Earlier this evening, CQ Politics announced a major shake-up in its views of three Senate and fifteen House races:
"Big Batch of Rating Changes Reflects Stronger Democratic Breeze". With only two exceptions, each change has the respective race trending away from the GOP and towards the Democratic candidate.
Let's hope that, if anything, they're playing down the extent to which we may be looking at a tectonic shift here. Five races have moved into the "No Clear Favorite" toss-up category, all from "Leans Republican":
* Rhode Island Senate (Chafee may not survive his primary and is trailing Whitehouse in any event)
* Arizona-08 (open seat to replace Jim Kolbe)
* Connecticut-04 (Diane Farrell rematch against Chris Shays)
* Illinois-06 ("Fighting Dem" Tammy Duckworth versus Peter Roskam, to replace Henry Hyde)
* Minnesota-06 (Patty Wetterling against conservative activist Michele Bachmann, to replace Mark Kennedy)
Keep in mind that the absence of a race only means that their prior view about it hasn't changed, not that it's uncompetitive. The inclusion of several races that failed to make it onto
Larry Sabato's list discussed around these precincts earlier today should make some people a bit happier.
The only races where the Republican gained ground are first, CA-50, the rematch between Francine Busby and (now incumbent) Brian Bilbray. CQ Politics notes that much of Busby's staff from the special election cycle has moved on to other races, and that she isn't likely to see anywhere close to the money that was pouring in several months ago. Second, they've downgraded Jack Carter in Nevada, since they don't believe that Dems are going to pour in the necessary resources. I'd like to hope that they're entirely off-base about this one.
The other races, for those unwilling to click through the link at the top:
* New Mexico Senate, from D favored to safe;
* Arizona-01, from safe R to leans R;
* Connecticut-05, from R favored to leans R;
* Illinois-10, from safe R to favored;
* Nebraska-01, from safe R to favored;
* Nevada-02, from R favored to leans R;
* New York-20, from R favored to leans R;
* New York-27, from D favored to safe D;
* Oregon-05, from D favored to safe D;
* Wisconsin-08, from R favored to leans R;
* Wyoming-AL, from R favored to leans R.
But there's no way to spin this as anything other than really, really good news. In the House, CQ Politics now shows only 175 GOP-held seats as "Safe", as opposed to 184 Democratic "Safe" seats. That's a good starting point for us to be working from.