just toplines and trendlines—but Republican Andy Barr and the NRCC are out with a new survey from Public Opinion Strategies showing Dem Rep. Ben Chandler up 49-46. That's a bit tighter than POS's June survey showing Chandler leading 47-42, which is obviously the reason Republicans are leaking these numbers. But if Chandler is just a hair's breadth away from that magic 50% mark in even a GOP poll, that's not very optimistic for Republicans.
10:44 AM PT: HI-Sen: Mazie Hirono is trying to slam the door on her Republican opponent, Linda Lingle, with a new internal from Benenson Strategy Group that features the Democrat crushing by a 54-37 margin. That's up from 51-40 in the last poll Hirono made public, from June.
11:40 AM PT: AZ-Sen: It's officially "game on" in Arizona. According to Politico's Alexander Burns, the NRSC is following the DSCC and will be going on the airwaves in Arizona, to boost GOP Rep. Jeff Flake's flagging fortunes. No word yet on how much Republicans are spending, but the DS's new ad (backed by over $500K) is now available. Interestingly, it attacks Flake for hoping women will "remain silent" as he "votes to defund Planned Parenthood" and "pushed to let insurers deny us needed medical care—even breast cancer screenings our own doctors request." That last line is accompanied by an arresting still image of a mostly hairless woman who is evidently meant to invoke cancer patients.
11:54 AM PT: CA-10: Democrat Jose Hernandez has a new internal from Momentum Analysis, and it shows him trailing GOP Rep. Jeff Denham just 45-43. That's a definite improvement from a previously unreleased July survey which had Denham up 48-40. [EDIT: Hernandez was at 40 in July, not 43.] And the presidential toplines make sense: Obama's up 47-46 in a district he won 50-47 last time. If anything, that might be slightly pessimistic, since this is the sort of turf where it would be reasonable to expect the president to do better than he did four years ago. It's also worth clicking through to see the actual polling memo because it includes something I haven't seen before: word clouds condensing free-form comments offered by respondents about Hernandez's and Denham's television advertising. "TV," "ads," and "commercial" are, unsurprisingly, the most common for both men, but after that, the most frequently-cited word with regard to Denham's ads is "negative" while for Hernandez, it's "astronaut." So clearly, Democrats are winning on the awesomeness front.
12:00 PM PT: MO-Sen: Todd Akin's dumbass move of the day is actually in deed, rather than word, form. It turns out he failed to report income from a state pension on his federal financial disclosure forms... income of almost $130,000. While this kind of thing is hardly a major ding (especially on Akin, who has far greater wounds to worry about), it doesn't look good when you manage to "forget" over six figures worth of income, and it also undermines GOP attacks on Dem Sen. Claire McCaskill over her late tax payments on her (since sold) private plane.
12:05 PM PT: The Live Digest continues here.
12:10 PM PT: WA-Sen: Rasmussen: Maria Cantwell (D-inc): 57, Michael Baumgartner (R): 37.