In the bat­tle for the Sen­ate, most states remain unchanged from last time, but there are a few notable excep­tions. First, here is the cur­rent map:

Now for the details.

As always, “Con­tin­u­ing” refers to the seats in Sen­ate Classes 2 and 3, which are not up for elec­tion this cycle.

Here the high­lights of the past two weeks, walk­ing from the Pacific to the Atlantic:

  • Nevada: Real Clear Pol­i­tics believes Nevada is a tossup. The recent NBC News/​Marist poll, a registered-​​voter poll, has incum­bent Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Dean Heller with a two-​​point lead over his likely oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Shel­ley Berkley (D-​​Las Vegas). Recent his­tory sug­gests that the NBC News/​Marist polls have a few-​​point lean to the left. This puts it in the five or six point ter­ri­tory in likely vot­ers. I strongly dis­agree with RCP on their take; it’s a “Leans Repub­li­can” state.
  • North Dakota: Ordi­nar­ily, we shouldn’t even be dis­cussing a state with a Cook Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index (PVI) of R+10. But this week, Mason-​​Dixon released a new poll, cov­er­ing the matchup between the sole Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date, for­mer Attor­ney Gen­eral Heidi Heitkamp, and her most likely Repub­li­can oppo­nent, fresh­man Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rick Berg. In it, Heitkamp leads by a point. While I sus­pect that it’s prob­a­bly a bit of an out­lier, cou­pled with last month’s Forum/​Essman poll show­ing Berg ahead by seven points, I’m more con­fi­dent that North Dakota “Leans Repub­li­can” than being a “Likely Repub­li­can”. Real Clear Pol­i­tics dis­agrees with me; they’re call­ing it a tossup. At the very least, we should watch for con­fir­ma­tion of it being as close a race as Mason-​​Dixon believes it to be.
  • Nebraska: No new polls, but I’m adding a new gra­di­ent to this map, call­ing it “Cur­rent D, Likely to Flip R”. That also changes the bar graph, even though the like­li­hood hasn’t really changed in the past two weeks.
  • Mis­souri: Repub­li­can for­mer state Trea­surer Sarah Steelman’s lead over Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Akin (R-​​Town and Coun­try), con­tin­ues to shrink. The newest Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling poll gives Steel­man a mere three-​​point lead for the nom­i­na­tion, down from nine in Jan­u­ary; the dif­fer­ence this time is that the runner-​​up is busi­ness­man John Brun­ner (her lead over Akin shrank by four). Regard­less of which Repub­li­can faces Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sen­a­tor Claire McCaskill, polls still don’t give a clear lead to any­one. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling has Steel­man tied with McCaskill, while Ras­mussen indi­cates a dozen-​​point Steel­man lead. Both give McCaskill two more points against Brun­ner. All of this sug­gests a slight lean to the R side, with the long-​​term trend to the right. As I noted last time, the state’s PVI points to a barely Repub­li­can lean. With such con­ser­v­a­tive offer­ings from the Repub­li­can Party, this shouldn’t be an easy race for any of the can­di­dates, but a recent McCaskill tax scan­dal has cost her a cou­ple of points, at least tem­porar­ily. With the lat­est poll trend, I’m putting Mis­souri into the “Leans Repub­li­can” col­umn, but I expect to see rever­sion to the mean by next time.
  • Michi­gan: One new poll from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling has incum­bent Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow with a com­mand­ing lead over the per­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Hoek­stra (R-​​Zeeland). Recent his­tor­i­cal data sug­gest that PPP is biased to the left, per­haps by as many as five or six points. Even so, that leaves things in Stabenow’s ter­ri­tory. When Hoek­stra retired from the House to run for Gov­er­nor in 2010, his DW-​​NOMINATE was +0.736, far more con­ser­v­a­tive than the –0.20 that the state’s D+4 PVI would project. While Stabenow’s DW-​​NOMINATE is –0.412, it’s both the cor­rect sign and so much closer to the PVI pro­jec­tion that, espe­cially with the extra push of incum­bency, it’s hard to imag­ine Hoek­stra has much of a chance, bar­ring some major disruption.
  • Ohio: With State Trea­surer Josh Man­del fac­ing off against incum­bent Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown in Novem­ber. The lat­est Ras­mussen poll shows Brown up by five, con­sis­tent with the his­tor­i­cal data (if you account for house effects). Brown should be a rel­a­tively easy tar­get, given that he was the 11th most lib­eral Sen­a­tor in the 111th Con­gress, so this is a race to con­tinue to watch.
  • Florida: For the first time, a poll has indi­cated a lead for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Con­nie Mack, IV (R-​​Fort Mey­ers) over Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son. Quin­nip­iac released a poll indi­cat­ing a one-​​point lead for Mack, while NBC News/​Marist sug­gested a four-​​point lead for Nel­son and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling shows Nel­son­with  a 13-​​point lead. Account­ing for the house biases, we can con­sider the three polls to give roughly the same pic­ture, that of a few-​​point edge to Nelson.
  • Vir­ginia: It has been two months since a poll was pub­lished show­ing pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee (and for­mer Sen­a­tor and Gov­er­nor) George Allen with a lead over pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee (and for­mer Gov­er­nor) Tim Kaine. Allen had a DW-​​NOMINATE score of +0.407, which is a bit to the right of the pro­jected PVI equiv­a­lent of +0.10. We can’t deter­mine Kaine’s DW-​​NOMINATE, but his poli­cies put him all over the map. Regard­less, the three most recent polls, one from NBC News/​Marist, one from Quin­nip­iac and one from Ras­mussen, show Kaine with a six, one, and two-​​point lead, respec­tively. The last two are within the mar­gins of error, but with the longer trend sug­ges­tive of a slight (but real) lead for Kaine. It’s such a small lead, though, that it’s still effec­tively a tossup this far out.
  • Con­necti­cut: Here’s a new state to watch more closely. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Mur­phy (D-​​Cheshire) appears ever more likely to pick up his party’s nom­i­na­tion. On Team Red, WWE founder Linda McMa­hon is now draw­ing sim­i­lar pri­mary num­bers. In a matchup between the two, the lat­est Quin­nip­iac poll has Mur­phy with a mere three-​​point lead, putting the state in dan­ger of being called a tossup. One lone poll may sim­ply be an out­lier; we’ll wait to see if we get con­fir­ma­tion from else­where before chang­ing the map color.
  • Mass­a­chu­setts: Incum­bent Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Scott Brown remains sta­tis­ti­cally tied with chal­lenger Eliz­a­beth War­ren. The lat­est round of polls from Suffolk/​7News, and the Boston Globe show tiny leads for Brown, while West­ern New Eng­land University’s poll shows an equally tiny lead for War­ren. Mass­a­chu­setts has a PVI of D+12, which would sup­port a DW-​​NOMINATE of –0.60. Brown’s DW-​​NOMINATE of +0.183, while excep­tion­ally mod­er­ate for a Repub­li­can (he’s the third most lib­eral Repub­li­can in the Sen­ate), is still pretty far from the state’s posi­tion on the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Absent the incum­bency, Brown wouldn’t be expected to stand a chance. But with the incum­bency, it’s still a tossup.

The map has changed a bit from two weeks ago. A cou­ple of tossups have moved into the “Leans” columns, one for each party. Intrade is giv­ing Repub­li­cans about a 55 per­cent chance of tak­ing the Sen­ate, down two points from two weeks ago, with a 26 per­cent chance of Democ­rats hold­ing at least 51 seats, and 14 per­cent chance of exactly 50 seats. Note that the three add up to 96 per­cent, which I believe reflects more about how lightly traded these mar­kets are than any­thing else. How cred­i­ble do you think those mar­ket num­bers are? Do you agree or dis­agree with my state analy­ses above?

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