We have a few new polls to add into the mix, includ­ing (at long last) some in New Mexico.

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:

  • Wash­ing­ton: I was wait­ing for one more poll with results in line with the trend. Yes­ter­day, I got it. Sur­veyUSA found that incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell leads state Sen­a­tor Michael Baum­gart­ner by 11 points, a num­ber in line with the pre­vi­ous over­all trend. While the polls have been some­what noisy, the noise is sig­nif­i­cantly smaller than the mar­gin. The Ever­green State is now Everblue, mov­ing to “Likely Democrat”.
  • Cal­i­for­nia: It’s not as if this is a seat in ques­tion, but there’s a new Field poll, which gives incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Dianne Fein­stein a 19-​​point lead over Repub­li­can Eliz­a­beth Emken. This is well in line with the pre­vi­ous poll con­ducted by SurveyUSA.
  • New Mex­ico: At last we have a set of polls from the Land of Enchant­ment. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling came up with a five-​​point unad­justed lead (which adjusts to a tie) for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­tin Hein­rich (D-​​Albuquerque) over Heather Wil­son, the woman he replaced to take the House seat when she left to run for New Mexico’s other Sen­ate seat. On the other hand, WeAskAmer­ica shows Hein­rich with a nine-​​point lead, with a likely voter model. There aren’t enough data points yet to sep­a­rate the sig­nal from the noise, but the his­tor­i­cal data sug­gest that Hein­rich does have a lead in this race, so I’m leav­ing New Mex­ico a “Leans Demo­c­rat” state.
  • North Dakota: Ras­mussen released a poll since last time indi­cat­ing an unad­justed nine-​​point lead (eight points after the bias adjust­ment) for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rick Berg (R) over for­mer state Attor­ney Gen­eral Heidi Heitkamp. With so lit­tle polling data, and with seri­ously con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion within the avail­able data (swings of ten points), it’s hard to say any­thing defin­i­tive about North Dakota from the polls. Nonethe­less, the vot­ing pat­terns and demo­graphic data con­tinue to sug­gest that Berg will have an eas­ier time cap­tur­ing this open seat. It’s a “Leans Repub­li­can” state.
  • Wis­con­sin: A slew of new polls in the Bad­ger State again. OK, it’s really two, one from Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity, and one from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, but they cov­ered the Repub­li­can pri­mary as well as hypo­thet­i­cal matchups for the poten­tial Repub­li­can can­di­dates against Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tammy Bald­win (D-​​Madison). While for­mer Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son has long polled as the favorite among Repub­li­cans, banker Eric Hovde has recently become a seri­ous poten­tial chal­lenger, despite never before hav­ing run for pub­lic office. Against Thomp­son, Bald­win is behind by four points in the Mar­quette poll (a Likely Voter pol), and at an unad­justed tie (which adjusts to about a five-​​point deficit) in the PPP poll. That puts the two roughly in sync, and sug­gests a some­what close race, but one that the for­mer Gov­er­nor would likely win. Against Hovde, how­ever things look quite dif­fer­ent. Mar­quette came away with Bald­win lead­ing by six, while PPP found Hovde ahead by one (adjust­ing to a lead of six). This puts the two polls in dia­met­ri­cally oppos­ing posi­tions, despite both polls being con­ducted over the same period. At the very least, this sug­gests that Hovde is still a bit of a wild card, and that means we need to keep an eye out for this one. In the mean­time, Wis­con­sin remains “Leans Repub­li­can”, though not by a wide margin.
  • Ohio: A new poll here from Ras­mussen indi­cates that incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown has a four-​​point unad­justed lead over Repub­li­can Josh Man­del. This trans­lates to a five-​​point adjusted lead, which is in line with some prior polls. For some rea­son, the Ohio polls have been noisy, with Brown’s recent lead rang­ing from about five to about 15 points. This makes the win­ner of the upcom­ing elec­tion fairly pre­dictable, though the mar­gin is far less so. For this rea­son, I’m leav­ing Ohio in the “Leans Demo­c­rat” col­umn, though if this trend con­tin­ues I’ll be mov­ing it to “Likely to Stay Demo­c­rat” in another cou­ple of months.
  • Florida: We con­tinue to see polls with results all over the place in the Sun­shine State. Mason-​​Dixon and Ras­mussen both had new polls. The lat­est batch has Mason-​​Dixon show­ing the incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son with a five-​​point edge over his almost cer­tain oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Con­nie Mack, IV (R-​​Fort Mey­ers), while Ras­mussen has Mack up by nine (an adjusted mar­gin of eight). That 14-​​point dif­fer­ence, cou­pled with the noisy sig­nal we’ve already been see­ing, means I’m keep­ing it in the “Tossup” col­umn until we get closer to Novem­ber or show a clear trend.
  • Vir­ginia: Last time, I men­tioned the WeAskAmer­ica poll, which showed the Repub­li­can, for­mer Gov­er­nor George Allen, with an aston­ish­ing nine-​​point lead over his oppo­nent, for­mer Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine. I said at the time that it smacked of being an out­lier. With three new polls under our belts, I’m now con­fi­dent in that assess­ment. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling came up with an unad­justed two-​​point Kaine lead (which adjusts to a three-​​point Allen lead), close to Quin­nip­iac’s two-​​point Allen lead (Quinnipiac’s adjust­ment fac­tor is essen­tially zero). And yet Ras­mussen (!) had an unad­justed one-​​point lead for Kaine, which adjusts to two points in the Democrat’s favor. With all of these, plus the pre­vi­ous trend of noisy results, it leaves Vir­ginia right where I had it before: a Tossup.
  • New Jer­sey: This is the one mover in this edi­tion. The lat­est Quin­nip­iac poll shows incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Bob Menen­dez hold­ing a com­fort­able 13-​​point lead over state Sen­a­tor Joseph Kyril­los. Given how far we are into the cycle, there’s no rea­son to believe that the Gar­den State will bear fruit for the Repub­li­can. New Jer­sey moves to “Likely Democrat”.

With our nar­rowed July “Tossup” and “Leans” zones, New Jer­sey and Wash­ing­ton become the lat­est states to be moved.

Last month’s five tossups remain: Florida, Indi­ana, Mass­a­chu­setts, Mon­tana, and Vir­ginia. The sixth I men­tioned before, North Dakota, now looks a lit­tle more likely to have a Repub­li­can result. It seems cred­i­ble for Repub­li­cans to win at least three of the five tossups, since they have struc­tural advan­tages in all of them. This is prob­a­bly why Intrade is giv­ing Repub­li­cans about a 52 per­cent chance of tak­ing the Sen­ate, down a point from two weeks ago, with a 30 per­cent chance of Democ­rats hold­ing at least 51 seats (down three from last time), and 20 per­cent chance of exactly 50 seats (down a point). Note that the three add up to 102 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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