Tonight, we get the answer to two impor­tant ques­tions regard­ing the future of the United States Sen­ate. Both Wis­con­sin and Con­necti­cut have their Repub­li­can pri­mary elec­tions for their Sen­ate candidates.

Let’s look at the two states, today’s elec­tions, and the impli­ca­tions of the poten­tial outcomes.

Con­necti­cut

Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans head­ing to the polls in Con­necti­cut, but the out­come isn’t really in doubt. For Team Blue, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Mur­phy (D-​​Cheshire) has con­sis­tently polled com­fort­ably ahead of for­mer state Sec­re­tary of State Susan Bysiewicz. And on Team Red, World Wrestling Enter­tain­ment founder Linda McMa­hon, who in 2010 lost her bid for the United States Sen­ate to Richard Blu­men­thal, has con­sis­tently polled even more com­fort­ably ahead of Chris Shays, who used to rep­re­sent the Fourth Con­gres­sional Dis­trict until he lost the seat to Jim Himes.

Assum­ing the out­come matches expec­ta­tions, Mur­phy seems likely to win the seat, which is being vacated by inde­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man. Mur­phy has polled ahead of McMa­hon in every poll con­ducted to date, though at times by a low single-​​digit mar­gin. Con­necti­cut is still a “Leans Demo­c­ra­tic” state, but with enough room for change between now and November.

Wis­con­sin

This is a more inter­est­ing race, at least on the Repub­li­can side. For Democ­rats, the choice is sim­ple: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tammy Bald­win (D-​​Madison) is the only can­di­date on the bal­lot. But for Repub­li­cans, there has been a bru­tal bat­tle among the early favorite, for­mer Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son; the recent star, bank­ing exec­u­tive Eric Hovde; and the under­dog, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Neu­mann (R-​​Janesville).

As I dis­cussed in “The Ide­ol­ogy Gam­ble”, the trend is toward more hard-​​line con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in the gen­eral elec­tions, even at the risk of giv­ing more seats to Democ­rats. This is another such instance. Thomp­son is the main­stream Repub­li­can can­di­date, while Hovde is the hard-​​line Tea Party favorite. Mean­while, Neu­mann splits the dif­fer­ence, with a DW-​​NOMINATE around the cur­rent Repub­li­can aver­age of +0.7.

All three can­di­dates poll within the mar­gin of error from each other. This is truly anybody’s race.

As has been the his­tory with the ide­ol­ogy gam­ble, the mod­er­ate Thomp­son polls best against Bald­win, to the point where it’s essen­tially a tossup between the two, based on his­tor­i­cal polls. The other two tend to poll a cou­ple of points worse against Bald­win than does Thompson.

Should Thomp­son win, Wisconsin’s sen­ate race is a tossup. Should he lose, it’s a “Leans Demo­c­ra­tic” state, though just barely.

This, too, will be a state to watch closely over the next three months.

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