Senate Watch: September 1

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A few states moved in the past two weeks. Move­ment was to be expected, of course, since we’re nar­row­ing the zones for “Tossup” and “Leans”. But that’s exactly why this edi­tion is such a surprise…we had a cou­ple states move into “Tossup”.

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:

  • Hawaii: Why do I list Hawaii? Because there’s an ever-​​growing drum­beat sug­gest­ing that for­mer Gov­er­nor Linda Lin­gle has a shot at beat­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mazie Hirono (D-​​Honolulu) in the gen­eral elec­tion to fill the seat being vacated by Sen­a­tor Daniel Akaka. Polling hasn’t lent much sup­port to the claims of a close race; Hirono’s lead has ranged from five to 22 points over the past 18 (!) months, with no read­ily dis­cern­able trend. The last poll, con­ducted in July by the Hon­olulu Star-​​Advertiser, gave Hirono a 19-​​point lead in a “likely voter” model. Real Clear Pol­i­tics calls Hawaii a “Leans Demo­c­rat” state, but I feel pretty con­fi­dent from the polling data that it’s “Likely Democrat”.
  • Nevada: Recent polls from the Las Vegas Review-​​Journal/​SurveyUSA and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling make the Sil­ver State look ever more cer­tain to keep incum­bent Sen­a­tor Dean Heller. His lead over Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Shel­ley Berkley (D-​​Las Vegas) is five points in the for­mer, and an unad­justed two (adjusted five) in the lat­ter. Five points is a lot to ask this close to the elec­tion, par­tic­u­larly since Heller has led the race since its incep­tion and there has yet to be a trend of nar­row­ing. For those rea­sons, I’m mov­ing Nevada to “Likely Republican”.
  • Ari­zona: We now know that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeff Flake (R-​​Mesa) will be fac­ing off against for­mer Sur­geon Gen­eral Richard Car­mona in Novem­ber. Flake has polled fairly well against Car­mona, but the polling has been light and infre­quent. I’m torn between keep­ing Ari­zona at “Leans Repub­li­can” and mov­ing it to “Likely Repub­li­can”. There have been hints of a nar­row­ing trend, but it’s hard to dis­tin­guish between sig­nal and noise here. For now I’m leav­ing it where it is, since we have had no polls since July, but my gut is telling me that it’s prob­a­bly time to move it.
  • Mon­tana: One new poll from Ras­mussen gives Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Denny Rehberg (R) an unad­justed four-​​point lead over incum­bent Sen­a­tor Jon Tester. Ras­mussen has been the only firm to poll Mon­tana since April, and the amount of noise in his polls in other states means that we have large error bars here. I just don’t have enough con­fi­dence to move Mon­tana out of the “Tossup” column.
  • New Mex­ico: Ras­mussen is here again, this time show­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­tin Hein­rich (D-​​Albuquerque) ahead of his pre­de­ces­sor, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Heather Wil­son (R-​​Albuquerque) by seven points. The num­ber is con­sis­tent with every poll since April. Wil­son has yet to even tie a sin­gle poll, let alone show a lead. The only thing keep­ing New Mex­ico out of the “Likely Demo­c­rat” col­umn is the low fre­quency of polling, cou­pled with the high noise of the firms con­duct­ing the New Mex­ico polls. It’s still a “Leans Demo­c­rat” state, but if we don’t see a poll with a Wil­son lead by Octo­ber 1, I will move it to “Likely Democrat”.
  • Mis­souri: You know you’re in trou­ble when your party aban­dons you and begs you to drop out of the race. This is the fate of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Akin (R-​​Wildwood), whose intem­per­ate com­ments regard­ing rape and preg­nancy have left him deeply unpop­u­lar with all but the hard­est of hard-​​line Repub­li­cans. While Akin had a lead over Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Claire McCaskill in every post-​​February poll before he made his fate­ful gaffe, he has not done well in the polls since then. Ras­mussen saw a ten-​​point unad­justed lead (11 adjusted) for McCaskill, while The Post-​​Dispatch/​Mason-​​Dixon came away with a nine-​​point lead and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling a one-​​point unad­justed lead (though that adjusts to two points in favor of Akin). PPP could be an out­lier, but it was con­ducted much later than the oth­ers — on Day 3 of the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion — so we might also be see­ing a con­ven­tion bump here as well. Intrade, in one of the few indi­vid­ual Sen­ate mar­kets with enough activ­ity to men­tion, has McCaskill with a 62 per­cent chance of reëlec­tion. Because of the PPP poll, I’m not ready to go so far as to call Mis­souri “Leans Demo­c­rat” (though Real Clear Pol­i­tics is). I am, how­ever, con­fi­dent enough to move it to “Tossup”, pend­ing another round of polls.
  • Wis­con­sin: For­mer Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son is polling well against Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tammy Bald­win (D-​​Madison). With the pri­mary behind us, CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac’s six-​​point unad­justed (four adjusted) lead, Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity’s nine-​​point lead, Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling’s five-​​point unad­justed (eight adjusted) lead, and Ras­mussen’s 11-​​point unad­justed (ten adjusted) lead, all in Thompson’s favor, things look mighty good for this to be a flipped seat. I’m leav­ing Wis­con­sin in the “Leans Repub­li­can” col­umn for one more round, but only because I’m not yet sure if this is a bump or a gen­uine base.
  • Michi­gan: Three polls in the past two weeks, all of which have been a sur­prise to me. Both Mitchell Research and Baydoun/​Foster show for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Hoek­stra with a lead over incum­bent Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow, by one and two points, respec­tively. The Detroit News, on the other hand, gave Stabenow an eight-​​point lead. The Detroit News poll is in line with the his­tor­i­cal trend, but it’s unusual (though hardly unprece­dented) to have two out­liers be that close to each other. When I get data that are that much in con­flict, I sit and wait for more before react­ing. I’m leav­ing Michi­gan as “Likely Demo­c­ra­tic”, but frankly I’m baf­fled by this lat­est set of numbers.
  • Ohio: Three new polls this time, from The Colum­bus Dis­patch, Ohio Poll/​University of Cincin­nati, and CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac. The Dis­patch poll indi­cated a tie, and the Ohio Poll gave incum­bent Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown a one-​​point lead over state Trea­surer Josh Man­del. The Quin­nip­iac poll, on the other hand, gave Brown a seven-​​point unad­justed (nine-​​point adjusted) lead. It’s hard to dis­cern whether we’re see­ing a tight­en­ing race, since Quin­nip­iac is right at the his­tor­i­cal trend, while the other two point to ero­sion of Brown’s lead. I was expect­ing to move Ohio to “Likely Demo­c­rat” this time, but the lat­est data pro­vide enough uncer­tainty that I’m leav­ing Ohio in the “Leans Demo­c­rat” column.
  • Florida: Only one poll this time, from CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, who saw a nine-​​point unad­justed lead for incum­bent Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son over his chal­lenger, Con­nie Mack, IV (R-​​Fort Myers). It adjusts to an 11-​​point lead. As I said last time, Florida’s polling has been rel­a­tively noisy, and Rasmussen’s par­tic­u­larly so, so his lat­est poll from two weeks ago didn’t give me much con­fi­dence. With the addi­tion of the Quin­nip­iac poll, the pic­ture is even clearer than it was last time, when I moved Florida into “Leans Demo­c­rat”. No change here.
  • Vir­ginia: Two polls, and two ties: Ras­mussen and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling both saw no lead, before adjust­ing for house bias. After adjust­ing, they indi­cate a one-​​point lead for for­mer Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine over for­mer Gov­er­nor George Allen in Rasmussen’s case, and a three point lead for Allen in PPP’s case. At this point, I think Vir­ginia will be a “Tossup” right up to elec­tion night.
  • Con­necti­cut: Three new polls, from Quin­nip­iac, Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, and Ras­mussen. Quin­nip­iac and Ras­mussen saw a three-​​point unad­justed (one point and two points adjusted, respec­tively) lead for for­mer WWE exec­u­tive Linda McMa­hon over Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Mur­phy (D-​​Cheshire). PPP had the oppo­site view, with four unad­justed (one adjusted) points in Murphy’s favor. This lat­est round makes it all but impos­si­ble to put Con­necti­cut in any col­umn other than “Tossup”, a move from “Leans Democrat”.
  • Mass­a­chu­setts: One new poll from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling gives incum­bent Sen­a­tor Scott Brown a five-​​point unad­justed (eight adjusted) lead over Eliz­a­beth War­ren. As a sin­gle poll, it’s impos­si­ble to tell whether we’re see­ing an out­lier or sig­nal; it’s pretty far from the trend that has been in place since April. In the only other Intrade indi­vid­ual Sen­ate mar­ket with enough trad­ing activ­ity to dis­cuss, Brown is trad­ing at a 59 per­cent win rate, while War­ren is trad­ing at 45 per­cent. It appears from the his­tor­i­cal charts that the mar­ket is react­ing to the PPP poll. Absent con­fir­ma­tion that PPP wasn’t an out­lier, though, Mass­a­chu­setts stays a “Tossup”.

We’ve had a few moves: Nevada, Mis­souri, and Connecticut.

And so, our for­mer four tossups become six: Indi­ana, Mass­a­chu­setts, Mon­tana, and Vir­ginia are joined by Con­necti­cut and Mis­souri. It seems cred­i­ble for Repub­li­cans to win at least three of the six, but win­ning three would not hand them the major­ity unless Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI) becomes Vice Pres­i­dent. More­over, North Dakota, which has been lightly polled for some time, may not still be “Leans Repub­li­can”; the absence of data leaves us effec­tively blinded there. The Intrade mar­kets moved a decent amount: they now give Repub­li­cans about a 54 per­cent chance of tak­ing the Sen­ate (up four points from two weeks ago), with a 26 per­cent chance of Democ­rats hold­ing at least 51 seats (down five points from last time), and now a 25 per­cent chance of exactly 50 seats (up five from last time). The sum is 105 per­cent, so there’s clearly some mar­ket error. Most indi­vid­ual Sen­ate race mar­kets are still too lightly traded to pro­duce any mean­ing­ful data.

How cred­i­ble do you think those mar­ket num­bers are? Do you agree or dis­agree with my state analy­ses above?

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  1. Why do you still list Hawaii? Well for one, the GOP has a
    rel­a­tively pop­u­lar ex-​​governor run­ning, and I think ex-​​governors are hard to
    write off no mat­ter what state. Then you have the fact that its essen­tially not
    been polled by any major polling firm and the big mar­gins are almost entirely
    dri­ven by the “Adver­tiser” poll, which noone knows if they are cred­i­ble. The 3 “non-​​Advertiser” polls in the last 12 months aver­age to Lin­gle down 6. So until even PPP can spit out a Lin­gle down 10 poll, I’d say this is a race to watch.

    Anyway,some nice GOP devel­op­ments this week (save for Todd Akin).  I’m shocked by some, but yet other incum­bents like Kloubachar and Casey and Cantwell are doing quite nicely. I think Stabenow and Sher­rod Brown are far more par­ti­san than the oth­ers though, so hope­fully their declines are for real. The CT tight­en­ing I really can’t fig­ure out though.

    Also,I won­der if you can include some hot gov­er­nor races, pos­si­bly in the House pre­dic­tion post. There’s only a few I believe, like maybe NH and WA.

  2. Pol­i­tics is such an enter­tain­ing busi­ness. To think that in a cou­ple of months, Angus King might well be the second-​​most-​​powerful man in Amer­ica! :-)

  3. I have the sus­pi­cion that Mass. is the bench­mark con­test.  If Eliz­a­beth War­ren can’t make the sale there, I’m dubi­ous about many of the other races.  I sus­pect, given the sim­i­lar­ity of her posi­tions to those of Obama on the key issues, the Pres­i­den­tial debates may be the tip­ping point, one way or the other.

  5. rgbact,

    Why do you still list Hawaii?

    I wouldn’t say “still”. This is the first time I men­tioned Hawaii at all. A six-​​point gap is pretty sig­nif­i­cant this close to the elec­tion, by the way.

    I won­der if you can include some hot gov­er­nor races, pos­si­bly in the House pre­dic­tion post.

    I’m inter­ested in run­ning both Gov­er­nor and House arti­cles. It’s mostly a mat­ter of free time that’s been hold­ing me back, par­tic­u­larly in the case of House races, where there are so many of to cover.

  6. chan­nel­clemente,

    I have the sus­pi­cion that Mass. is the bench­mark con­test. If Eliz­a­beth War­ren can’t make the sale there, I’m dubi­ous about many of the other races.

    I dis­agree. Unlike 2010, 2008, and 2006, this elec­tion doesn’t have the mark­ings of a wave. When it’s not a wave year, the local stuff comes to the fore. I don’t see the Mass­a­chu­setts elec­tion as hav­ing an appre­cia­ble impact on Wis­con­sin, Michi­gan, Mis­souri, or Florida.

  7. Michael,

    it, to me is not so sim­ple as a wave elec­tion.  Most of the Con­gres­sional races seem uphill fights, and some of the Sen­ate con­tests, for the Democ­rats.  I take the sta­tus of the race in Mass. as a bench­mark of the Democ­rats abil­ity to make a con­vinc­ing argu­ment about the cause-​​effect nature of our cur­rent eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion and 2008–9 melt­down.  The fact that no one in the White House and per­haps the Fed can move an econ­omy with mon­e­tary pol­icy when inter­est rates are essen­tially zero seems to be a fact no one wants to acknowl­edge.  Even quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing is sub­ject to the law of dimin­ish­ing returns after the first appli­ca­tion, so not much help there.  To me, that is the crux of mov­ing the 4–8% of the elec­torate stand­ing on the side­lines cur­rently, con­vinc­ing them that this reces­sion digout is going to be a slow slog, no mat­ter the res­i­dent of 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Ave.  If that sale, of those salient facts, can’t be made in Mass. by War­ren, I’d con­clude it can’t be made any­where.  In local elec­tions, for the most part, I believe those races have been nation­al­ized,   so the demon­stra­tion project that is the Mass. Sen­ate race is the key, IMO.

  8. @fili (#2)  Yes!!  Your 1st sen­tence cap­tured my out­look to a tee.  It’s bet­ter than any Hol­ly­wood script (save for The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion).  To your point about King, I won­der if it may be the case with Manchin as well, though to a lesser extent.

    @CC (#3)  I am going to dis­agree.  If we had two equal cam­paign­ers on even turf, then I’d agree.  But then again, since each may can­cel the other out, on 2nd thought, you may be right.  While I don’t always think “all pol­i­tics is local” holds true, I believe it does here.

    My state thoughts as of today:
    Hawaii.  If this was being con­tested in a more even PVI state, say FL, OH, CO, then it’s Lin­gle by 8%.  Maybe even if it was an off-​​year elec­tion.  But a favorite/​popular son will be at the top of the ticket.  Lin­gle loses by 7%.

    Mis­souri.  I could post an entire arti­cle on my thoughts regard­ing the polling here.  I’ll say this about the PPP poll you cite.  That same poll found 20% of AAs going for Rom­ney.  Allow me to step out on a limb and say…not hap­pen­ing.  Fair enough, McCaskill is unpop­u­lar, but you can’t say drink­ing more breast milk will cure homo­sex­u­al­ity.  Okay, he didn’t say that…but you almost think it’s some­thing he could say.  This is at least Lean D.

    Conn.  I know what you’re see­ing regard­ing the polling.  Last time McMa­hon hired peo­ple to run her cam­paign who were only inter­ested in mak­ing money for them­selves.  She is run­ning a much bet­ter cam­paign this time.  Plus she isn’t run­ning against a very pop­u­lar Blu­men­thal.  But for me, this is the D’s ver­sion of Indiana…fool’s gold.  Lean D.

    Mass.  You have prob­a­bly the best cam­paigner in the 2012 cycle (not named Obama) vs Sharon Angle lite.  If this was a state like Nevada, the DSCC may pull out.  Addi­tion­ally, War­ren broke the ice on being the first one to go neg­a­tive; this tells me she thinks she is behind.  As some­one who works hard to shy away from toss-​​ups, I have moved this one to (ever ever so slightly) Lean R.

    As of today, I have Biden as the 51st vote.  (Given a 90% chance King and 95% chance Manchin, caucus/​stay with the Ds.)

  9. clm,

    my premise is, more or less, if you can’t get an apple tree to grow in the most fer­tile ground avail­able, don’t plan on bak­ing a pie.  I can’t imag­ine a bet­ter can­di­date than War­ren.   Maybe I’m an opti­mist, but I think a lit­tle fail­ure by the GOP ide­alogs might kick start gov­ern­ment into work­ing again, because the House seems secure for the GOP this year.  Oth­er­wise, we spend another 2–4 years  in guer­rilla war­fare get­ting nowhere.

  10. Hey, it’s my bus­boy! So glad to see you again. And you’re so smart, I wish you would post a lot more often :-)

    I only dis­agree with 2 points in your sum­mary. I think Eliz­a­beth War­ren is a much bet­ter cam­paigner than you do… and she is tailor-​​made for the con­stituency in her state. More­over Brown has to man­age such a treach­er­ous high-​​wire act, run­ning as an R while pre­tend­ing not to be much of a con­ser­v­a­tive at all (with War­ren chuck­ing rot­ten toma­toes at him the whole time)  that he is more likely than not to make some kind of fatal error in these final two months.

    Also I think there’s a bet­ter than 90% chance that Angus King will cau­cus with the Dems. (I keep wait­ing for Mainer to weigh in on this one and give us the straight goods. Mainer! Where are you?)

    But HI.. CT.. MO… I think you’re right on point.

  13. fili,

    Here’s why I went with King at “only” 90%, (which is still a rather high num­ber).  Let’s say the Sen­ate is 50–50 (King as the 50th Dem) with Ryan as the VP or 51–49 (King as the 49th Dem), in other words, Rs in charge no mat­ter what King does.  I could see King cau­cus­ing with the Rs cause maybe they promise him a bet­ter than aver­age com­mit­tee gig, or per­haps he thinks he can do more for his state being in the “major­ity.”  But we agree, if it mat­ters, he’s going with the Ds.

    As to War­ren.  Have you seen the pic­ture of her on the horse?  :-)   It’s very Dukak­isian.  As you point out, can­di­dates have to side step pro­duce fly­ing in their direc­tion.  Granted Brown is cam­paign­ing in a vir­tual farmer’s mar­ket there is so much he needs to avoid.  But War­ren runs toward the pro­jec­tiles and lets it hit her right in the face.  How she han­dled the whole Pocahontas-​​gate is mind bog­gling.  She tells Brown he needs to release more tax returns from his years in pub­lic ser­vice.  Turns out he already had, and she hadn’t — think­ing her days in Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion didn’t count.  She is try­ing to run against the 1% when her resume reads éli­tist.  A low level mem­ber of Warren’s cam­paign tried to take a shot at Brown for avoid­ing the RNC the 1st 2 days.  Turns out he was serv­ing his time for the National Guard — oops.  I could go on.  I do think it’s pos­si­ble to be even too lib­eral for Mass.  Brown on the other hand has shaked hands with what seems like 40% of Mass vot­ers. 
    So to “CC’s” point, I think you’re ask­ing a fast-​​food deep-​​fry cook to bake that apple pie. 
    But it is MA, where 40% of the elec­torate would vote for a dead ani­mal as long as it had a D next to its name.  That gives Brown lit­tle room for error, and the polls to date show he has yet to make that error.

  14. @busboy… maybe I’m read­ing him wrong but I don’t think Angus King  seems like a guy who could be bought off with a com­mit­tee gig. He looks to me like a crusty, prin­ci­pled, rock-​​ribbed New Eng­lan­der who will be a painful thorn in the flesh for Repub­li­cans as long as he is in Congress.

    As for Mass., I just LOVE Eliz­a­beth War­ren. I love every­thing about her, so I admit it’s hard for me to be objec­tive on this one. I’m just an abject cheer­leader :-)

  15. so I admit it’s hard for me to be objec­tive on this one. I’m just an abject cheerleader

    Can you just include this at the end of all your posts? lol.

  17. Scott Brown is a mem­ber of the JAG in the Army National Guard with the rank of colonel.

    Eliz­a­beth War­ren was a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can for a good chunk of her life.
    What a com­plex web we weave.

  19. Arm,

    I’m kind of neu­tral on that as an issue, but I would offer the opin­ion, he wasn’t crawl­ing around in the mud dur­ing the con­ven­tion.
    Here in CA his­tory is about to be made with regard to the mort­gage cri­sis.  If this deci­sion is made, this will become a huge elec­tion issue, I’d spec­u­late.
      Immi­nent Domain is about to become a tool for mort­gage recla­ma­tion.  This could act as a big­ger eco­nomic stim­u­lus than any­one ever dreamed of.  The guys that hold these secu­ri­tized notes/​instruments based on mort­gages are going the scream bloody mur­der.
    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​9​/​0​1​/​e​m​i​n​e​n​t​-​d​o​m​a​i​n​-​m​o​r​t​g​a​g​e​s​_​n​_​1​8​3​6​7​1​0​.​h​tml 

  20. Wowm,

    this could be an incon­ve­nient real­ity. Bain in the crosshairs.
    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​9​/​0​2​/​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​i​n​q​u​i​r​y​-​o​n​-​t​a​x​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​g​y​-​a​d​d​s​-​t​o​-​s​c​r​u​t​i​n​y​-​o​f​-​f​i​n​a​n​c​e​-​f​i​r​m​s​.​h​t​m​l​?​_​r​=​1​&​a​m​p​;hp 

  21. “Conn.  I know what you’re see­ing regard­ing the polling.  Last time McMa­hon hired peo­ple to run her cam­paign who were only inter­ested in
    mak­ing money for themselves.”

    Thanks for your per­spec­tive. I had won­dered if there were alot of con­sul­tants that were just using McMa­hon as an ATM before. I’m still really puz­zled as to how she is even in CT while Heather Wil­son is lag­ging in NM–both GOP women run­ning against fairly non­de­script con­gress­men. Think Wil­son needs to take some lessons.

  22. Fili Kings inten­tions on who he sits with should he win (and look­ing at things right now up here he should win, maybe hand­ily) is at this point still pretty much the stuff of con­jec­ture. I think he might play the game to enhance our states posi­tion from los­ing some one like Snowe but he also has tended to remem­ber who brought him to the big dance. It is going to be Democ­rats and small num­bers of mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans along with a large group of real Inde­pen­dents that will send him to DC, not rad­i­cal teapers or SOCONS. Cof­fee shop the­ory is nearly uni­ver­sal that he will cau­cus with the Dems but never doubt his independence.

  23. I think it’s worth not­ing that the Intrade Sen­ate con­trol bets do not include Inde­pen­dents. In other words, the Democ­rats must out­right win 50 seats (plus VP) or 51 seats for the “Dems con­trol Sen­ate” bet to be paid. Bernie Sanders and the likely Maine win­ner don’t count towards the Democ­rats’ total as far as Intrade is con­cerned. There­fore, even if actual party con­trol is about a 50⁄50 propo­si­tion right now, it’s under­stand­able that the Democ­rats bet­ting odds would be sub­stan­tially lower, because they’ll really need 52+Biden or 53 for the bet to be a win­ner at Intrade, while the Repub­li­cans only need 50+Ryan or 51.