after all, I am a high school teacher and a blogger. How does that qualify me to comment about politics?
I was at a political event in Arlington VA today and a friend who is running for local office, after hearing my musings about what I expect the status of the US Senate to be after November 4 dared me to put my musings up here.
So I am responding to that dare.
I think we hold the Senate.
Worst case we have 52 votes.
I can conceive that we go from our current 55 to 56, with an outside chance of 57, but I view those as unlikely.
Travel below the fold to see my half-baked reasoning.
{note updating at 9 PM because I forgot we will probably lost the Baucus seat in Montana).
Republicans need to gain net 6 seats to take control.
I think we keep NH, MI and NC. You might argue about NC, but I think the indications now, including early voting, make it increasingly clear Hagan will hold on.
We will lose WV.
We will probably lose MT
Orman, despite not having spent to define himself positively before Republican money came in to bash him, looks like he will defeat Roberts. Yes I know he said he would caucus with whichever party has the majority. But what if without him it is 50 Repubs and 49 Dems (which I do not think it will be)? The Republicans have bashed him so heavily I think he caucuses with the Dems.
if I am right, after looking at 6 states, it is a we are down one and we are on a path of 54 Dem votes.
There are two other Republican seats in question, GA and KY.
Let's take Georgia. I have no doubt Nunn will lead on election night. The question is if she can get to 50% to avoid the runoff. There is the issue of the 40K+ registrations that the Secretary of State has apparently refused to include, so far with the backing of a federal judge. I think that will create a backlash in our favor larger than 40K votes: remember that when Repubs in FL tried to suppress the Black vote in 2012 people stood on line for hours to vote. There is the further factor that Jason Carter is apparently doing fairly well in the Governor's race.
Then there is KY. Quite frankly it is too close to call, although my gut says that the endorsements by the Louisville and Lexington papers will have a positive impact for Grimes. Equally important, her recent advertising is more pointed and direct. I am inclined to think she may pull it out, but for now I will not say so.
Were the Democrats to win BOTH of these, Repubs would need to pick up an additional 7 seats, and there are probablhy not that many others in play. Even if we pick up only one, they would have to pick up 6 of what is left, which means running the table except 1 among AK, SD, NM, CO, LA, AR, and IA. And that is not going to happen.
I will give them LA. Except since it will go to a run-off, and if the Dems have already locked down the Senate, it is possible that Landrieu could use being in the majority to hold on.
While Arkansas has closed, for sake of argument let's give to Republicans. That's two, and we are in theory down to 52 seats.
So let's look at what is left.
NM - every day I get another scary email from Udall's campaign- ohmygod the race is now down to single digits. Yes, but it is still 5 days out more than a 5 point margin. I think it is clear we win this.
But then there is CO. Yes the conventional wisdom is that Udall will lose. Except that is based on likely voters using a model at least in part based on 2010 and the rest on 2012. But now CO is like WA and OR - every registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. That makes weaker voters more likely to participate, which favors Dems. That is why in performance relative to registration Washington is very Democratic. Further, CO has a substantial Hispanic population. Latino Decisions has demonstrated convincingly (at least to me) that traditional polling methods understates Latino participation (which breaks very much in our favor) for two reasons: (1) many Hispanics do not have land lines and many pollsters do not call cell phones; (2) many Hispanics do not like to be interviewed in English. Finally, Udall's pollster has him narrowly ahead. That pollster is Mark Mellman (disclosure, know him slightly), who was the only one to totally nail Reid's victory the last time Harry ran.
Then there is IA. I will ignore how Braley undercut himself. I will only note what people have been able to read here. As of yesterday about 1/3 of the vote was in and if the one pollster who isolated on those who had already voted is to be believed, Braley had a 21 point lead among that group, which would require Ernst to win by 14-15% among all remaining voters, the rest of early voting and election day voting and traditional absentees. Sorry, but I do not see that happening.
Were we to win BOTH of these we would be guaranteed 51 votes. Even if we only win one, we are at 50.
Then there are SD and AK. People have read here about the Begich ground game, and now we have more than one poll showing him comfortably ahead. SD is a three-way, with a serious effort to turn out the Native American vote. We may win neither, we could win both, we could win either.
I look at the total landscape and I am more than comfortable that we will be in control of the Senate, even if only by Biden's tie-breaking vote. I feel reasonably comfortable saying we will have at least 52 votes. I can conceive of anything up to 56 votes. I think 52 or 53 is totally reasonable.
But then remember - I know nothing about politics.
Peace.