Democrats stay at 52 seats in the Senate Snapshot. Odds of GOP control remain very low, if the election were to finish today.
Senate Competitive Campaigns Chart
Margins are based on the simple average of all published polls in which the majority of interviews were conducted on or after October 8th. No polls will be removed form the averages between now and Election Day. Only campaigns closer than 12.0% are listed. All polls used in the averages are taken from Pollster.com. Click here for the Senate Snapshot methodology.
Seat Outcome odds chart
Not much movement at all. Don’t expect much change before Election Day either, given how many polls are now in the averages. I can already see that the final Snapshot will probably project 52 as the most likely outcome. We're going to need a big final push that results in sweeping the toss-ups in order to come away from 2010 with more than 52 Senators.
***
And now, to answer what is by far the most frequent comment on the Snapshot: no matter the result of the election, I personally find it incredibly unlikely that either Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson switches parties.
For one thing, being the Democrat from a blue state who pisses off progressive activists is Lieberman’s entire schtick. If he became a Republican, then he would just be another Scott Brown, Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe. He would be one of a group, rather than a star.
Secondly, he’s never going to run as a Republican (maybe as an independent, but not as a Republican), because he wouldn’t win the primary. Representative Parker Griffith did the Democratic caucuses in Congress a big service by jumping ship, and then getting immediately teabagged. Even though Griffith had the most credibly conservative record of any Democrat in Congress, it wasn’t good enough for Republican activists.
Since Lieberman will not run as a Republican, he will face a Republican in the general election. This would prevent him from being a committee chair or ranking member, because Senate Republicans take punitive action when one of their own runs against the GOP nominee. Lisa Murkowski lost her position in the Senate Republican leadership, for example, when she announced her write-in campaign. By contrast, Senate Democrats, as Lieberman has proven in the past, do not take any action against their wayward members no matter what they do.
As far as Ben Nelson goes, he conducts more internal polling of his home state approval rating than any other member of the Senate. He knows that he has absolutely no chance to win a Republican primary. His approval rating among that electorate is likely in the single digits. With a Democratic caucus that will never punish him no matter what he does, and even give him huge money to run ads bashing the public option when he isn’t even up for re-election, Nelson’s move to stay in the caucus is obvious.
The combination of the right-wing tea primary machine, and a Democratic leadership that never punishes wayward Dems, is going to put an end to Donkey to Elephant switches. The conservative Democrats who might have switched in a different era will now stay in the party, and instead just frequently vote against its legislative agenda.