If you thought 2006 was a good year for us when we picked up six seats, 2008 looks a GREAT DEAL better.  It's been quite a long time since we've gone into an election cycle where the Repubs have, for the most part, written off FOUR Senate seats seven months before the election!

DSCC chairman Chuck Schumer stated that his committee will contest up to seventeen races in 2008.  With our major financial advantages right now, there is a good change we can win at least six, and maybe up to nine races, which would put us at the magic 60 mark.

Anyway, here are my rankings:

Hotline has a major round-up of Senate fundraising numbers; Senate Guru reformatted much of the information to be a little more readable, and has some thoughts.

I see lots of good news here. Democrats may be playing even less defense than expected. Only three Democratic incumbents -- Landrieu, Durbin, and Kerry -- have Republican challengers with more than $70k cash on hand, and Durbin and Kerry are safe nonetheless. That leaves a lot of room for Democrats to focus on open seats and taking out Republican incumbents.

And several of those Republican incumbents should be sweating the money situation. Al Franken outraised Norm Coleman ($2.2 million to $2.1 million), and Jeanne Shaheen outraised John Sununu ($1.2 million to $1 million); both Franken and Shaheen trail in the cash on hand department, but continued solid fundraising (and good polls in Minnesota and great ones in New Hampshire) is pretty damn sweet. Next door to New Hampshire, Maine's Tom Allen trails Susan Collins but has an impressive $2.6 million cash on hand.

In the battle for New Mexico and Colorado's open seats, the Udalls are kicking ass. New Mexico's Tom raised more than Republicans Wilson and Pearce combined, and holds a similar cash on hand advantage. Colorado's Mark outraised sweatshop-promoter Schaffer ($1.5 million to $1 million) and has nearly double the cash on hand.

Mark Warner continues to pull in ridiculous money ($2.5 million) on the way to joining Jim Webb in Virginia's senate delegation.

Unfortunately, in Oregon Merkley and Novick are underperforming financially, just as they've been showing other signs of weakness. And Texan Rick Noriega's totals (both money raised this quarter and cash on hand) weren't where they should be, though Burnt Orange Report points out that his fundraising picked up substantially in the latter part of the quarter, once it was clear he was the nominee.

But back on the up side, Andrew Rice pulled in an extremely nice-for-Oklahoma $431k. Oklahoma will remain a long, long shot, but Rice could outperform expectations -- that would be some serious map-expansion. Add in races like Alaska and Mississippi, where Democrats Mark Begich and Ronnie Musgrove may trail their opponents in fundraising but are polling well, and it continues to look like a great year for Democrats.

For context and rankings on these races and more, see brownsox' State of the Senate: April.

Race tracker wiki: MN-Sen NH-Sen OK-Sen OR-Sen NM-Sen CO-Sen VA-Sen

Who would have thought that Virginia could have two Democratic Senators? Based on Tuesday's polling data, it certainly looks like that could be the case come 2008.

So with eight months to go, I figure it’s time for an updated look at all the 2008 Senate races.  There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively.  Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent.  So I’ll rank these in terms of tiers.  The top tier will be the races where there is a serious challenger to the incumbent (or at least the incumbent’s party, in cases of retirement), where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching.  The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point.  Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play.  And the safe seats?  Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.

Follow me below the fold for all the races.  Note: Some of this may seem repetitive, with information you already know.  That’s because I originally wrote this for the Bruin Democrats, many of whom don’t follow the national races like we do.  Consider this a primer for both newcomers and political junkies alike.

Candidate Jim Gilmore continues his impossible task of rewriting the record of his term as Governor.

Gilmore pointed to his success in balancing the budget and creating a revenue surplus while he was governor. "That's what Mark Warner inherited from me," he said. Gilmore said that former Governor Warner, who is the Democrat running for the soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat, is not a straight-talker when it comes to being up front about his plans and his policies. - Leesburg Today

There has been an absolute deluge of polling in the month of January. Alas, virtually all of it is of the primary election variety, which this diary series (for the sake of my own sanity) does not cover.

That said, there were still new numbers this month from a total of 32 general election contests. Some of them have been diaried on DKos over the course of month, while others appear to be exclusive to this diary.

Follow me past the jump for the numbers....

It has been more than two months since my last Senate rankings. With the presidential primaries on every one's mind, congressional races are looking less urgent, not to mention that there was just very little news coming out of down-the-ballot contests during the holiday period. But a lot has changed since the beginning of November -- starting with the number of Senate elections that will be decided in 2008. Trent Lott's shocking decision to prioritize lobbying over holding the position he was elected to a year before has added a 35th race to our rankings, and has expanded the map for Democrats with an unexpected opportunity.

Full rankings are posted here, on Campaign Diaries.

For Virginia Democrats, things just seem to go from good to better. According to Not Larry Sabato, the right-wing nutjob Delegate Bob Marshall will indeed challenge Jim Gilmore to see who is farthest to the right of the people of the Commonwealth.

Well, any political junkie worth his/her salt is currently preoccupied with electing the next POTUS, but as I've stated many times, I'm primarily a congressional nerd. This is my final Senate rundown of the year, so here are things as they stand today, on the brink of the busiest winter politics has ever seen.

Seats are ranked by likelihood of flipping parties. Read below the fold...

Remember how Jim Gilmore essentially pushed Tom Davis out of the Senate race by getting the Virginia GOP to hold a nominating convention rather than a primary?  Well, according to WaPo, it might not be the coronation he was expecting.

Del. Christopher B. Saxman (R-Staunton) said today he is "strongly considering" challenging former governor James S. Gilmore III for the GOP nomination for Senate.

In an interview, Saxman said the party "needs new leadership" and "new blood." Saxman said he's been hearing from a lot of Repubicans who say the GOP needs to find a Senate candidate other than Gilmore who can reach out to independents and voters in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.

According to NLS, the state convention's votes are weighted in favor of areas represented by Repubs in the state legislature.

Translation:  If I were Mark Warner, I'd have a backup plan ready.

In 2005, Tim Kaine had it all.  His victory over the utterly repulsive Republican candidate, Jerry Kilgore, was a resonating one.  He had taken on the worst personal attacks the national GOP had to offer and defeated George Bush's handpicked choice for the governorship.  The Democratic Party was beginning its comeback from the depths of 2004 and his election reminded those among us who had fallen into a less than hopeful mood about our chances going forward that the fight was not over yet.  He gave the Democratic response to the State of the Union only a few short months later and the future of his career looked bright.  And yet somehow, Tuesday, after he had commandeered the Virginia Democrats' recapturing of the state Senate, it was all gone.  In two short years, two years that had seen his initial spark turn into a prairie fire of electoral gains for the Democrats, Tim Kaine had seen every door that opened for him, close right before his eyes.  He was a man without a home.

Before I start with anything else, let me say: thank you!  

Because of netroots support, the People For the American Way Action Fund was able to direct crucial support to the candidates who helped take back the Virginia State Senate.  Three of our four candidates knocked off incumbent Republicans, while the fourth is down by less than a hundred votes and heading for a recount.  There’s nothing to substitute for local support and boots on the ground, but your donations helped to make a crucial difference.  

Because of your support the Virginia senate is now officially blue, and even if you don’t live in the state, it still makes a difference to you.

SUSA polls the hottest Senate races for Roll Call.

These are all GOP-held seats.

Kind of ironic that SUSA didn't poll Udall, since it's looking increasingly likely that he'll be joining that race. But from the looks of it, even our worst performing candidates in New Mexico would be competitive.

According to these numbers, we pick up Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia. Minnesota would be a tossup. Oregon would stay Red, but with Smith under 50 percent it puts him in the danger zone. And Maine is still looking third-tier at this point.

Race tracker wiki: NM-Sen CO-Sen ME-Sen MN-Sen NH-Sen OR-Sen VA-Sen

Survey USA has polled key senate races for Roll Call. Numbers on the flip.

Credit to a poster called Johnny Longtorso on another board, who aggregated the numbers from Survey USA's copious data.

September was an awful month for the GOP: John Warner and Hagel retired, Shaheen and Mark Warner jumped in for Democrats... October started much the same way, as New Mexico's Pete Domenici announced he would not run for re-election, opening up yet another very vulnerable seat. But Democrats then ran into a bad patch of their own that culminated in the disastrous news that Bob Kerrey would not run in Nebraska. That by itself made a race that was leaning towards Democrats become a likely hold for Republicans. Meanwhile, the shuffle in New Mexico has still not been resolved, with Democrats scrambling to find a strong candidate.

Check out the full rankings (and more political news) here, on Campaign Diaries.

Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) has chosen to take a pass on the Virginia Senate seat, paving the way for Gilmore to become the Virginia GOPs candidate for Senate.  This virtually assures that Mark Warner will take the Senate seat next year.  Gilmore is extremely unpopular in VA. and it is likely that Warner will bury him in the election.

Interestingly, Davis cited "the Republican Party's increasingly narrow focus on candidates who pass conservative litmus tests" as one of the reasons for taking a pass.  It doesn't help that the Virginia GOP decided to have a state convention to elect their primary candidate rather than a primary, which would have favored Davis.

The Virginia GOP's chance to run one of its smartest members appears dead.

"I don't really know what I'm going to do," [Davis] said. "I've got some pretty strong thoughts on it. We're planning to sit down after November to do some additional polling and additional surveying. I don't know that I'll be definitive on Thursday, but I'll certainly be more forthcoming."

Davis has been sending strong signals recently that he is unlikely to be a Senate candidate next year. One GOP official, who talked on condition of anonymity because Davis did not authorize him to speak, said Davis had all but made up his mind last week not to run and has told people as much. But in the past 24 hours or so, the source said, Davis has been having second thoughts about saying he is not running.

Another GOP official close to Davis thinks he is "heading in the direction" of not running but has not made a final decision. He has been under a lot of pressure from Republicans in the House to run for reelection, in part to keep the 11th District safe for the GOP.

Davis has said he might wait until 2012 and challenge Webb for the seat, a more palatable task, apparently, than taking on the seemingly invincible Mark Warner. Not to mention that the Virginia GOP decided to determine its Senate nominee by convention, giving the more conservative Jim Gillmore a leg up with his party's far-right hardcore membership.

Now publicly, Davis is acting conflicted, though Chris Cillizza speculates it may have to do more with his state senator wife, who is being heavily targeted by Democrats this November.

One potential factor that could delay a definitive announcement from Davis is that his wife, Jeanmarie Devolites Davis, is caught up in a very tough reelection race for her state Senate seat. The Virginia legislative elections are set for Nov. 6, and Davis may not want an announcement from him to overshadow her campaign.

Now the CW is that if Davis passes on the Senate race, that he'd run for reelection in the House. However, there's been some rumblings that Davis would likely quite the House altogether for the time being. Now if he plans on targeting Webb in 2012, that seems less likely since he'd want to keep his public profile high. But there's no doubt that the smarter Republicans in the House, seeing the bleak picture ahead, are opting for the lucrative private sector rather than another two year in an ineffective (and deepening) minority.

Race tracker wiki: VA-Sen

Ah yes, another rundown of the epically fast-changing 2008 Senate races. By the time I post this, someone else surely will have retired. Or maybe Bob Kerrey will have finally made up his mind. But in any case, here goes:

1. Virginia - OPEN

Last ranking: 2
Outlook: Likely Dem

This is becoming Obama '04ish in its ease. Former Gov. Mark Warner (D) is around 60% in every poll, while Rep. Tom Davis (R) is now backing out of a Senate race he's been prepping for for years, and former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) is looking like the GOP standard-bearer sacrificial lamb.

2. New Hampshire - John Sununu (R) running for 2nd term

Last ranking: 1
Outlook: Lean Dem

Last poll had former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) up 54-38. I could see Sununu narrowing the gap, but how much improvement can he hope for when she's already over 50%?

Read other races below the fold...