Today marks a shift in our reg­u­lar Sen­ate and Reëlec­tion Watch sched­ules. Now that polling has increased in fre­quency, Sen­ate Watches will run weekly on Tues­days, with Reëlec­tion Watches every Saturday.

It’s been a sur­pris­ingly active ten days. Here is the cur­rent map:

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

Only eight states in con­tention were polled over these past ten days, but many have been polled heav­ily. Here the high­lights of the past two weeks, walk­ing from the Pacific to the Atlantic:

  • Nevada: A new poll from Ras­mussen, giv­ing Repub­li­can incum­bent Sen­a­tor Dean Heller a one point unad­justed lead over Shelly Berkley (D-​​Las Vegas), (plus some com­ments from our reg­u­lar read­ers) make me recon­sider my assess­ment of Nevada as “Likely Repub­li­can”. Rasmussen’s poll adjusts to a half-​​point in Berkley’s favor, and rep­re­sents an eight-​​point shift to the left from Rasmussen’s last poll at the end of July. I’m not ready to call this race a “Tossup”, but I’m cer­tainly mov­ing the Sil­ver State a col­umn to the left.
  • Mon­tana: One new poll from Mason-​​Dixon gives Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Denny Rehberg (R) a three point lead over Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sen­a­tor Jon Tester. Mon­tana is too lightly polled, the polls keep going back and forth between the two can­di­dates, and the polls them­selves have too large a mar­gin of error for me to find this elec­tion any­thing but a “Tossup”. Intraders are more inclined to believe Rehberg will win here; he is given a 57 per­cent like­li­hood (down eight from ten days ago), with Tester at 45 per­cent (up one). It’s a lightly-​​traded mar­ket, though, so I don’t give much cre­dence to it.
  • Wis­con­sin: What a dif­fer­ence a month makes. When last we looked at the Bad­ger State two Sen­ate Watches ago, Repub­li­can for­mer Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son had a com­fort­able and steady lead over Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tammy Bald­win (D-​​Madison). Then the two national con­ven­tions came and went, and what was once a sev­eral point lead for Thomp­son has turned into a sev­eral point lead for Bald­win. CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity, Ras­mussen, NBC/​Wall Street Jour­nal/​Marist, Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, and WeAskAmer­ica all saw a range of tie to a dozen points in Baldwin’s favor. A shift this large, and so close to the elec­tion, shifts Wis­con­sin to “Leans Demo­c­rat”. If it sticks into mid-​​October, we’re look­ing as “Likely Democrat”.
  • Michi­gan: More evi­dence that Michi­gan is becom­ing safe for Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow. Three new polls, from Baydoun/​Foster, MRG, and The Detroit News, all show her ahead of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Hoek­stra (R-​​Zeeland). The over­all noise in Michi­gan polling has been a range of about ten points end to end, so the cur­rent range of five to 16 points is in line with his­tory, and good enough to leave Michi­gan as “Likely Demo­c­ra­tic”. Intraders agree, giv­ing Stabenow an 86 per­cent chance (up a point from last time) to Hoekstra’s 14 per­cent (down nine).
  • Ohio: Two new polls this time, from Ras­mussen and FOX News. Both firms’ house biases are approx­i­mately the same, at about 1.5 points to the right of the con­sen­sus. Ras­mussen gives incum­bent Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown an eight point unad­justed lead (which adjusts to about 9.5 points) over Trea­surer Josh Man­del. FOX came away with Brown up by seven unad­justed points (8.5 adjusted). Last time, I thought that, given how noisy polls have been in Ohio this year, we needed more time with Brown hav­ing a com­fort­able lead before mov­ing Ohio from the “Leans Demo­c­rat” col­umn to “Likely Demo­c­rat”, and I said I’d do it if we had a solid con­tin­u­a­tion of the trend. We do, and I am. Intraders are bull­ish for Brown, giv­ing him a 72 per­cent chance (up seven from last time) to Mandel’s 34 per­cent (up nine from last time). It’s a rather lightly-​​traded mar­ket, though, par­tic­u­larly for Man­del, which accounts for the sum of the two being 106 percent.
  • Florida: Five polls this time, from Ras­mussen, Gravis, FOX News, WeAskAmer­ica, and Miami Her­ald/​Mason-​​Dixon. All show incum­bent Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son with a lead over Con­nie Mack, IV (R-​​Fort Myers), other than Gravis, who saw Mack up by one unad­justed point (which adjusts to a three point Nel­son lead). Last time, I said I was near­ing the point where was going to move Florida to “Likely Demo­c­rat”, and was wait­ing to see if this is a tem­po­rary bump or a new plateau. It’s either at its peak and about to revert to the mean, or it will be a plateau. It hasn’t quite been enough time to tell, so I’ll leave it to next week. My gut says “plateau”, though.
  • Vir­ginia: Five new polls this time, in only ten days. This round, from Ras­mussen, The Wash­ing­ton Post, Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, and FOX News, all had Demo­c­ra­tic for­mer Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine ahead of Repub­li­can for­mer Gov­er­nor George Allen. PPP had the low num­ber of one unad­justed point, which adjusts to one in Allen’s favor. The Wash­ing­ton Post had the high of eight points. I was not expect­ing any move­ment, con­sid­er­ing how long the race has been sta­ble at an up-​​the-​​middle tossup, but sud­denly here we are. Vir­ginia moves to “Leans Demo­c­rat”. Intraders are sim­i­larly con­fi­dent in a Kaine vic­tory, giv­ing him a 68 per­cent chance of win­ning (up nine from ten days ago), to Allen’s 40 per­cent (up ten from ten days ago). With both hav­ing risen, and the total between the two of 108 per­cent, it’s clear that the trad­ing is still too light to be espe­cially meaningful.
  • Mass­a­chu­setts: Five polls, all since the two national con­ven­tions. West­ern New Eng­land Uni­ver­sity, Suffolk/​7News, and WBUR/​MassINC all saw sig­nif­i­cant leads for Demo­c­rat Eliz­a­beth War­ren over the Repub­li­can incum­bent Sen­a­tor, Scott Brown. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling had War­ren up by two unad­justed points, which adjusts to a tie. UMass/​Boston Her­ald found a four point lead for Brown. The over­all trend is clearly in Warren’s direc­tion. It’s enough to push the race to “Leans Demo­c­rat”. Intrade agrees; War­ren is given a 59 per­cent chance to Brown’s 42.

It seems as if the nation lurched to the left in the past ten days. Mass­a­chu­setts and Vir­ginia went from “Tossup” to “Leans Demo­c­rat”, and Nevada moved from “Likely Repub­li­can” to “Leans Repub­li­can”, while Wis­con­sin jumped two columns, from “Leans Repub­li­can” to “Leans Demo­c­rat”. Our six tossups from before are whit­tled down to four: Con­necti­cut, Indi­ana, Mis­souri, and Mon­tana. Repub­li­cans’ best chance is Indi­ana, while Democ­rats’ best is prob­a­bly Con­necti­cut or Mis­souri. Mon­tana is cur­rently a real coin flip, mostly because of the paucity of data. Republican’s chance of tak­ing over the Sen­ate have decreased appre­cia­bly from last time. 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 an 18 per­cent chance of hold­ing at least 51 Sen­ate seats (down a whop­ping 27 points in the last ten days), with a 60 per­cent chance of Democ­rats hold­ing at least 50 seats (up an equally whop­ping 27 points), and still a 21 per­cent chance of either 48 or 49 seats.* The sum is 99 per­cent, which sug­gests that these mar­kets are being traded heav­ily enough to carry some weight.

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

*Editor’s note: Thanks to mclever for cor­rect­ing me on the pay­out terms for the Intrade Sen­ate markets.

Related arti­cles