Within the Margin

• I’m sorry my liveblog tailed off so early tonight. I left the computer lab to go to the county Dem gathering at Shadows in Poughkeepsie, where the wifi infrastructure is not up to snuff. I had to constantly reconnect and had long lulls with no connection. So getting results and relaying them to the people in the room was hard enough, let alone processing them in a meaningful fashion here. So I had to abandon that effort. For those who were following, thank you. I hope that in the coming days I can provide something worth reading in appreciation for those who drop by this blog to see what I have to say. I am deeply grateful for any and all eyeballs who make their way over here.

• Thank you so much to everyone who put something into the electoral process this year, on any side – whether as a poll worker or a campaign staffer or volunteer. In particular, let me thank two people on the ground. One is my collaborator here, Matt Clausen, who decamped for Ohio in June to reelect the president. The result was that Matt couldn’t post here throughout the season, but he has provided myriad sanity checks and news flashes and a man-on-the-ground sensibility that fueled my race ratings this autumn. And thanks to my brother, Patrick Kelly, who spent the final weeks of this campaign in Colorado helping to turn a tough race – one we weren’t sure we’d pull off – into another victory for Barack Obama in that state. I think I’m capable of separating my forecasting and analysis from my rooting interest; my race ratings, for one, have been incredibly sober. But I do root, and Matt and Pat uprooted for the cause, and I respect and thank them for it.

• Democrats made a lot of history in Dutchess County tonight. I’ll be writing in more depth about that in the coming days. But this was the greatest night in the history of the Dutchess County Democratic Party. Congratulations are in order for all of the party’s candidates and for chairwoman Elisa Sumner.

• After the 2008 election, I was talking with a wise Republican colleague of mine. She noted that her side couldn’t keep picking groups of people and saying, “We don’t want your vote.” Four years later, the situation is little changed. I’m talking here about minorities and immigrants and gays and the non-religious and college students and even a great many women…the list is awfully large, and some notable segments of it are growing quickly. Now, I think Republicans would find that to be an overly-dramatic statement. After all, so many of them are pretty chill – at least in theory – with the groups I just named. But at some point policy matters. Tone matters. The Republican Party, over the last last four years, has demonstrated that it is at worst hostile and at best ill at ease with these groups. Elections aren’t going to get any easier for them if that remains the case. Even if they do win under those circumstances, they’ll find that governing with that hostility or ill-ease is quite difficult. It’s time for an adult discussion about feelings and policy when it comes to many segments of the American public. And look, it cuts both ways occasionally – I think a lot of liberals could do more to understand where the religious are coming from, for example. But let’s not pretend that the shortcomings are equal at this moment in time.

• I have subsisted largely on doughnuts today. I spent six hours driving to Scranton and back, four hours on doors, some time writing, and then it was results time, so dinner didn’t happen. I am looking forward to cooking something fantastic tomorrow.

Here’s where I’ll be tonight. All times eastern. Refresh often.

First thing to note: parts of Indiana and Kentucky close their polls at 6:00 eastern time, which is absurd. But that means we already have some results. With a small number of precincts reporting, Richard Mourdock (R) is leading Joe Donnelly (D) by 4.5 points in the Indiana senate race. Keep in mind this evening that WTM has Donnelly picking this seat up for Democrats, as part of our overall forecast of no net change in the Senate (3 Rep pickups canceled out by 3 Dem pickups).

7:05 We have a long way to go in this Senate race, but we’re up to 4% counted now, and Mourdock’s lead has shrunk to about 2 points (CNN has more results but doesn’t report to a decimal place). Right now Romney is leading Obama 60-38 in Indiana atop the ticket, which is unrealistic: Indiana is not rocketing all the way back to its ’04 numbers. Remember that Obama won this state four years ago. He won’t this time, but that margin’s going to close, and as it does, Donnelly will pull ahead.

7:11 Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good about Donnelly even with so few precincts in. That’s because Mourdock is leading narrowly, and we haven’t seen any of Marion (Indianapolis), St. Joseph (South Bend/Notre Dame) or Lake (Gary) counties yet. Nor Vanderburgh (Evansville) or LaPorte counties). These are Indiana’s most Democratic counties, and they are populous places. Barring the unexpected, we’re headed toward the first senate flip of the night, which is helpful for Dems as they seek to maintain a Senate majority.

7:21 Indiana-8 is a longshot pickup opportunity for Dems. We can start to get a decent read on it, because a lot of the IN precincts which have already reported are in the 8th. Republican incumbent Larry Bucshon leads by 0.9%.

7:24 7% in; Donnelly now up about 2% as votes start to come in from Lake and Marion counties. The city of Gary is ultra-Democratic as are some of the neighboring towns. Marion County is coterminous with Indianapolis; there’s some red suburban territory in there but in federal races Indy is essentially Democratic now (twas not always thus).

7:27 Ben Chandler (Kentucky-6) is a Democratic survivor from the 2010 wipeout, and he’s in a rematch with the man who he narrowly beat: Andy Barr. This is a top target for the Reps, but we have it at Lean Dem. Barr is up by 10 votes right now, but none of Fayette County has reported. Fayette includes Lexington, and is one of the bluer counties in Kentucky.

7:29 In other House news, Wacky Jackie Walorski is favored to pick up IN-2 for the Reps; this is the seat Donnelly has vacated to run for Senate. It was made redder in redistricting. Walorski has a comfortable lead in the early count, but that’s without any of South Bend reporting.

7:42 Not much erosion for Obama in Kentucky relative to 2008. Dave Leip’s site is not loading consistently – he apparently was not equipped for election night traffic – so my access to historical data might be somewhat limited tonight. But most counties look to be coming at roughly same percentages as 2008. Harder to judge turnout this early. I mention this not because Kentucky is a swing state, but specifically because it is not: the disparity in national versus state polling has led us to assume that Obama must be doing worse than before in non-swing states. KY is not an indicator of that.

7:45 Let’s talk about a bigger fish in the presidential race: Florida. Early Obama lead (50%-49%). With the ultra-red panhandle not closing for another 15 minutes and nothing in yet from populous counties like Miami-Dade (good for Dems) or Polk (good for Reps), I don’t have a feel yet for this one. My assumption has been a Romney win in Florida, of course.

7:54 As my good friend Chris Kelly just pointed out, the Florida numbers are bizarre. CNN has 34% reporting…everyone else 4-5%. CNN knows something that no one else does?

8:00 Indiana update: St. Louis County (South Bend, home of the Fighting Irish) has largely reported. That moved Brendan Mullen ahead significantly in IN-2, but let’s see if that holds up. Walorski will fight back in the much redder areas of the district, obviously. Marion is also starting to come in, so statewide numbers are more useful now. Romney is down to a 10-11 point lead in Indiana, depending on which results you look at. That falls in line with my expectation that Indiana ’12 will be a midpoint between Indiana ’04 (big Bush win) and Indiana ’08 (narrow Obama win). Lastly, Donnelly leads by 6.3% in the Senate race. Dems are on top in the first of the Abortion Derbies in the Senate – Mizzou being the other.

8:09 Florida update: Some erosion for Obama relative to ’08 in populous, suburban Polk County. McCain won 52.5-46.3 in 2008; Romney leads 53.4-45.7. That’s a smallish gain, but played out across the state – along with Romney improvements in the super-red panhandle, which we’re seeing so far – might be enough to flip it. Romney absolutely has to have Florida; I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop here.

8:20 Let’s do a House update. Buchson is pulling away in IN-8 (southwest corner). Reps should be OK there. Mullen has a big lead with half of the vote counted in IN-2; he’s going to gain some more ground in LaPorte County so that’s still very much in play as a difficult Dem hold. But it looks like Ben Chandler might be toast in KY-6; Barr is up 5 and much of Fayette County is in, so I don’t see where he makes up ground. He had momentum late; should’ve changed it to Tilt Dem or even Tilt Rep.

8:24 The Florida goofiness continues. CNN shows an Obama lead, with 45% counted. Everyone else shows a narrower Romney lead, with 23-31% reporting. That could mean that on their way to 45%, Obama will retake the lead. Or it means CNN is watching a different game, as they’ve been known to do in Florida sometimes.

8:26 I haven’t mentioned Virginia yet, because we didn’t have anything from Fairfax County. As that starts to roll in, the current ginormous Romney lead will diminish and we’ll get a sense of where things stand there.

8:27 CNN added a bunch of results in Florida – 50% reported, 50-50 tie. Obama up by 6,536 votes statewide.

8:32 Networks are already calling the Connecticut Senate race for Chris Murphy. So Dems replace Joe Lieberman with, you know, an actual Democrat. And Linda McMahon loses again, in a race Republicans spent September thinking they might pick up. She won’t be missed on the American political scene.

8:32 Relocating to Shadows – I’ll be back online within a half hour in a new thread.

Georgia’s 12th District
There’s not a lot of data or reporting to influence this minor change – but the fact that Democrats have produced two polls showing their man John Barrow surviving, while Republican challenger Lee Anderson has been mum, tells me that there is a better shot than I thought of Barrow holding on in a district which is much redder post-redistricting. I still think the Reps pick this seat up, but I’m less confident about that result than I was a week ago.
From Lean Republican to Tilt Republican

Maine’s 2nd District
Republicans bluster every two years about this being in play. It’s not. Shouldn’t have fallen for their game.
From Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic

Massachusetts’ 6th District
Our initial set of House Ratings had this district at Tilt Republican, but that was probably foolish. Democratic incumbent John Tierney has basically acknowledged in a campaign ad that he didn’t do enough to deal with his wife’s  family’s tax-evasion shenanigans, and Richard Tisei’s internal polls include a 17-point lead. Tisei will be the only openly-gay Republican serving in Congress in 2013, and he’ll be the first Republican from Massachusetts to win a House seat since Peter Blute and Peter Torkildsen lost their seats in 1996 – Torkildsen losing to Tierney that year, in fact.
From Tilt Republican to Likely Republican

Minnesota’s 8th District
I’ve always believed that Dems could retake this district, but doubted whether long-ago Congressman Rick Nolan was the man to do it, especially if this overwhelmingly white, working-class territory saw the sort of erosion atop the ticket that we expect for that demographic this year. But almost every poll has Nolan up, and though Obama won’t repeat his 53% from 2008 here, it seems like freshman Chip Cravaack just has too much headwind to work against.
From Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic

North Carolina’s 8th District
I was working on a North Carolina House Calls piece that would look at this district (and NC’s other competitive races) in depth, but this ain’t my day job, sadly, and time ran out – plus I journeyed to Pennsylvania and back today for GOTV, which is not a quick trip. Anyway, in that piece I would have shifted Larry Kissell’s seat closer to a GOP takeover. We already had the Rep challenger, state senator David Rouzer, winning here – the question is how strongly we feel. The national party gave up on Kissell a while ago in this turf, which was made much redder in redistricting. Kissell doesn’t raise much money and doesn’t campaign all that well; his survival in 2010 was somewhat surprising. Anyway, hedging with a Lean rating is unnecessary.
From Lean Republican to Likely Republican

Note that the Minnesota pickup shifts our overall projection for the House to a +4 net gain for Democrats – leaving the GOP with 238 seats and Democrats with 197. Our revised table of ratings for the competitive races:

Likely Dem	Lean Dem	Tilt Dem	Tilt Rep	Lean Rep	Likely Rep
AZ-2	CA-9	AZ-1	CA-36	CA-21	AZ-9
CA-24	CA-41	CA-7	CA-52	CO-3	CO-4
CA-47	FL-22	CA-10	CO-6	MT-AL	FL-16
CO-7	KY-6	CA-26	CT-5	NY-19	IN-8
CT-4	NY-24	FL-18	FL-2	TN-4	MA-6
DE-AL		IL-11	FL-10		MI-3
FL-9		IL-12	GA-12		MN-2
FL-26		IL-13	IL-10		NE-2
HI-1		IL-17	IN-2		NV-3
IL-8		IA-4	IA-3		NJ-3
IA-1		MI-11	MI-1		NJ-7
IA-2		MN-8	MN-6		NC-8
MD-6		NV-4	NH-2		NC-11
NY-25		NH-1	NY-11		ND-AL
WA-1		NY-1	NY-18		OK-2
WV-3		NY-21	NY-27		PA-6
		NC-7	OH-6		PA-8
		OH-16	TX-23		PA-18
		PA-12	UT-4		SD-AL
		RI-1			TX-14
					VA-2
					VA-5
					WI-7
					WI-8

Overview
Illinois faces a unique set of circumstances in its Congressional elections this year. Like many states, it saw a wave of House seats fall into Republican hands during the 2010 wave elections. But unlike many of larger states where this occurred, Democrats maintained control of the governorship and the state legislature. This allowed the Dems to undo an incumbent-protection plan from 2002 and draw a friendlier map designed to regain a number of seats lost in 2010.

The Land of Lincoln lost one seat during reapportionment; the 16th district’s veteran Republican incumbent Don Manzullo was drawn into a primary with freshman Adam Kinzinger from the 11th. The younger, more energetic newcomer won the primary and now has what is expected to be a same district for the foreseeable future. So the current 11-8 Republican advantage in the Illinois delegation is effectively 10-8 going into this year’s elections.

If Democrats are to make a dent in the Republican House majority, they need 3-5 pickups in Illiniois, and they need to hold their sole endangered seat (the 12th district).

The Safe Seats:
Seven of Illinois’ seats are based in the City of Chicago; all are safely Democratic. Republicans last won a Congressional district in the city in 1994, when a GOP wave and a scandal-plagued incumbent gave them the Northside’s 5th district for a single term. The 1st, 2nd and 7th districts are majority-African American districts in accordance with the Voting Rights Acts; the 1st and 2nd cover the South Side while the 7th covers the Downtown/Loop and the Near West Side. Eahc includes more suburban territory than their previous incarnations. The 4th is the Hispanic-majority VRA district – earmuff-shaped to join Hispanic neighborhoods on the North and South sides. The 3rd is a majority-white district in Southwest Chicago (plus some suburbs); Republicans lack a bench here but it’s not nearly as Democratic in federal races as the rest of the city. Finally, the 9th district covers the Lakefront and places like Evanston, Skokie and Winnetka and includes one of the larger population of affluent white liberals anywhere in the country.

Illinois’ 6th district covers a sprawling portion of the city’s western suburbs, including Downers Grove, Wheaton, Lake Zurich, Palatine and the northeastern part of Naperville. It has been a Republican district for more than a century. Dems almost picked it up in 2006 when Tammy Duckworth ran for an open seat, but Peter Roskam won, expanded his margin in 2008, and is now utterly safe. The same goes for freshman Randy Hultgren further west in the 14th, which stretches from McHenry and Marengo in the north to Batavia and Geneva further south and to Plainfield beyond that. The 15th district is one of only two that John McCain would have carried in 2008 under the new lines; it covers the southeastern portion of the state, including Danville and Effingham. The other McCain district is the significantly-revised 18th, covering parts of Peoria, Springfield, Bloomington-Normal and smaller towns like Quincy and Jacksonville. Aaron Schock will easily win again there before running for governor in two years. The final safe Republican district was mentioned above – Adam Kinzinger’s new 16th, covering eastern Rockford, DeKalb, Mendota and part of the Illinois River Valley.

The Competitive Seats:

Illinois’ 8th Congressional District – Northwest Chicago suburbs including Elgin, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village
Last flip: 2010
Joe Walsh was one of the least likely winners of 2010, narrowly defeating a moderate Democrat who had appeared to cement her hold on the district after becoming the first Dem to win it in the modern era in 2004. Walsh is the quintessential Tea Partier in terms of ideology, settled a lawsuit by his ex-wife for failing to pay $115,000 in child support, and making outlandish comments about abortions to protect a mother’s health. With all of that, he surely would have lost his old district this time out. But Democrats made sure of it, redrawing it about six points bluer. On top of all that, he drew a powerhouse challenger in Tammy Duckworth. She’s pulling away in polls, and it’s hard to see how Walsh holds on here.
Rating: Likely Democratic

Illinois’ 10th Congressional District – Northern Chicago suburbs including Waukegan, Buffalo Grove, Highland Park, part of Northbrook
Last flip: 1980
This district elects relatively moderate Republicans to Congress with few exceptions. But as a 61% Obama district, Dems targeted it as one of their few pickup opportunities in 2010 when incumbent Mark Kirk ran for the U.S. Senate. But even with a plausible candidate in friendly territory, Dems couldn’t get it done. Bob Dold was elected, and immediately targeted by redistricters, who increased the Obama percentage to 63%. Moderate Democratic businessman Brad Schneider opened a sizable lead in a recent poll, but we’ve seen Dold come from behind before – granted, not this far. Dold has largely distanced himself from the extremists in the House GOP caucus, and I think that’s enough – just barely enough – to help him survive as the region’s voters applaud him for being reasonable. We set the bar low these days.
Ratings: Tilt Republican

Illinois’ 11th Congressional District – Southwestern Chicago exurbs including Aurora, Bolingbrook, Joliet, southwestern Naperville
Last flip: 2010 (Aurora and Joliet)
Redistricting was not kind to 7-term Republican incumbent Judy Biggert. The Obama percentage rose from 54% to 61% and less than half of the district’s voters come from her current 13th district. She is being challenged by Bill Foster, who served the old 14th district for a term and a half before losing in 2010. A physicist and businessman with considerable personal wealth and moderate sensibilities, Foster is a tough opponent, even for the relatively-moderate Biggert. Like the 10th, this one’s incredibly tight with surprisingly little polling. Republicans sounded the alarm last week though, indicating that Biggert urgently needs funds to survive on Tuesday. She doesn’t seem nimble on the campaign trail, and the sense here is that Foster has the momentum.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 12th Congressional District – Southwestern Illinois, including East St. Louis, Alton, Mt. Vernon, Carbondale, Cairo
Last flip: 1944
Democrats have held the East St. Louis district since before the end of World War II, but that streak may come to an end this year. Incumbent Jerry Costello is retiring, opening a seat that feels like a danger area for Democrats – white, working-class, mostly rural. It’s a district where Obama won 55% in 2008, but he’ll probably fall a bit short of that this time. Carrying the blue flag here is General Bill Enyart, former head of the Illinois National Guard. Republicans are sending out Jason Plummer, who ran statewide for lieutenant governor two years ago and lost. Enyart seems like the better candidate on paper and leads in a pair of recent polls, but this district seems like it could be headed toward swing territory.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 13th Congressional District – Central Illinois, including Champaign, Decatur, most of Springfield, parts of Bloomington-Normal
Last flip: 1938
This is effectively the descendant of the current 15th district, but it bears little resemblance to the seat Tim Johnson is vacating. Former Congressional staffer Rodney Davis is hoping to replace him, but he’s fighting on blue turf (55% Obama). Democratic physician David Gill was thought to be a lightweight candidate; national Democrats were disappointed when he won the primary. But Gill has proven to be a competent campaigner, and local Republicans have had  to sort through some angst about the way David was selected (Johnson bailed after winning the primary, so a replacement candidate was chosen by local party leaders). I didn’t expect this one to go Dems’ way, but Gill seems to have the edge.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Illinois’ 17th Congressional District – Quad Cities, western Rockford, most of Peoria, Galesburg
Last flip: 2010
This race is exceedingly difficult to call. The Quad Cities area sent Democrats to Congress from 1982 to 2010; this was a late-breaking district in that year’s Republican wave and one which I deemed unlikely to flip even in my worst-case scenario for Democrats. But flip it did, a credit to the hard work of local pizzeria owner Bobby Schilling.

So will it flip right back? The district is now three points bluer after redistricting, and Schilling campaigned as a Tea Partier…this district should revert to the mean, no? That’s what I thought coming into the year. But Schilling has adapted somewhat to reality in the House, eschewing some of the Tea Party’s positions and fashioning a record that is occasionally labor-friendly. That should help him out in this blue-collar district with a decent proportion of union households. It should be noted, too, that as much as Schilling only reached the radar screen late in the 2010 campaign, he ended up winning by 10 points – a significant margin for the district and for a lower-tier race.

Schilling faces East Moline alderwoman Cheri Bustos, winner of a difficult Democratic pimary. Polling is tight but has been moving in Bustos’ direction. Both sides have poured money into the race; it’s near the top of Democratic takeover lists and presents something of a “Well, if not here, then where?” dilemma for the party. Presidential coattails will be present but seem unlikely to be enormous; Obama is not polling nearly as well in Illinois as he did four years ago. It is truly too close to call with any confidence, but we’re picking Bustos. The rationale: The Quad Cities media market crosses into Iowa – a presidential battleground state. Obama spent the first half of the year tied or trailing in Iowa; more recently he has opened up a lead in one of his most important states. Part of what has enabled this is the spring and summer advertising push – a push which has necessarily played out in this part of Illinois due to the market overlap. If Iowans are increasingly in the president’s camp, I suspect this district will drop off less for Obama than others in Illinois. That should be enough to get Bustos just barely over the top.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

Summary: +4 pickups for Dems, but all on a knife’s edge: they could get a fifth, or they could come away with only one (Walsh) if the Republican incumbents can finish strong.

Over the final days, we’ll be elaborating on our House of Representatives ratings by offering district-by-district rundowns of key races. We’ll open with a statewide analysis of the place we know best: our native New York.

Current state delegation: 21 Democrats, 8 Republicans
Reapportionment changes: -2 seats (for a total of 27 seats)
Competitive Races: 1st, 11th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 24th, 25th, 27th

Following the 2000 elections, Democrats held 19 seats and Republicans 12. The 2002 redistricting eliminated one of each and in that November Dems began a steady increase in their domination of the New York delegation. Tim Bishop picked up the eastern Long Island seat (1st district) to put Dems up 19-10. In 2004, Brian Higgins picked up the Buffalo-based 27th make it 20-9. The 2006 wave saw Dems pick up three more – the mid-Hudson Valley’s 19th, the Upper Hudson Valley/Catskills/Adirondacks 20th, and the 24th in central New York. It was a 26-3 delegation following the 2008 elections, when Dems added the Staten Island/southern Brooklyn 13th, the Syracuse-based 25th, and the Southern Tier’s 29th. A special election in 2009 saw Democrats win the North Country’s 23rd for the first time since before the Civil War, leaving the delegation at a preposterous 27-2 Democratic edge.  That meant that Republicans had oodles of targets in the Empire State for the 2010 midterms. They won back the 13th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 25th and 29th and fell achingly short in the 1st.

And that’s about when New York congresscritters started snapping semi-nude photos of themselves and sending them to potential admirers. First Republican Chris Lee resigned, opening his 26th district in western NY’s GLOW region and Buffalo suburbs. Democrats hadn’t won an election there in quite some time, but they won the special – meaning they had held 28 of New York’s 29 districts at some point in the previous two years. But then Anthony Weiner resigned, opening his 9th district in a politically-marginal patch of Queens and southeast Brooklyn. No one could stop talking about how Democratic the district was and how it couldn’t possibly fall to the GOP, but – I’m going to sing my own praises here – I knew better from the start. Registration numbers don’t tell the whole story; a lot of of those Democrats were older and socially conservative. Throw in a Hasidic bloc vote that had steadily abandoned Democrats over same-sex marriage in recent years, add a stumbling economy, and you have a recipe for Bob Turner to capture the 9th for the GOP.

So that’s where we stand now: 21 Democrats, 8 Republicans, and many, many seats that have changed hands once and often twice in the last decade. The state legislature, divided between a Democratic Asssembly and a Republican Senate, couldn’t agree on a map, so a judge stepped in and drew one herself. It’s a fairly sensible map – some bizarre edges here and there, like the 4 or 5 houses in East Fishkill that are unnecessarily carved out of the new 18th and into the new 19th – that largely maintains communities of interest and which maintains a high number of competitive seats – all of which are described below. The judge had to eliminate two districts, one from upstate and one from downstate. Upstate, she carved up the old 22nd, where Democrat Maurice Hinchey was retiring anyway. In New York City, she eliminated the 9th – won by Turner in 2011. That prompted Turner to run in the U.S. Senate primary, which he lost.

The loss of two seats in redistricting means that the partisan breakdown heading into this election is effectively 20 Democrats and 7 Republicans.

New York’s 1st District – Eastern Long Island including Smithtown, Port Jefferson and the Hamptons
Last flip: 2002
As Suffolk County’s population exploded in the postwar period, the 1st district changed hands a few times before bowtie-sporting Democrat Otis Pike won it in 1960 and held it for eighteen years. Republicans picked it up in the friendly year of 1978 when Pike retired; registered Conservative William Carney came along at just the right time, as Long Island turned sharply to the right. But Carney was done in by local issues, nearly losing to Assemblyman George Hockbrueckner in 1984 and choosing to retire two years later. Hockbrueckner ran again and won, holding the seat until the Republican wave of 1994. Michael Forbes found himself at odds with the national Republican party and became a Democrat in 1999…at which time he found himself at odds with the state’s Democratic party. Forbes lost the 2000 primary to a 71-year old library, allowing fireworks magnate Felix Grucci to recapture the seat for Republicans. Grucci choked down the stretch in his 2002 reelection bid, and Democrat Tim Bishop took advantage to win the seat.

Bishop won without much difficulty for the next few cycles, but drew a heavily-funded challenger in Randy Altschuler for the 2010 election. Altschuler pushed Bishop to the limit; after a lengthy recount, Bishop won by fewer than 600 votes. The challenger is back for another round and Bishop has taken some heat for an episode involving a fireworks permit and a campaign donation. The cynic can read between the lines and see a pay-to-play scenario, but there’s no smoking gun to prove it. Regardless of who one believes on the fireworks tale, Bishop’s internal polling has shown large leads throughout the cycle, as did the only public poll of the race – Siena’s in early September. But Altschuler has released two polls since then showing low-single digits leads. We could really use a return trip by Siena to see if the race has swung all the way to Altschuler’s favor; personally I can’t readily trust McLaughlin, a GOP pollster that shows a ridiculously close race in Queens’ 6th district, where Dems are going to win easily.  But for all that Altschuler has been hit repeatedly over outsourcing, the Bishop fireworks fiasco is the more recent big news in the district, and means that if Bishop is ahead, as we think he is, it’s only by a narrow margin.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

New York’s 2nd District – Southern Long Island including Levittown, Massapequa, Babylon, Brentwood, Islip, Ronkonkoma
Last flip: 1970 – but that’s for the SE Nassau portion; there’s not a clear line of descent connecting this district to its “ancestors.”
This is the closest thing to Peter King’s current 3rd district; it takes in the southeastern corner of Nassau County and the southwestern corner of Suffolk. It’s somewhat more Democratic than King’s current district, having voted 51%-48% for Obama four years ago. But Democrats failed to find a strong challenger for the popular King, a somewhat moderate and occasionally labor-friendly Republican who has always outperformed the national and state GOP ticket anyway.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 3rd District – Northern Long Island including Commack, Huntington, Hicksville, Oyster Bay, Glen Cove, Port Washington, Whitestone
Last flip: 2000
This is effectively the successor to Democrat Steve Israel’s current 2nd district; Israel is running for reelection here, in a district slightly less blue than his current. Israel won his seat prior to the last redistricting, replacing Rick Lazio when he ran for the Senate in 2000.

Israel, whose focus this term has been more national ins scope as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, should win without a problem here against Army veteran, reservist and financial planner Stephen LaBate with a somewhat generic platform. But a word about Labate is called for: with his impressive resume, I anticipate he’ll be back to run for something else, presumably the state legislature when an opportunity appears. Long Island Republicans ran Lee Zeldin in a longshot Congressional bid in 2008; he fared acceptably in a very Democratic year and parlayed that into a relatively-easy state senate win two years later.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 4th District – Southwest Nassau County including Hempstead, Westbury, Long Beach, Wantagh
Last flip: 1996
Carolyn McCarthy rode a single issue – gun control, following the Long Island Railroad Massacre that killed her husband –  to Congress in 1996 and has won ever since, usually with little difficulty. Nassau County legislator Fran Becker kept it close (54%046%) two years ago and has opted for a rematch, but his campaign shows no signs of momentum, even with a district that on paper is friendlier to Republicans than the current version.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 5th District – Southeast Queens and western Nassau, including JFK Airport, the Rockaways, Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, Jamaica, Valley Stream
Last flip: 1960
There has long been a district in the southeastern portion of Queens, and it has long been Democratic. It was a more conservative strain of Democratic when it was still a white-majority district; by the 1980s it had an African-American majority and is now a very liberal district. The latest round of redistricting changed its number from the 6th to the 4th and is expanding it into Nassau County, but it remains a safely Democratic seat – one that voted 86% for Barack Obama in 2008. Gregory Meeks will continue to win easily here.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 6th District – Central Queens including Ridgewood, Middle Village, Elmhurst, Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Flushing
Last flip: 1952
This was numbered as the 5th district for the last couple of decades, and consistently elected Democrat Gary Ackerman. The houseboat-dwelling Ackerman is retiring, and the district is set to elect a woman who embodies its fast-growing Asian plurality – Assemblywoman Grace Meng of Flushing.

Republicans have their most plausible candidate in decades here in NYC councilman Dan Halloran. A Theodist, he’d be the first Wiccan of any kind in Congress…but he’s not going to be in Congress. Winning a city council race with Mike Bloomberg atop the ticket is one thing; winning a Congressional race in a 63% Obama district is quite another. McLaughlin has a ridiculous poll here showing Meng up 36-33 with a preposterous 31% undecided. While areas like Middle Village lean Republican and there is a long history of elected Republicans from this area in the city council and state legislature, that simply never translated to the federal level, and it won’t this year, either.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 7th District – Lower East Side including Chinatown; southern Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, western Park Slope, Red Hook, Sunset Park; Bushwick, Cypress Hills, Woodhaven
Numbered as the 12th district under the current map, this is the triborough Hispanic-majority district in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. It has elected Nydia Velazquez since it was created in 1992 and it will do so again this year. Velazquez fought off a primary challenge from the Brooklyn Democratic machine and will face James Murray on the Conservative line next week, but no Republican opponent. Velazquez and Obama will break 80% here with ease.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 8th District – Parts of Brooklyn and Queens, including Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Canarsie, Mill Basin, Coney Island; Howard Beach
The Bed-Stuy district used to reach the waterfront in downtown Brooklyn and Red Hook, but was redrawn as an African-American majority Voting Rights Act district in 1982 and has easily elected Ed Towns ever since. But the increasingly inert Towns finally opted to retire this year, opening the door for Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries to win the nomination (after beating lunatic city councilman Charles Barron in the primary). The young, charismatic Jeffries will win the general with ease in this ultra-safe district and seems like a good bet to become an energetic and creative congressman. Having seen him speak in person at the DNC this summer, I’m  looking forward to watching his career unfold.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 9th District – Central Brooklyn including eastern Park Slope, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Brownsville, Gerritsen Beach
Last flip: 1922 (Flatbush portion)
Like the 8th, this district (which until now has been numbered as the 11th) is an African-American majority district and utterly safe for Democrats. Three-term incumbent Yvette Clarke is not the most brilliant Congresswoman currently serving, but she easily fended off a primary challenge and will dispose of general election candidate with no difficulty.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 10th District – Parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the Upper West Side, Chelsea, West Village, Financial District; Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood
This is a district of two disparate parts: the chic and liberal West Side of Manhattan, and several traditionalistic and conservative Brooklyn neighborhoods. On balance, however, this is a safely Democratic seat. 10-term incumbent Jerrold Nadler does just fine here every two years in what until now has been numbered the 8th district; he’ll easily dispose of NYU economics professor Michael Chan this time around.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 11th District – Staten Island; Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Gravesend
Last flip: 2010
Previously numbered the 13th, this is becoming one of New York’s more colorful districts. In 1980, longtime Democratic incumbent John Murphy was indicted in the Abscam scandal; he lost relection. Republicans Guy Molinaro and later his daughter Susan Molinaro held the seat without controversy, eventually passing it on to Vito Fossella, a young Republican on the rise. Fossella had held off a decent challenge in 2006 and seemed reasonably positioned to continue serving in the House indefinitely…until his 2008 DUI arrest in Virginia. That incident set into motion a series of events which revealed Fossella to have two families: one back home in Staten Island, and another in Virginia, where he had fathered a child out of wedlock. This wasn’t viable behavior for a Congressman; Fossella retired. That opened the seat up for Democratic city councilman Michael McMahon, who obliterated his GOP and Conservative opposition on his way to winning 61% of the vote. It was one of the Dems’ easiest pickups in 2008.

But it wouldn’t last. FBI agent and Gulf War veteran Michael Grimm challenged McMahon in 2010 and won a narrow victory, 51%-48%. Staten Island had reasserted its conservatism; this is the GOP’s most durable stronghold in New York City, after all. But it’s still a swing seat, and Grimm seemed to realize that: he kicked off his Congressional career by downplaying the importance of the conservative label and opted to join the moderate Main Street Partnership rather than the Tea Party Caucus. He cast the occasional labor-friendly vote in keeping with his representation of a district with plenty of working- and middle-class residents.

Except it’s rarely that easy in this seat. Grimm is the subject of a grand jury investigation into alleged campaign finance abuses – including funneling contributions from non-citizens into his campaign account through a rabbi’s aide who has since been arrested. It’s looking somewhat…well, grim…on the legal front.

And yet, Democratic developer Mark Murphy can’t seem to break through. Perhaps that’s because some district voters remember how his father John Murphy – yup, the Abscam guy described above – left office three decades ago. It’s not that Staten Island and southwest Brooklyn are any more Republican than four years ago; polls have shown Obama ahead in a district that McCain narrowly carried in 2008. It seems absurd that a candidate who has spent much of the year in legal trouble could survive, but two things have happened since our initial House ratings, when we put this at Tilt Republican. One, yet another poll has come out in recent days showing Grimm ahead by double-digits. Second, the hurricane and its aftermath has probably frozen local campaigns in place. Staten Island was ravaged by Sandy, with many flooding-related deaths. It no longer seems like this could be a late-breaking pickup for Dems; it appears Grimm will hold on.
Rating: Likely Republican (changed from Tilt Republican)

New York’s 12th District – Upper East Side, Roosevelt Island; East Village; Astoria, Long Island City; northern Williamsburg
Last flip: 1992
The “Silk Stocking” District on Manhattan’s East Side was historically a place moderate-to-liberal Republicans could win, unlike the rest of Manhattan. This was John Lindsay’s district before he became mayor of New York City; he was succeeded by Democrat Ed Koch, but the district went back to the GOP when Koch in turn was elected mayor in 1977. Republican Bill Green held the seat until 1992 – ironically, he was hurt by the addition that year of a part of Queens that was unfamiliar with him and which preferred fiscal liberalism but more conservative social stances. Green offered the opposite – the only formula that could work for a Republican on the East Side – and was defeated by Councilwoman Carolyn Maloney.

Over the course of Maloney’s time in Congress, the East Side has lost all of its Republican representation: State Senator Roy Goodman left his office in 2002 and was succeeded by a Democrat. Assemblyman John Ravitz retired from the Assembly the same year, failing to win Goodman’s Senate seat, and was succeeded by a Democrat. Charles Millard won a city council seat in 1991, lost a Congressional race to Maloney in 1994, and left the council in early 1996 – replaced by a Democrat. And City Councilman Andrew Eristoff won his seat in 1993 but left the council six years later, replaced by a Democrat. Republicans haven’t come particularly close to winning any of these seats since then – a long-winded way of saying that Maloney is quite safe here.

I don’t want to give short shrift to the eastern section of the district, however: Maloney has been well-received in the fascinatingly-diverse Astoria over the years and will likely adapt well to her new constituents in the northern part of Williamsburg, too.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New  York’s 13th District – Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood; Kingsbridge, Jerome Park, Norwood
Last flip: 1950 (East Harlem), 1954 (northwest Manhattan neighborhoods)
This area used to comprise several swingy districts. The northwestern portion of Manhattan was still electing the occasional Republican in the early 1950s; East Harlem was a three-way battle between Democrats, Republicans and the American Labor Party in the first half of the 20th century. These days, we’re looking at a district which gave Obama 93% of its votes in 2008. The action here is in the Democratic primary, where every two years someone tries to depose Charlie Rangel, whose campaign finance violations nearly cost him his seat this time around. But state senator Adriano Espaillat fell short, so Rangel gets another term. This seat will likely elect a Dominican soon…but for now, the one-time center of African-American culture in New York continues to elect one of the more storied African-American members of Congress.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 14th District – East Bronx and northern Queens, including City Island, Morris Park, Parkchester, Throggs Neck; College Point, LGA, Ditmars-Steinway, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona
Last Flip: 1968 (East Bronx portion)
Previously the 7th, this district is quite diverse, crossing two boroughs and comprising a mix of white, Hispanic, African-American, and Asian neighborhoods. Joe Crowley is running for his 8th term and he’ll win it easily in a district that gave Obama 76%. Crowley is an effective enough Congressman but is probably known more for his local operations as Queens Democratic chairman.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 15th District – South Bronx, including Fordham, High Bridge, Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Castle Hill, Tremont
The South Bronx has long comprised the poorest Congressional district in the county. It was also Barack Obama’s strongest district in 2008, as he beat John McCain 95%-5% here; many precincts failed to give McCain a single vote. Jose Serrano and his moustache have always topped 90%; 2012 will be no different.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 16th District – Northern Bronx and Lower Westchester, including Riverdale, Woodlaw, Williamsbridge, Wakefield, Eastchester, Baychester; Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, Mamaroneck
Last flip: 1988 (lower Westchester portion)
Lower Westchester still has its Republican strongholds – eastern Yonkers and Eastchester in particular, and many of the suburbs in this part of the county voted for Republican Rob Astorino when he won the county executive seat in 2009. The north Bronx section includes Woodlawn, which was fond of John McCain in 2008. But on balance, this district is very Democratic, supporting Obama with 73% in 2008 and consistently electing Democrats to federal and state offices.

Eliot Engel is forever dealing with significant changes to his district’s boundaries; for the last 10 years his 17th district included most of Rockland. But he has won each permutation with little difficulty; his only really competitive general election came in 2002 when he received Rockland and faced its county executive  Scott Vanderhoef. But even then, Engel won 63%-34%. He’s utterly safe.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 17th District – Central/northwest Westchester and Rockland, including Peekskill, Croton-on-Hudson, Ossining, Mount Kisco, Chappaqua, Tarrytown, White Plains
Last flip: 1988 (central Westchester portion), 2010 (northern Rockland/Westchester portion)
A collection of classic New York City suburbs, this would have been solidly Republican 20-30 years ago. Nowadays, Republicans still win plenty of local elections, but they struggle in state and federal contests. The fast-growing Hasidic bloc vote in central Rockland is ever more influential in local contests but is not going to affect a Congressional race, especially one where both candidate are socially liberal. 

This is a rather different district than those Nita Lowey has represented for the last 24 years; just under half comes from her current 18th district. But Lowey is exceedingly popular in the areas should already represents, and will adapt easily enough to the northern towns which have been added – some of which are very Democratic. On balance, this is still a Democratic district (58% for Obama) but it’s a few points redder than the one Lowey is currently has. For the first time in ages, she drew a respectable Republican challenger in Rye Town Supervisor Joe Carvin, a moderate who says he voted for Obama in 2008.

We initially rated this Likely Dem, given the geographic changes and Carvin’s ability to spend loads of money (he’s a hedge fund manager). But he never seemed to make headway, and Sandy has shifted attention away from the campaign – Metro-North is still restoring rail service to this commuter district, and power outages remain. Lowey will win another term without much trouble. She’s now 75 and had a health scare in recent years; she’ll be atop retirement watch lists next year – a retirement which some believe could provide an opening for the start of Chelsea Clinton’s political career.
Rating: Safe Democratic (changed from Likely Democratic)

New York’s 18th District – Mid-Hudson Valley including Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Cold Spring, Brewster, Somers, Bedford, Newburgh, Middletown, Port Jervis
Last flip: 2010
This district – where the Within the Margin duo grew up – comprises the next layer of suburbs, with plenty of NYC commuters, affluent millionaires in northeast Westchester, post-industrial cities – some emerging as tourist desinations, like Beacon, and some struggling mightily with drugs and gangs, like Newburgh – and robust farmland in the Black Dirt country of western Orange County. These places were strongly Republican for the first century or so of the party’s existence, but in the 1964 LBJ landslide Democrats captured both Hudson Valley districts. By 1972, both seats had returned to Republican hands and would remain so into the 21st century. One of these districts still exists in a similar form and will continue to do so as this new 18th district, a true marginal district (52% for Obama in 2008). It includes more cities than the previous version, but it lost some Democratic towns in northeast Westchester; all told about one-quarter of the district’s voters are new to Hayworth.

In 2006, Democrats captured it in their national landslide as John Hall edged out six-term incumbent Sue Kelly. Hall won easily in 2008, but Republican came after the district hard in 2010 and reclaimed it with a 53%-47% win for Nan Hayworth. For most of the next two years, local and national media went out of their way to paint Hayworth as the new Sue Kelly – the female suburban moderate. But Kelly really wasn’t particularly moderate in her final terms, and Hayworth  hasn’t been, either, with little daylight between her positions on taxes and spending and those of the Tea Party.

Sean Maloney, a former Clinton and Spitzer staffer, was recruited by the DCCC as this race became a major front in the battle for control of the House of Representatives. With support from organized labor he comfortably won the primary as the only candidate who could compete across the district’s four counties. Maloney has regional ties but didn’t live in the district; he has been attacked as a carpetbagger and for his role in the Spitzer administration’s Troopergate debacle. But his Cinton connection provides legitimacy for his economic message, and his fundraising prowess allows him to get the word out. He has hit Hayworth for being little different from the Tea Partiers in Congress. If he didn’t eschew traditional retail campaigning, I think he might win. But his focus on the airwaves makes for an incomplete push, and with power outages across the district after Sandy, he may have run out of time to get it done.
Rating: Tilt Republican

New York’s 19th District – Upper Hudson Valley and Catskills, including Oneonta, Monticello, Kingston, Middleburgh, Canajoharie, Hudson
Last Flip: 1974 (Ulster and Sullivan), 2010 (most of the rest)
I’ve lived in this district (which has been numbered the 20th until now) for the last 4.5 years, so I can vouch for its physical beauty – and for its newfound political competitiveness. This district’s predecessors elected Republicans decade after decade until Democrat Edward Pattison broke through in the Watergate landslide year of 1974. Pattison lost in 1978, and Dems rarely even came close again until 2006, when Kirsten Gillibrand beat John Sweeney. Gillibrand destroyed Sandy Treadwell two years later, was appointed to Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate seat, and was succeeded by Scott Murphy when the Democrat won a tight special election. Murphy couldn’t hold on in the 2010 wave, losing 55%-45%. Veteran and West Point professor Chris Gibson pulled away at the end for a comfortable win.

The redrawn district gave Obama 53% in 2008, with newly-added Ulster being the strongest Democratic county. It’s also Democratic candidate Julian Schreibman’s home turf. Columbia County is Gibson’s home turf and tends to be strongly Democratic in federal elections. Greene, Schoharie, Delaware and western Montgomery counties are GOP-friendly; Rensselaer County is winnable for Democrats. Outside of Ulster and Sullivan, Republicans maintain the edge in most local and state elections.

Gibson is more moderate than his freshman neighbor to the south, Nan Hayworth. He’s also more articulate. But the court-drawn map for the new 19th only includes 40% of his old territory, and he polls much worse in these areas. His campaign has released polls showing double-digits leads, but the recent Siena poll showed  Schreibman within two points. One tends to trust the public polls more than campaign polls, so it appears Schreibman is closing. Gibson showed he was a finished in 2010 with the wind at his back; it remains to be seen if the Democrat can get over the top in a neutral year. I think Gibson has done what he needed in order to distance himself from the extreme conservative of fellow House Republicans, but the momentum appears to be with Schreibman.
Rating: Tilt Republican

New York’s 20th District – Capital Region, including Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Saratoga Springs
Last flip: 1958 (Schenectady, Amsterdam), 1970 (Albany), 2010 (Saratoga)
The capital region’s cities range from slightly Democratic (Amsterdamn) to extremely Democratic (Albany). The area’s suburbs have mostly trended blue in recent decades. The more rural areas comprise some very GOP-friendly territory, but they’re always going to be outvoted in a district that orbits Albany. This district’s predecessors have elected Congressman with very long and effective careers, from conservative Democrat Sam Stratton to the moderate Mike McNulty to the liberal Paul Tonko, who first won in 2008. Tonko saw his share of the vote drop to 59% in 2010, but it will rise back above the 60% this time around.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 21st District – North Country, including Watertown, Potsdam, Plattsburgh, Glens Falls, Johnstown
Last flip: 2009 (northern/western portions), 2010 (Warren/Washington/Essex/Saratoga)
This is the Adirondack district, though it stretches beyond the park’s borders somewhat to the west and south. It voted narrowly for Obama in 2008 (and its predecessor for Gore in 200) but the GOP held it for quite a long time: from the Civil War era until losing a 2009 special election after longtime Republican incumbent John McHugh was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Obama. After more than a century of safely belonging to the same party, the district is now in the midst of its third consecutive close election.

How did Democrat Bill Owens come to capture this once-safe territory? Republican nominated Deirdre Scozzafava, a moderate North Country Assemblywoman, for ’09 special. At the peak of the Tea Party’s ascendance, conservatives were feeling their oats and weren’t happy to have a moderate as the standard-bearer. They rallied behind accountant and businessman Doug Hoffman, who received the Conservative Party nomination and rode a grassroots insurgency to blow past Scozzafava in the polls. She eventually withdrew from the race after weeks of being berated by her party’s right wing, and endorsed Owens with just a few days before the election. In the midst of all the shouting, Owens kept trucking along. Scozzafava’s share of the vote plummeted to just under 6% on the Republican line on Election Night, Hoffman hit 46% on the Conservative line, and Owens won with 48%.

In 2010, national Republicans set about correcting the matter. They recruited businessman Matt Doheny and duly nominated him…while Hoffman ran once again on the Conservative line. This time, Hoffman finished a distant 3rd, with 6%. Owens edged out Doheny by a point, 47.5%-46.4% in what was one of the unlikelier Democratic holds coming into the cycle.

This time, it’s an Owens-Doheny rematch – sans third wheel – in the redrawn district, and polling consistently shows Owens with an edge. He is running a decidedly conservative campaign that matches his voting record, and appeared set to win again, with both public and private polls showing solid leads for Owens. But the final Siena poll, released this past week, is showing movement for Doheny, essentially closing the gap. Owens still has the edge, but if he’s not sealing the deal with the appreciable number of undecideds in this race, Doheny will squeak to victory.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

New York’s 22nd District – Central New York, including Rome, Utica, Little Falls, Cortland, Norwich, Binghamton
Last Flip: 1974 (Binghamton), 2010 (rest of the district)
This is mostly the successor to the 24th district, though Binghamton comes from Maurice Hinchey’s dismantled 22nd. It covers what is sometimes known as the Leatherstocking Country – overlapping with parts of the Mohawk Valley and the Southern Tier. The region is generally Republican but not particularly ideological; as a result, the GOP tends to win local elections but faces tougher sledding at the federal level when voters must reckon with the conservatism of the national party. Moderate Republican Sherwood Boehlert held the seat with ease for 24 years; when he retired in 2006 the Democrats rode a prize recruit, district attorney Michael Arcuri, to a fairly comfortable victory. But unlike most Democrats elected that year, he actually had a harder time in 2008 and only beat businessman Richard Hanna 52%-48%.   Hanna returned in 2010, and in the midst of the GOP wave beat out Arcuri 53%-47%.

Hanna has staked out ground as perhaps the most moderate Republican in Congress both in tone and ideology. He even encouraged women to donate to Democrats, saying his party has nothing to offer women at this time. That seems likely to earn him a strong primary challenge from the right in 2012; this year he escaped with negligible opposition in the nominating contest. Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Dan Lamb, a Hinchey staffer. Lamb should be able to parlay the Hinchey name to a decent showing in Binghamton and Broome County, where Hanna is unknown. But elsewhere, Hanna should cruise; he’s well-funded and he fits pretty well his district, which was slightly improved (from his perspective) in redistricting; it’s now a district where McCain won very narrowly, as opposed to the previous Obama 50%-48% version. Lamb doesn’t seem to have gained traction.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 23rd District – Southern Tier and western Finger Lakes, including Jamestown, Olean, Corning, Elmira, Geneva, Ithaca
Last flip: 1974 (Ithaca), 2004 (Jamestown), 2010 (rest of the district)
This is the successor to the Southern Tier’s 29th district, though Ithaca comes from Hinchey-land, Jamestown from the old 27th and Geneva from the old 24th. As such Republicans will always be favored here; there is not much of a Democratic bench outside the deep-blue stronghold of Ithaca and Tompkins County, and Democrats who hail from that region will be tarred as being too liberal for the rest of the district. Tom Reed easily picked up the old 29th in 2010 after freshman Democrat Eric Massa resigned amidst a sexual harassment scandal. The former Corning mayor faces off with Tompkins County legislator Nate Shinagawa, who has not demonstrated that he’s closing in on Reed. The new district is more Democratic than the one Reed originally won; it voted narrowly for Obama in 2008. But Reed fit in fine with the original version and seems to be motoring along without a hitch in the new one.
Rating: Safe Republican

New York’s 24th District – Syracuse area and eastern Finger Lakes, including Ontario, Oswego and Auburn
Last flip: 2009 (Oswego), 2010 (rest of the district)
Syracuse has historically been a GOP-friendly upstate city, but it has gradually come to stop defining itself by voting against New York City. The ‘cuse gave 76% of its votes to Obama four years ago, and Democratic presidential candidates have steadily increased their share of surrounding Onondaga County over the last two decades. So much so, in fact, that many people considered the old 25th district to effectively be a safe seat for Democrats once Dan Maffei succeeded longtime moderate Republican Jim Walsh in 2008. But just two years later, Maffei suffered a narrow defeat at the hands of Ann Marie Buerkle, returning the seat to GOP hands. 

Buerkle campaigned as a very conservative candidate and has voted like one; she has generally been considered one of the GOP’s most vulnerable members throughout this cycle. She’s not a great fundraiser, either. Maffei is back to reclaim his old seat. But what I thought would be slam dunk has been much tougher than expected for the former Congressman. Polling shows a tight race; with the latest Siena offering showing a 44-44 tie. It’s worth pointing out that polls also consistently show Green Party candidate Ursula Rozum garnering 5-8% of the vote. Typically third-party candidates underperform their polling on Election Day, but Maffei has to be concerned that he’s losing votes on his left flank, all the while being blasted by Buerkle for being too liberal himself. Maffei is playing on blue turf (56% Obama) and has shown the ability to win comfortably under great conditions and lose by the narrowest of margins under hostile conditions. He remains the favorite, but we spent the year assuming this race would be over by now.
Rating: Lean Democratic

New York’s 25th District – Rochester area including Irondequoit, Brighton, and Brockport
Last flip: 1986
The old 28th district was the most ridiculous in New York state, stretching from Rochester to Buffalo and doing so via a narrow coastal pathway along Lake Ontario. The judge who drew the state’s new map sought compactness and cohesion of communities of interest, so the new district now includes all of Rochester and is entirely contained with Rochester’s Monroe County. It no longer contains a largely-African American section of Buffalo, so it’s not as Democratic as before. But it’s still pretty blue – Obama won the new version 59%-40%.

Louise Slaughter is 83 years old and facing a somewhat tougher district, so Republicans targeted her for the first time ages. They recruited Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, who has proven popular in Monroe County. But her fiscal conservatism is less appreciated in federal races, and her early vagueness in answering basic questions about major federal legislation did not earn her the appreciation of the press corps.

And Slaughter is well-liked here. Despite breaking her leg earlier this year, keeping her off the campaign trail just when she needed to meet new constituents, she has consistently led the few polls in this district by a pretty good margin – one by five points, the other three by ten points. Brooks might be viable when Slaughter retires if she sharpens her command of federal issues – or at least her willingness to take a position on them – but in the meantime, Slaughter appears to have another term in her.
Rating: Likely Democratic

New York’s 26th District – Buffalo area including Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, Lackawanna
Last flip: 2004
Usually-Democratic Buffalo elected moderate Republican Jack Quinn to Congress for a number of years, but Democrats regained his seat upon his retirement in 2004. Since then, Democrat Brian Higgins has won with ease, even as the district registered a relatively small gain for Obama in 2008 and Carl Paladino swept the region two years ago. Now, redistricting has given Higgins the rest of Buffalo (previously a significant section of the city was connected to Rochester) while removing marginal Chautauqua County and a conservative swath of southern Erie County. His district is more compact and much more Democratic; at 63% Obama, we won’t be seeing Republicans compete here any time soon.
Rating: Safe Democratic

New York’s 27th District – Western New York including Lockport, Hamburg, Orchard Park, Batavia, Geneseo, Canandaigua
Last flip: 2011
Formerly numbered the 26th, this district focuses on the GLOW Region (Geneseo, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties) which is upstate New York’s most conservative region. It also includes the further reaches of Buffalo’s suburbs. Traditionally a Republican district, Democrats were competitive in 2006 and 2008 but fell short. It seemed like Chris Lee was consolidating his grip, but then a taking-shirtless-photos-of-himself-and-sending-them-to-people-besides-his-spouse scandal occurred in early 2011. Lee resigned very quickly rather than letting any more shoes drop, and Republicans set about replicating their divided-party drama for the special election (see New York’s 21 district, above). Republican Assemblywoman Jane Corwin was deemed insufficiently conservative by some of the Republican base, even though she had the Conservative nomination. Local septuagenarian billionaire and industrialist Jack Davis, who had run as a Democrat in 2006 and 2008,  launched an independent campaign that garnered Tea Party support. Corwin’s team melted down as the election drew near, while the Democrat Kathy Hochul was unflappable. The Erie County clerk’s laserlike focus on Republican efforts to replace Medicare with a voucher system was effective in an aging district, and she won 47%-42% in one of the more surprising special election results in recent memory. 

Hochul’s political chops probably could have gotten her reelected in that district even without split opposition. But she was hurt mightily by the new maps, which swapped in a lot of conservative territory from southern Erie County. Those voters know her from her time as county clerk, but they’re not necessarily looking to send a Democrat to Congress. The district lost some of the Rochester suburbs where she did well in the special election, too. It’s now a 54% McCain district, about two points redder than the version she won last year.

But Republican can’t count on the pickup. They nominated Chris Collins, the former Erie County Executive. Collins was considered an up-and-coming star…until losing his bid for reelection last year. An abrasive figure, Collins has little crossover appeal, whereas Hochul has proven her ability to win in Republican areas. With polling effectively tied and little seeming to affect the race in terms of candidate mistakes or coups, we give the edge to the candidate on friendlier ground, and that’s Collins. But his is a very narrow advantage indeed.
Rating: Tilt Republican

Summary: No net change; 1 Democratic pickup, 1 Republican pickup (new total: 20 Democrats, 7 Republicans)

 

New projection: 53 Democrats, 47 Republicans – no net change

When we first posted our race-by-race Senate ratings in mid-October, we concluded that Republicans were looking at a net gain of one seat, for a 52-48 Democratic majority come January (down from their current 53-47 edge). Since then, several Senate races have shifted unmistakably in favor of Democratic candidates. We’re shifting some of our ratings appropriately. In one case – Indiana – we’re moving from Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic. This makes it a Democratic pickup and gives them three pickups (along with Massachusetts and presumably Maine, if the independent Angus King caucuses with Dems as expected). We have three Rep pickups right now (Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota) so the arithmetic is simple: no net change in the 2013 Senate. Democrats would consider that a huge win, considering the difficult map they faced coming into this year’s Senate elections. It’s also worth noting that we consider Montana and North Dakota each to be a on knife’s edge – if the Republican is favored, it’s by the smallest of margins. Let’s look at what’s prompting our changes in each state.

 

Indiana
Republican Treasurer Richard Mourdock has never held more than the narrowest of leads here, and has occasionally trailed Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly. The ultra-conservative Mourdock has always had limited crossover appeal to independents, and alienated some of the state’s Republicans by defeating longtime senator and widely-respected statesman Dick Lugar in the primary. But since our original Tilt Republican rating, Mourdock may well have sunk himself by declaring that it is “God’s intent” when a pregnancy occurs resulting rape. Mourdock has been somewhat mournful in the week since, and has tried to clarify his statement. But at the end of the day, it’s a bizarre sentiment, and I doubt many Indianans believe that their God views rape and pregnancy quite the same way. Donnelly is hardly a progressive’s dream candidate when it comes to reproductive rights; he quite foolishly once bought into the distinction between “rape” and “forcible rape.” But it’s not hard to appear reasonable when Richard Mourdock is your opponent, and Donnelly’s careful campaign may finally be starting to pull ahead here. The last two Democratic polls each show a seven-point lead, by far his largest of the campaign; independent polling has shown a narrower Donnelly lead while Mourdock’s last internal showed the Republican ahead by a point . There are still a great many undecideds here, as has been the case all year. But it’s our gut feeling that those undecideds are finally seeing Mourdock’s extremism, adding it to his loud partisanship, and edging toward Donnelly. Add to that the anecdotes we’re hearing about GOP women refusing to applaud Mourdock at a recent GOP dinner – after giving gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence a standing ovation – and it seems like it’s all going wrong for Mourdock.
Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Massachusetts
We are very cautiously moving this race to Lean Democratic from its previous Tilt rating. Generally held to be the most intriguing Senate matchup of the cycle, we never anticipated either candidate pulling away. But Elizabeth Warren appears to be doing so. She’s now polling over 50% with some regularity, at least one survey has shown that minds are made up enough that Scott Brown’s ceiling is lower than he can afford it to be, and Brown seems to be running out of ideas to attack her. We mentioned in our first writeup that Brown is a closer, and I expect him to be sharp in the final days of this campaign. But in 2010 he had momentum, and this time it appears he does not.
Rating: Lean Democratic

 

Nebraska
I don’t think either Matt or I really expected this race to tighten up; Democrat Bob Kerrey just didn’t seem to have it in him this time. The decorated veteran and former governor and senator is attempting a comeback after 12 years out of politics and trailed by double-digits in polls all year against Deb Fischer, the state senator who pulled off an upset win in the GOP primary as the Tea Party standard-bearer. But anecdotally, Kerrey is outworking Fischer on the ground, and he has found a line of attack that seems to be working with regards to a land dispute lawsuit by Fischer against her neighbors. And perhaps voters are feeling nostalgic for the 1990s? Either way, there have been five polls of this race since mid-October – one from Kerrey showing a five-point deficit for the Democrat, one from Fischer showing her still ahead by 16 points, and three independent polls showing leads of 2-3 point for Fischer. This is still her race to lose, Nebraska is fundamentally a solidly red state, and there are plenty of attacks for Fischer to roll out to blunt Kerrey’s advance in the final week. But we can’t call a race with two weeks of close polling safe, and in fact, we’re not even sure it’s Likely Republican. We’re skipping all the way to Lean Republican. If Kerrey shows signs of receding again over the weekend, we’ll change the rating accordingly before Election Day next Tuesday.

For dueling takes on the race and particularly Kerrey’s movement, read this and this.
Rating: Lean Republican

So to recap:

Indiana From Tilt Republican to Tilt Democratic
Massachusetts From Tilt Democratic to Lean Democratic
Nebraska From Safe Republican to Lean Republican

 

Next Tuesday’s election will see many seats changing hands in the House of Representatives – but Within the Margin sees very little change in the overall partisan breakdown of the House. Having painstakingly rated all 435 seats over the course of this year, we see Republicans winning 239 seats to 196 for Democrats. That equates to a +3 net gain for Democrats. Given how much ground Republicans gained in 2010 and the likelihood of some ebb and flow from that high-water mark, we spent the year figuring that it would be a little bit higher than that – more like 7-10 seats. But recruiting shortfalls in otherwise-winnable districts, coupled with newly-drawn maps that will take a bit of work for Democrats to unlock, have created a dynamic that seems likely to result in roughly equal takeover totals for both parties.

Several factors are at play in creating a scenario where the parties’ respective pickups will largely offset each other:

Cartographic Casualties (and Protections)

This is a redistricting cycle, meaning every state had to redraw Congressional and legislative lines in accordance with 2010 Census data. Some seats changed very little; some were utterly transformed. Some were eliminated (in states whose population growth lagged) while fast-growing states gained seats. With Republicans controlling state legislatures and governorships in many competitive states, they had a free hand to draw favorable maps that will, at least for now, lock in many of their gains from the 2010 midterm elections.  Examples include Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states where oodles of seats changed hands in 2006, 2008 and 2010 but where few – possibly none – will do so this time around. The Republicans went on the redistricting offensive in North Carolina, securing their 2010 pickup and giving themselves strong pickup opportunities in four(!) Dem-held districts.

Democrats had fewer instances in which they controlled the mapping process, but they used it to create numerous pickup opportunities in Illinois and to create a strong takeover chance in a western Maryland district.

States with independent redistricting processes such as Arizona and California tended to see a higher proportion of competitive seats. A court-drawn map in New York has created an abundance of closely-matched seats, though not all of the races have turned out to be particularly close.

No Wave

Every discussion of the state of play in the House this year references the lack of a “wave” favoring one party or another. After three consecutive cycles of big gains for one party of the other – Dems winning big in 2006 and 2008, Reps erasing those gains and then some in 2010 – this year does not feature a headwind for either party. Neither presidential candidate is headed for a landslide; he might have some regional strengths that pull some House candidates into office on his coattails but Romney’s not bringing as many Republicans to the House as Reagan did in 1980, nor is Obama bringing in as many Democrats as he did four years ago.

Washing Out the Crazies

Every wave election brings in some people who are woefully out of touch with their districts or who are not personally suited for higher office; 2010 was no different. People like Joe Walsh and Allen West are volatile bomb-throwers representing moderate districts; the odious Walsh is almost assuredly a goner and we think West will narrowly lose as well.

We also think Steve King in Iowa has met his match – Iowa had to lose a seat in Congressional redistricting, meaning his seat is more Democratic than it used to be. But he has certainly not adjusted his tone to his new constituents.

Republicans may have had the upper hand in terms of seats won and lost through redistricting, but they brought in so many freshman on their 2010 tide that some will be washed back out to sea, helping Democrats to eke out a small net gain this year.

In the chart below, we follow our likely/lean/tilt system, which is elaborated upon in our Senate post. Seats currently held by Republicans are listed in red and those currently held by Democrats in blue; those seats which due to redistricting pit a Democratic incumbent against a Republican incumbent are listed in purple. Some seats are brand-new because the state gained seats (i.e. AZ-9) or adopted a dramatically different map and have no incumbent; these are listed in black. So as an example, NY-24 is currently Republican-held but we see it flipping to Dems; it is depicted in red but under the Lean Dem column.

A number of seats will be changing party control that are not reflected on the chart below. That’s because we’ve rated those seats as Safe takeovers – these include Arkansas’ 4th district, where Democrat Mike Ross is retiring and seems certain to be replaced by Republican Tom Cotton; North Carolina’s 13th district, where Democrat Brad Miller is retiring after being dealt an unwinnable hand in redistricting and is virtually guaranteed to be replaced by Republican George Holding.

Likely Dem	Lean Dem	Tilt Dem	Tilt Rep	Lean Rep	Likely Rep
AZ-2	CA-9	AZ-1	CA-36	CA-21	AZ-9
CA-24	CA-41	CA-7	CA-52	CO-3	CO-4
CA-47	FL-22	CA-10	CO-6	GA-12	FL-16
CO-7	KY-6	CA-26	CT-5	MT-AL	IN-8
CT-4	NY-24	FL-18	FL-2	NY-19	MI-3
DE-AL		IL-11	FL-10	NC-8	MN-2
FL-9		IL-12	IL-10	TN-4	NE-2
FL-26		IL-13	IN-2		NV-3
HI-1		IL-17	IA-3		NJ-3
IL-8		IA-4	MA-6		NJ-7
IA-1		MI-11	MI-1		NC-11
IA-2		NV-4	MN-6		ND-AL
ME-2		NH-1	MN-8		OK-2
MD-6		NY-1	NH-2		PA-6
NY-17		NY-21	NY-11		PA-8
NY-25		NC-7	NY-18		PA-18
WA-1		OH-16	NY-27		SD-AL
WV-3		PA-12	OH-6		TX-14
		RI-1	TX-23		VA-2
			UT-4		VA-5
					WI-7
					WI-8

Brief writeups for each seat are coming up as the week continues.

Last Friday, we posted some analysis and ratings for each competitive senate seat. Today, we look at the other 18 Senate races: the ones we’ve called safe for one party or the other. Lest you think that there’s no juice to these, this group of races includes:

• One surefire Republican pickup (Nebraska) which is an important starting point for the GOP in their request to retake control of the Senate – and which didn’t have to be: Democrats made a serious tactical error here.

• Some seats (Hawaii, New Mexico) which were considered potentially competitive earlier in the year. We’ll talk about why they’re not looking that way anymore, but it should be noted that late-breaking news could shift one or two back onto our radar screen.

• An intriguing independent candidate spending big bucks in Maryland – and maybe finishing 2nd in the process.

• A quick update on Christine O’Donnell’s political ambitions.

• The Empire State. A good chunk of our readership has ties to New York, which is included in today’s rundown.

• A Republican winning from the left in Tennessee. I’m serious! Sort of.

Without further ado, our look at the safe seats. Remember, to garner a Safe rating, an election must feature fundamentals that are just too strongly in favor of the leading party – the partisan lean of the state being the biggest factor, followed by the relative popularity or weakness (baggage, poor fundraising) of the respective candidates. Something dramatic needs to happen for the favored candidate to lose – arrests or scandals might do it, but even a wave election probably wouldn’t lap up on the shores of these states.

And keep in mind that most of the Senate seats up this year feature Democratic incumbents; that’s because in the previous two elections featuring this class of senators, Democrats picked up a net of 4 seats in 2000 and 6 seats in 2006. As a result, they’re playing mostly defense this year.

 

California

The Golden State used to have competitive senate elections; in 1994, Diane Feinstein held on by less than two points. Of course, Michael Huffington spent $30 million that year to keep it close. The 2010 race looked close for a while – again, Republicans found a challenger with fundraising chops as Carly Fiorina’s campaign spent $17M against Barbara Boxer. But in the end, Boxer won by 10 points. This year, Republican recruiting was a non-event – if Fiorina and Meg Whitman, despite their business fame and all their millions, couldn’t be competitive in the most Republican-friendly cycle in generations, than who could pull off a win in California in a presidential year?

So taking on Diane Feinstein this year is Elizabeth Emken, a lobbyist for Autism Speaks. That’s not a bad launching point for a campaign in a smaller jurisdiction – state legislature, perhaps, or another shot at a Congressional bid – but scaling up to a Senate race in the country’s largest state is not easy. It’s even harder when your issue positions are rather boilerplate; a statewide Republican candidate in California needs to distinguish herself on ideas in order to have a chance at victory. Emken doesn’t do so, she has raised little money for a race of this magnitude, and accordingly polling has shown her stuck in the mid to low 30s. Feinstein will win a fourth full term despite rather mediocre approval ratings.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Delaware

In 2010, the First State’s Senate race provided more laughs than any other. Sadly, Christine O’Donnell opted to sit out the 2012 cycle after three failed Senate bids in a row. But fear not: she’s keeping her options open for a 2014 return. In the meantime, Delaware’s senate race has little going for it. Democrat Tom Carper captured this seat from a five-term incumbent in 2000. He was re-elected with 70% in 2006 against a guy who beat O’Donnell in the Republican primary, and he should approach that lofty number this time against Kevin Wade, a businessman with little political experience and a somewhat odd haircut.

Delaware used to be Republican-leaning, but that has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Along with that change has come the total disappearance of a GOP bench in the state. Throw in local man Joe Biden’s presence on the ballot this year, and all of this, combined with his own solid approval ratings, means that Carper can stake a claim to being the safest Democratic senator in the country this year.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Hawaii

Democratic incumbent Daniel Akaka is retiring, and both parties are probably running their strongest respective candidates to replace him. Three-term incumbent representative Mazie Hirono defeated Ed Case in the primary; she was the more liberal choice but that’s hardly a hindrance in Hawaii – in fact it’s the smart move, given the lengthy history of Case irking the grassroots with conservative stances and general egomania. Republicans are running former two-term governor Linda Lingle. She’s fairly moderate, and she has her own TV channel! Because everyone wants to watch more campaign ads!

In another year, maybe Lingle would have a shot. Hawaii has given Republicans a chance at the federal level before; Pat Saiki won multiple House terms in the 1980s and Charles Djou briefly held a House seat – albeit under unusual circumstances – in 2010. But this is the president’s birthplace and the state where he rolled up his highest percentage in 2008. Spring and summer polling occasionally showed Lingle making it competitive, but more recently she’s had trouble even breaking 40% while Hirono comfortably clears the 50% mark. We thought about keeping this Likely Democratic, but we were certain that in another week or so, we’d be moving it to Safe Dem. So we’re going to go ahead and pull the trigger now.

Rating: Safe Democratic 

 

Maryland

This was an open seat in 2006, and Republicans thought they had a shot with Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. His campaign never really took off, but he did parlay it into an interesting and “empathetic” stint as RNC chairman. Congressman Ben Cardin won that election by 10 points. The question this year is whether Cardin will double that winning margin, or truly clear the bar by tripling it. He faces two opponents: underfunded Republican Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service Agent, and the rather well-funded independent Rob Sobhani, an author and president of an energy consulting firm. Sobhani has an interesting platform that seeks many worthy investments in infrastructure and research, meaning that they would go nowhere in a Congress where the GOP continues to control one or both houses. Points for trying, though.

Sobhani dropped some serious coin on a hefty ad buy last month and as a result was just one point behind the Republican candidate in a recent Gonzales Research poll. But that still left him 29 points behind Cardin. If Sobhani can generate some momentum and pass Bongino, it would be a real kick in the teeth to the already down-and-out Maryland Republican Party. Cardin will cruise here, so we’re curious about margins and whether this upstart indy candidate can put together a respectable showing in November.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Minnesota

When Mark Dayton retired in 2006, his Minnesota Senate seat seemed like it would be somewhat competitive. But the race between Democratic (DFL, to be precise) Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Klobuchar and Republican Congressman Mark Kennedy stayed close only briefly. Klobuchar never trailed in a poll, and was pulling away by late summer. She ended up winning by 20 points while Kennedy was replaced in the House by a crazy woman.

Sensible politicos will take the over on whether Klobuchar will exceed her 2006 margin this year against Kurt Bills, a social studies teacher and Rosemount city councilman who defeated a Democratic incumbent in a 2010 race for State Representative. Bills is a Paulist but like many of that ilk he gets confused about what “small government” actually means when it comes to people’s personal lives; he voted for an amendment to the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

Bills has raised little money. Klobuchar has a very positive approval rating in Minnesota and her lead in polls has ranged from 14 to 29 points.  After flirting with swing-state status in the early 2000s, Minnesota has been mostly friendly to statewide Democrats in recent cycles. Klobuchar wins easily; can she top 60% this time?

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Mississippi

Former Congressman Roger Wicker had to work a bit in 2008 when he ran to fill the remainder of Trent Lott’s senate term. That year, former Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove was competitive in funding and Democrats targeted the state aggressively in October after some close poll results. Wicker ended up winning 55-45% in the closest Senate race Mississippi has seen since 1988. He’ll win much more easily this year against Albert N. Gore, Jr., a distance relative of the former vice president who is 82 and chairs the Oktibbeha County Democratic Party. Mississippi politics are entirely race-based; white voters vote Republican and black voters vote Democratic. That means Democrats have a higher floor than in some states, especially if turnout is high in the presidential race as it was in 2008. But they also have a ceiling. Wicker will clear 60% with ease, probably pushing 70%. Democrats have a long way to go before they have the bench, money and issues to win Senate races in Mississippi.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Nebraska

Republican Deb Fischer is a lock to pick up this seat, which Democrats have held since 1988 (and before that, from 1976 to 1987). Ben Nelson was a popular Nebraska governor in the 1990s who held this seat for Dems in 2000 when Bob Kerrey retired. He won again easily in the Dem-friendly year of 2006, but opted to retire this year rather than face a very difficult race in a state that Mitt Romney will carry easily (though it should be noted that Nebraska splits its electoral votes by Congressional district, and Barack Obama was able to win the Omaha-based 2nd district in 2008 to pick up one Nebrasks electoral vote).

Fischer, a down-the-line conservative (except when it’s personally inconvenient) rancher who serves in Nebraska’s unicameral state legislature looked like the third wheel for most of the Republican primary campaign. Attorney General Jon Bruning had eyed this seat for many years, as had State Treasurer Don Stenberg. But Stenberg is starting to feel like a perennial candidate and didn’t bring anything new to the campaign, and Bruning came under attack for ethics problems in his state office (not to mention the perceived sin of having been a liberal Democrat when he was younger). Fischer gained steam in the campaign’s final weeks and beat Bruning by five points.

But Fischer is not an electoral juggernaut. It is entirely the fault of one man’s outsized ego and the Democrats’ national senate campaign arm (the DSCC) that this race is not more competitive. Chuck Hassebrook was in the race and was a legitimate candidate. As an elected member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents and Executive Director of the Center for Rural Affairs, Hassebrook had an interesting profile, some connections, and impeccable Nebraska ties. But the DSCC begged former governor and senator Kerrey to get into the race after Nelson retired, and Kerrey eventually agreed. Hassebrook stepped aside and effectively, the race ended. That’s because while Kerrey was extremely popular as a governor and senator, and maintained a number of businesses in his native state, he hadn’t lived in Nebraska in recent years. He had taken a job as president of the New School in New York City. That’s fine; I’d certainly like to be a university president myself. But going from making noises about running for mayor of New York to running for senator in Nebraska is a tall order. Kerrey has always been something of a celebrity politician and I suspect his ego made it hard to pass on this race. But he has not been remotely competitive despite raising a decent bit of money: Fischer’s polling lead in in the mid-to-high teens right now and barring a shocking development, it’s not getting closer. Would Democrats have won with Hassebrook in this red state? No, probably not. But he would have run a more plausible campaign, surely.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

New Jersey

In 2006, newly-appointed Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez was not well known by New Jersey voters, and he spent the year posting too-close-for-comfort leads against a Republican state senator with a famous name, Tom Kean, Jr – son of a popular former governor. Menendez ended up winning by nine points, but only after I (and others) spent the fall wringing our hands over the prospect of losing a Senate seat in New Jersey; recall that Dems were trying to flip the Senate that year and did so, 51-49…but Republicans would have maintained control had Menendez lost.

Six years later, Menendez is still not well known by New Jersey voters. I would theorize that this is in part because Chris Christie is the dominant personality in Jersey politics right now. In part it may also be because Menendez spent the previous two-year cycle chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, therefore focusing on national politics more than local matters – but Chuck Schumer held that job for four years and remained ever-visible in New York throughout his tenure. Regardless, Menendez is leading a different New Jersey state senator, Joe Kyrillos, by larger margins than he typically led Kean in 2006. He rarely breaks 50% in polling, buyt Kyrillos is way behind and shows no signs of closing the gap. Folks in Jersey don’t necessarily know much about their junior senator, but clearly he hasn’t offended them, either.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

New Mexico

This was supposed to fairly competitive. Longtime popular Democratic incumbent Jeff Bingaman retired, and both parties put forth their strongest possible candidates.  Republicans nominated former Congresswoman Heather Wilson, an Air Force fighter pilot with relatively moderate credentials, and Democrats selected her successor in New Mexico’s 1st district, Congressman Martin Heinrich. Both candidates had won in a swingy district in tough years (Wilson in ’06, Heinrich in ’10).

But after being a presidential swing state in 2000 and 2004, New Mexico really isn’t one anymore. Sure, Republicans fared well here in the strong Republican year of 2010. But Obama carried the state with ease four years ago and is doing so again.  Tom Udall won an open senate seat by 22.6% in 2008. And Heinrich has basically led from the start in the Senate race – first by smaller leads, now by a double-digit margin. The Republicans’ National Republican Senatorial Committee has stopped spending here, so it doesn’t see a path to victory for Wilson. I don’t either. Young Martin Heinrich’s upward career path looks set to continue into the Senate without much difficulty.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

New York

Another young Democratic up-and-comer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, was appointed in 2009 to this seat (formerly Hillary Clinton’s), won a special election in 2010 to serve the remainder of Clinton’s term, and is about to win a full six-year term this November. Republicans nominated attorney and conservative activist Wendy Long, who has gained no traction whatsoever. It took Gillibrand a while to build up statewide name recognition, but her leading role on an impressive array of legislative initiatives Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell repeal, the 9/11 first responders’ health bill, the insider trading ban for members of Congress, and her continued work on the farm bill) has changed that, and her approvals have risen steadily upward as a result. The question for this year is whether Gillibrand can top her 62% showing from two years ago; it seems likely that she will.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Rhode Island

In 2006, this was a hotly contested seat: Lincoln Chafee, the most moderate-to-liberal Republican in the Senate faced a tough re-election bid – first against conservative primary challenger Steve Laffey, and then against Democratic attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee survived Laffey’s strong challenge and kept it relatively close against Whitehouse, but the Democrat pulled away for a seven-point victory. Chafee is now the Obama-endorsing independent governor of Rhode Island, and Whitehouse is the incumbent in a safe senate seat. Software company founder and president Barry Hinckley trails by huge margins in a race that appears on no one’s competitiveness radar.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Tennessee

When Bill Frist retired in 2006, it set up a tight race between Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, a Republican, and Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. Corker was always favored in this Republican-leaning state, but Ford kept it close to the end and may have been undone by a race-baiting ads in the final days of the campaign. Democratic fortunes have gotten much worse in the Volunteer State since then, and this year, Tennessee has never been considered in play at the presidential or senate level. Accordingly, Democrats failed to recruit a strong challenger here this year. So in a Democratic primary with few voters and zero name recognition for any candidate, the winner was the man whose name appeared at the top of the ballot – Mark Clayton. He’s the president of a conservative organization called Public Advocate USA that is considered an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So this is the only state in the union in which the Republican senate candidate is the more liberal of the two major party options. Clayton was immediately disowned by the state and national Democratic parties; Corker will likely top 70% to easily win a second term.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Texas

Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison is retiring after 19 years in the Senate. Former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz is replacing her. Yes, Texans still have to vote to make it official, but Democrats didn’t recruit a serious candidate. Former state representative Paul Sadler trails by high double-digits in most polls to the Tea Party’s latest up-and-comer in Cruz, who won a difficult Republican primary to earn the right to walk through the general election. It’s possible that in a decade, every statewide race in Texas will be a battle, assuming Democrats can continue to fare well among the state’s exploding non-white population. But demographic shifts take time, and for the moment, Texas will continue to elect two Republicans to the U.S. Senate.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Utah

The action in Utah’s recent Senate races has been in the Republican nominating conventions and primaries, where incumbents have had to fend off strong challenges from the right. Robert Bennett failed to survive in 2010, but Orrin Hatch learned from his colleague’s travails, struck alliances with Tea Party activists, and easily defeated his challenger this year. His Democratic opponent has a great resume: Scott Howell served in executive posts with IBM and as a state senator. He’s running as a conservative Democrat in a deeply conservative state. But that’s going to be enough in Utah, especially with Mitt Romney atop the ticket  with his ties to the LDS Church and the Salt Lake City Olympics. Hatch will win his seventh term next month.

Rating: Safe Republican

 

Vermont

Bernie is beloved in Vermont. That’s first-term Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.  An avowed democratic socialist, Sanders gained popularity as the mayor of Burlington in the 1980s before being elected to the House in 1990. When Senator Jim Jeffords retired in 2006, Sanders made the jump with ease, winning 65% of the vote. He’ll do something similar this year. For a time it looked like Tom Salmon – Vermont’s State Auditor and a Democrat-turned-Republican – would mount a challenge, but he ultimately passed. The mantle was taken up by John MacGovern, served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for eight years in the 1980s and early 1990s. He has tried running for the Vermont state senate a couple of times and lost; he’ll lose this one, too.

Rating: Safe Independent (effectively Safe Democratic)

 

Washington

Remember RealAudio? Yeah, it wasn’t the best piece of software you’ve used. But Maria Cantwell did pretty well as an executive at RealNetworks, the company that created it. From there, she defeated incumbent Republican Slade Gorton to win this Senate seat in 2000. Her tenth-of-a-percentage-point margin was one of the slimmest in the country that year; her 17-point reelection margin in 2006 was quite a bit more comfortable. She’ll do about the same against State Senator Michael Baumgartner this year: her polling lead has doubled from the start of the year as she closes in on a 60% vote share. Republicans made a game effort to win a Senate race here in 2010, but fell about five point short in the best year for Republican in a generation. It’s certainly not happening for them this time around.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

West Virginia

The Mountain State is a fascinating one. Not long ago, it was usually blue at the federal level: Carter won it twice, Dukakis carried it, Clinton won it twice with ease. It was somewhat surprising when Gore fell short here in 2000. Bush dramatically expanded his winning margin in 2004, and in 2008 both major party candidates saw their vote shares fall but Obama fell further than McCain. Clearly a red state then, yes? But political observers know that West Virginia remains overwhelmingly Democratic in registration and in its state legislature. Republicans did pick up a Congressional seat in 2010, but Dems held the Senate seat by a comfortable margin after a heated campaign. In 2011, Democrats held the governorship – albeit narrowly. West Virginia remains very happy to elect Democrats, but of a certain type. Allegiance to the coal industry is a must. Same goes for supporting gun rights. Pro-choice candidates are frowned upon.

Joe Manchin fits the bill. He won two smashing gubernatorial victories, with 64% and 70% even as Bush and McCain were carrying the state the same year. After the death of the legendary Senate Robert Byrd, Manchin ran in the 2010 special election. In an anti-Obama state and a tough year for Democrats, it looked dicey for a while…but Manchin ended up with a 10-point victory over wealthy businessman John Raese. This year is a rematch between the conservative Democrat and the Florida-residing Raese, and this time it’s truly going to be a blowout. Manchin has led by as much as 52% in one poll. That’s a stretch, but Manchin can count on winning a full six-year term this fall. Whether his more liberal colleague Jay Rockefeller can do the same in two years amidst Republican efforts to paint the Democratic Party as anti-coal is a much more complicated proposition.

Rating: Safe Democratic

 

Wyoming

John Barrasso was appointed in 2007 to replace Senator Craig Thomas’ term after the latter man died of leukemia. He won a special election in 2008 to serve out the remainder of Thomas’ term, and is now running for his first full term in the Senate. Barrasso previously served in the Wyoming legislature and now consistently ranks as the one of the most conservative members of the Senate. That works just fine in Wyoming, where there hasn’t been anything resembling a competitive Senate race since 1996.

Democrats do sometimes win statewide here: just recently, Dave Freudenthal served two terms from 2003-2011 as one of the most popular governors in America. Democrats in fact won seven out of nine  gubernatorial races from 1974 through 2006. Gary Trauner ran very competitive races for Congress in 2006 and 2008. But Freudenthal was term-limited in 2010 and Democrats did not make a serious play for that House seat. Democrats are running an elected official for this seat in Albany County Commissioner Tim Chesnut, but he lacks money and Barrasso has no weaknesses in a state that likes its federal representatives very, very conservative.

Rating: Safe Republican

Overview – The Competitive Seats

+1 net gain for the Republicans; Democrats projected to maintain control of Senate

In our first batch of Senate ratings, we see Dems holding on to their majority. Reps need to pick up 3 (if Romney wins the presidency) or 4 seats (if Obama is reelected) in order to control the Senate in January. At is stands now, this appears unlikely. We have the Reps gaining a net of one seat, or two if Maine’s Angus King caucuses with them, which seems unlikely.

Democrats picked up six seats in their 2006 wave, meaning that a number of freshman are facing their first attempt at re-election – including some in classic swing states. Five of those 2006 pickups are indeed hotly contested seats again this time around. One of those purple-state freshmen, Jim Webb of Virginia, is retiring. Two others, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana, are facing extremely tight re-election contests. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania seem more secure, but they’re not out of the woods yet. Additionally, Democrats face difficulties in holding open seats in Nebraska and North Dakota, where incumbents are retiring and Democrats rarely face an easy path to victory. Dems have to work to hold a number of other seats in Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but right now they hold the edge. At this time, we see the Republicans picking up the Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota seats – and the latter just barely.

But while the Republicans have many more targets, they’re playing defense in a few places, and we have them losing a pair of seats in Maine (to an independent who is more likely to caucus with Democrats than Republicans) and Massachusetts. That gives Republicans a net gain of a single seat, allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate in 2013.

What follows below is a description of the state of play in each competitive senate race – each race is rated as Tilt, Lean, Likely or Safe; the safe seats will be summarized in a future post. We don’t do tossups: if it’s that close, we try anyway, rating it as a Tilt to one party or the other. Anyone can tell you Montana’s  tough to call; someone has to go out on a limb and make their best guess, and that’s what we’re doing. Charlie Cook and Stu Rothenberg and Larry Sabato can play it safe, but that’s not our way.

• If a race is Tilt Dem or Tilt Rep, it’s on a knife’s edge. We’re looking at all the usual candidate factors, state political fundamentals, national influences and polling to predict a winner, but those things are either all very close or are working at crosswinds to muddy the outcome. These are the races most likely to see a rating change between now and November, and we won’t be shy about updating accordingly. The idea is to be right, not to hedge.

• If a race is Lean Dem or Lean Rep, we feel one party has the advantage as the race stands now, but that the race is still fluid.

• If a race is Likely Dem or Likely Rep, we feel one party has a strong advantage and the trailing candidate will need something unexpected to happen, or a wave election to occur that currently no one sees coming.

• If a race is Safe Dem or Safe Rep, then the fundamentals are just too strongly in favor of the leading party. Something dramatic needs to happen for the favored candidate to lose. We’re talking arrests or enormous gaffes, not just an unexpectedly close poll or a tough new attack ad.

We’ll update the Senate ratings as events warrant between now and November.

Arizona

Incumbent three-term Republican Jon Kyl opted not to run for reelection this year. Mesa-area Congressman Jeff Flake won the Republican primary to succeed Kyl. Flake won all of his general elections fairly easily in his deep-red House district, and hasn’t had a tough election since his first House primary in 2000. Flake is a libertarian-flavored conservative, with strong opposition to federal spending of almost any kind but support for comprehensive immigration reform rather than the hardline policies his home state has become known for. He has a mixed record on social issues, voting to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell but also voting twice for a Federal Marriage Amendment. By one statistical reckoning, Flake’s record is the most conservative in the House; others find him a bit closer to the middle depending on how some of his “lone wolf” votes are calculated – a similar phenomenon to Ron Paul.

Democrats made the most of a limited bench, nominating former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Having served in the Bush administration gives Carmona some bipartisan credibility, while having done so in what was primarily a non-controversial post gives him none of the lingering taint of the Bush years. But forget that stuff: Carmona has a fascinating background, as a high school dropout who enlisted in the Army at 16, served in Vietnam, and became a physician before holding public office. That narrative can appeal across party lines and demographic groups.

Public polling consistently shows a tight race, with Flake slightly ahead. The campaigns have spent recent weeks releasing dueling internal polling, each showing their man with a lead. On balance, the numbers tilt this race slightly toward Flake’s favor. But we’re only now starting to see a pivot to a really aggressive attack strategy from Flake, one designed to not only damage Carmona, but to do so among women by painting him as a raging man who made life difficult for a female boss. Democrats obviously have to perform well among women to win just about any race so this could effectively disqualify their candidate. If Carmona weathers this storm with convincing denials and an effective return salvo, we could be looking at a change to Tilt Democratic; if not, we’ll be changing this to Lean Republican before long. Also helpful for Carmona would be if the Obama campaign actually targeted the state; that possibility was still being floated at the start of the month. But that seems increasingly unlikely now that Obama is on the defensive in the narrower band of must-win swing states. Close polling keeps our rating at Tilt for the moment

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Connecticut

Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats but has technically been an “Independent Democrat” since his 2006 reelection victory, is retiring after four terms in the Senate. That creates an open seat race in a state which has been increasingly blue over the last 20-25 years, but which has shown substantially weaker polling numbers for President Obama than he had four years ago.

At the start of the year, few expected this Senate race to be particularly close. The Republican frontunner, Linda McMahon, had lost by almost 12 points in the deep-red year of 2010…after spending $50 million from her personal WWE fortune.  She then spent primary season positioning herself to the right in order to defeat former representative Chris Shays. As long as Democrats put forth a reasonable candidate, they should win easily, right?  That was our expectation, and they seemed to have that candidate in the form of Representative Chris Murphy, a three-term Congressman from the 5th district in the northwest portion of the state. Murphy had beaten a popular incumbent in a swing district in 2006 and held the seat fairly easily against a pair of sitting state senators in 2008 and 2010.  He dispatched the laughable CT Secretary of State, Susan Bysiewicz, in the  Democratic primary (laughable because she wasn’t very good at her primary job – overseeing elections – which is something I happen to know a bit about from a bureaucratic perspective). It was all falling into place for Murphy.

But McMahon wasn’t done. She had many more of her millions to spend, and spend she has: $11M as of the pre-primary filing over the summer; she has signaled that she’ll pour much, much more than that into the race by the time she’s done. Some of that has been spent crafting a more positive image for herself after the ugliness of 2010; the rest has been spent beating up Murphy for problems with late rent and property tax payments.  Murphy’s financial woes were fairly standard-issue stuff and he paid up. But the sheer volume of hits, as much as the content, it took its toll-  McMahon took the lead in a number of polls, and Democrats started talking about shifting money into a race they figured Murphy could win on his own.

Yet it turns out McMahon had similar tax payment  issues – along with a 1976 personal bankruptcy that cost her creditors more than a million dollars – which she says she will repay (no word on whether she’ll include interest). The result is that Murphy seems to have righted the ship somewhat. The narrative has been reset – they’re talking more about social issues lately, on which there’s not as much difference between them as on fiscal matters.  And Murphy hit 51% in a recent Rasmussen poll, turning around that outfit’s previous three-point McMahon lead.

Both Murphy and McMahon have weaknesses, but Murphy come with a smaller sticker shock, and he has proven to be a closer in his career. It might not be as blue as 2008, but Connecticut will still give Obama a win this year, probably in the high single-digits. Pending further developments, that should add up to a Dem victory here.

Rating: Lean Democratic

 

Florida

Senator Bill Nelson picked up this seat for Democrats in 2000, succeeding Connie Mack III (that’s Cornelius McGillicuddy III, grandson of the Hall of Fame manager of the Philadelphia A’s). He obliterated the infamous Katherine Harris – yes, the one who wasn’t very good at overseeing elections in Florida – in 2006 but brought middling approval ratings into this year’s bid for a third term. The Republican establishment was faced with plenty of candidates but none they liked, so they flailed about in search of a savior before finally settling on Connie Mack IV, because Americans love a political dynasty no matter how much we say otherwise. Mack, a four-term representative from the Fort Myers area, had a tragicomic entrance into the race: he has enough shenanigans in his past that a GOP primary rival called him “the Charlie Sheen of Florida politics.” Maybe a stretch, but Mack certainly comes across as something of an entitled political scion. A thin legislative record and bland campaign do nothing to overcome that image, and no one seems to think he can win this race. Nelson won’t skate by as easily as he did in 2006.  But most polling shows a double-digit lead for the incumbent, and that feels about right.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Indiana

Longtime Republican Senator Dick Lugar was known as a foreign policy expert and a statesman committed to establishing bipartisan support for arms reduction treaties. That involved working with President Obama rather than criticizing him at every turn. It also involved a focus on the arcana of international diplomacy rather than Indiana-centric matters. Perhaps unsurprising for a man who hadn’t faced a tough race in 30 years, Lugar no longer keeps an actual physical residence in Indiana. All of that combined to provide an opening for state treasurer Richard Mourdock to primary Lugar from the right. Lugar is widely adored in Indiana, but it soon became clear that the Republican base had grown tired of him. Mourdock ended up winning the primary comfortably, and has made little to no effort to pivot back to the center for the general election.

Republicans controlled redistricting in Indiana, and drastically altered three-term Representative Joe Donnelly’s South Bend-area district. Faced with a much redder House race or a shot at the Senate – and possibly Mourdock rather than the beloved Lugar – he chose to run statewide. With a moderate record in the House and and a much more centrist tone than Mourdock, Donnelly represents the Democrats’ second-best chance at a Senate pickup this cycle (third, if you count the tricky Maine race). Polling has borne this out: in eight polls since the start of summer, each candidate has led in four, and never by more than three points.  The Obama campaign has effectively conceded Indiana, his most surprising 2008 win. Will Romney coattails carry Mourdock to victory? They’ll be worth something. It’s a given that some longtime Lugar voters will not vote for the sharply partisan Mourdock – but the question is whether the skip this race, or go with Donnelly. In a race that sits on a knife’s edge, with no momentum for either man, the state’s partisan fundamentals seem likely to give Mourdock a narrow edge. This is one of the hardest Senate races to call this year, meaning we could change our minds a few times in the coming weeks…or that no further clues will appear, and we’ll be especially eager to see how this one plays out on Election Night.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Maine

Here’s an interesting one. Moderate Republican senator Olympia Snowe is retiring after three terms. Republicans nominated Secretary of State Charlie Summers; he was also a state senator in the early ’90s. Democrats nominated Cynthia Dill, a state senator who happens to have been born in my native Hudson Valley (Carmel, specifically).

And neither the Republican nor the Democrat will be elected. That’s because independent former governor Angus King will win, and probably in a walk. King ran the state from 1995-2003, after a career as a lawyer, public television host and an alternative energy developer.  He generally stakes out liberal positions on social issues and more moderate stances on fiscal matters. He certainly tilts left-of-center, and endorsed Obama for president in 2008 and again this year. The assumption is that King will ultimately caucus with Democrats in the Senate, but he refuses to commit to one or the other, and has in fact intimated that he could operate independent of both. If so, he won’t have any committee assignments and he’ll find it’s hard to get work done – that being said, it’s not like a lot of work gets done in the senate anymore as it is.

King has led polling since Snowe announced her retirement. The margins jump around – sometimes his leads approach 30 points over Summers; some Republican polls have shown a single-digit race – as did one surprising survey from PPP in mid-September. Dill has always placed third in polls, because King draws so much support from Democrats who see him as their de facto candidate.

While indies usually poll better than they actually perform on Election Day, in King’s case we’re talking about a well-known quantity – a two-term governor who has been the established frontrunner since entering the race. His lead is real. The only reason we’re going Likely Independent here, and not Safe, is that Republican-affiliated groups continue to spend money on this race, and King has been out of office long enough that he could be rusty if the unexpected occurs. But it’s hard to find anyone who thinks that will happen. We’ll probably change this to Safe Independent in the coming weeks. Afterwards, this blog will be intrigued to cover his approach to Senate business and see how this independent navigates a hyper-partisan DC landscape.

Rating: Likely Independent

 

Massachusetts

AKA: The Big One. For Democrats to hold the Senate, they probably need a pickup or two to offset likely losses elsewhere. In a cycle where most of the seats up for reelection are held by Democrats, many of them in reddish states, Massachusetts is a rarity: Scott Brown is a Republican, elected in January 2010, who is trying to hold in a state Obama will carry by roughly 20 points next month. But Brown breaks party lines relatively often for the modern era, maintains a centrist demeanor, largely avoids gaffes, and has as much money as any candidate could need. He plays the pickup truck card as well as any candidate we’ve seen.

His opponent makes no bones about being a progressive flag-bearer. Elizabeth Warren is a lawyer and academic whose publications include the prescient The Two-Income Trap, co-authored with her daughter. More recently she led the fight to create the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which – if allowed to do its job – will regulate financial products and services and in theory avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Beloved by grassroots activists, Warren has oodles of campaign money and favorable state dynamics. She also is an uneasy campaigner at times; the Cherokee heritage issue never goes away. Brown also taps into America’s strong anti-intellectual currents by mocking her for being a Harvard professor. For some, the fact that Warren grew up in a working-class, hard-luck family in Oklahoma insulates her from that attack. But for others, Brown has staked a claim to blue-collar affiliation since his first campaign.

Brown led polling for most of the summer, and before the Democratic convention this race was Tilt Rep or maybe even Lean Rep in my mind. But in early September, Warren started moving ahead, and she has led in 11 of 15 post-convention polls. Maybe coattail effects are baked into that, in which case this is probably a turnout battle – and it’s a state where the presidential outcome is a given, so the ground game of the respective senate candidates will be important. We know Brown is a good closer from his 2010 win, but we also know that Warren is a stronger campaigner than Martha Coakley, who Brown defeated that year. That adds up to a Warren edge, but not a large one.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Michigan

Second-term Democrat Debbie Stabenow faces off with former Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra. There’s not a lot to say about this race, whose only exciting moment came during the Super Bowl when Hoekstra ran a bizarre ad starring overt racism. Hoekstra took some heat for that, fell back in the polls, and hasn’t really recovered. Michigan was a swing state in 2000 and 2004, but McCain bailed early in autumn ’08 and Romney has never appeared particularly close in his native state this time around. We’re leaving it Likely Dem rather than Safe, simply because a national collapse on Obama’s part could put the state back in play down the stretch. But even then Stabenow would probably win…we’ll probably be adjusting this call to Safe Dem in the coming weeks.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Missouri

Freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill won a tough race in 2006 but entered this cycle as her party’s weakest incumbent senator: her reddish state just didn’t care for the job she was doing in DC. Not helping matters were revelations that she had failed to pay property taxes on a private jet her family owns. “Air Claire” spent most of the spring trailing in hypothetical polls against each of the three Republicans seeking to replace her.

But Republicans didn’t have a slam-dunk challenger to take her on. The three-way primary was closely contested, and Representative Todd Akin emerged as the winner. Then he told the world how little he knew about human reproduction. Then he refused to leave the race, no matter how much Republicans begged him too. Then, given a real drop-dead date to exit, he refused again. And then he said more dumb things about abortion. Meanwhile, state and national Republicans have gradually gotten behind him again, because they know this seat is nearly a must-win if they want to take back control of the Senate with this election.

So McCaskill now leads in most polling, usually by 6-7 points, and Democrats might end up holding a seat they had started to figure was gone. Akin is a national joke. But I’m reluctant to bet on an incumbent who is as strongly disliked as  McCaskill. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Akin chip away and keep this race competitive, especially if national Republicans blink and reopen an advertising barrage.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Montana

Jon Tester is another freshman Dem who won a tight race in a reddish state in 2006. He’s a rural farmer who brings a moderate voting record and has retained a folksy charm. Republicans are running their best potential challenger: wealthy rancher and at-large representative Denny Rehberg. He has also hewed to the center, standing out as one of the few Republicans in Congress to vote against the Ryan budget.

This is one of our tougher races to call, and it would probably a be a legitimate tossup if we were inclined to include those. It’s been largely drama-free, and the perpetually-close polling reflects that neither candidate has been able to open a big advantage or generate significant momentum. Rehberg has lead more often, so we have to give him the edge, especially with the advantage he holds in the state’s fundamentals: Democrats had a lot of momentum here in the last decade, electing a Democratic governor twice and controlling the state legislature for a few years. Obama only narrowly losing the state four years ago. But that momentum has dissipated. Tester will outpoll the president, but will that be enough? Republicans fared well here in 2010, and Romney is expected to carry Montana more easily than McCain did. That should only help Rehberg.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Nevada

The wretched and scandal-plagued Republican John Ensign resigned in 2011 in the middle of an ethics investigation. Republican Congressman Dean Heller was appointed to serve the remainder of that term and now faces reelection. This shapes up as one of the few Democratic pickup opportunities of the cycle, and longtime Las Vegas Representative Shelley Berkley stepped up to carry the blue flag.

Heller has hammered Berkley on the ethics investigations she’s undergoing – she sought federal funds to keep a kidney transplant center open; her husband is a physician in the employ of this center. It looks dodgy on paper, but less so when you realize that the services provided by this center are scarce in Nevada, meaning that the facility is critical for the care of many Nevada residents. FactCheck.org echoed the sentiments of many in concluding that she was trying to help her constituents, not herself. Heller knows this; he also advocated on behalf of the same center! But appearances matter in politics, and one can always do more to inoculate oneself against these types of charges. And having the phrase “ethics investigation” in every discussion about you makes it hard to win an election. Accordingly, Heller has led almost every poll of this race.

Obama won big here in 2008; this time around, the presidential outcome is in doubt in this high-unemployment state. Heller has largely kept the pressure on Berkley and Romney may yet squeeze out a win…but at the same time, we saw that 2010 polling consistently underestimated Harry Reid’s eventual margin of victory. An incredible Democratic turnout machine fueled that surprising Reid triumph after the majority leader was left for dead by many pundits earlier in the year. But he was also helped by the fact that his opponent was a right-winger far, far from the mainstream. Dean Heller is not Sharron Angle, and appears positioned to hold this seat. It’s more likely that we shift the race in his favor than in Berkley’s in future updates.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

North Dakota

Democrats held both of North Dakota’s senate seats from 1986 to 2010. But then Byron Dorgan retired, and ultra-popular Democratic-turned-Republican governor John Hoeven cruised to an easy pickup of his seat, winning a ridiculous 76% in the 2010 GOP landslide. Kent Conrad is joining his old friend Dorgan in the ranks of the retired, opening up another open seat in this usually red state. But the pickup won’t come so easily this time. Democrats nominated former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp, a proven vote-getter who was running basically even with Hoeven back in 2000, when he first sought the governorship. But Heitkamp left the campaign trail that year after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Having successfully vanquished that scourge, she’s mounting a political comeback. Her common touch is playing well on the campaign trail; she is not viewed as an ultra-partisan. Freshman Representative Rick Berg, on the other hand, contrasts with both her and Hoeven in that he is a down-the-line conservative whose campaign seems predicated on linking Heitkamp to Obama. It should be noted that Obama contested North Dakota in 2008 and received 45% of the vote, the best showing for a Democratic presidential candidate in decades. This time around, polling shows that he is unlikely to keep Romney’s margin below twenty, making Heitkamp’s road that much tougher.

The question here really is whether North Dakota will adhere to a long history of ticket-splitting that saw many Democrats reelected to Congress even as Republican presidential candidates generally won the state with ease, or if enough North Dakotans want unified Republican control of Washington that they elect both Romney and Berg. North Dakota is a lightly-polled state, with only seven published surveys for the senate race this cycle. Heitkamp has led in five, Berg in one, and they were tied in the other. Most of those Heitkamp leads came from Dem internals, which gives pause…but not as much as it would give if Berg ever responded with his own internals. He never does, so either he has an unconventional approach to these things and doesn’t like to tell people he’s actually winning…or he’s not actually winning.

Republicans have recently shifted resources to North Dakota from other senate races, signalling that they know Berg needs help to get over the top. Let’s see how that help plays out – right now we’re weighing North Dakota’s GOP-friendly fundamentals over Heitkamp’s polling advantage, but I’m looking for a narrative shift. If none appears, and Heitkamp’s performance on the trail continues to win praise, this might end up tilting to the Dems.

Rating: Tilt Republican

 

Ohio

Sherrod Brown is a freshman Democrat running in a classic swing state after decisively dispatching incumbent Mike DeWine in 2006. Brown’s record is of a pretty liberal, labor-friendly bent, meaning he has plenty of grassroots manpower in his corner. He also has what has turned out to be a fairly weak opponent in Iraq War veteran and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel. The young, smooth-talking Mandel has quite a resume at an early age, but he has shown much arrogance and very little in the way of policy specifics; he makes dodging questions into something of an art form. He’s getting hit for it now, as Politifact and various Ohio media outlets are getting tired of his games.

Various SuperPACs have spent enormous sums trying to make this race competitive. They have succeeded, insofar as polling has Mandel still within low double-digits of the incumbent despite being an abysmal candidate. But Brown has hit back on Mandel’s absenteeism in doing the job he was elected to and some dodgy appointments of his buddies to state posts. The momentum seems to be with Brown, even as Romney is tightening the presidential race once again in the Buckeye state. It’s getting hard to see a path to victory for Mandel. It’s also hard to see any Senate challenger his year who is less deserving than Mandel of being in a close race.

Rating: Likely Democratic

 

Pennsylvania

Before Rick Santorum was making Mitt Romney sweat a bit in the GOP primaries earlier this year, he was an ex-senator from Pennsylvania. State Treasurer Bob Casey destroyed two-term incumbent Santorum in 2006, coupling liberal issues on spending and taxes with a pro-life and pro-gun positions on cultural issues. Casey’s a good fit for Pennsylvania, able to perform well in the blue-collar Anthracite Kingdom, Lehigh Valley and Pittsburgh metro areas. Those advantages gave him huge leads all year over coal executive Tom Smith, despite Casey’s weak job approval ratings. Smith is a long-ago Democratic township supervisor and now running as a hardcore across-the-board conservative who makes strange abortion analogies. But as October dawned, Smith started surging even before Romney did, and polls now show a lead of only 2-3 points for Casey.

One assumes that Casey has material waiting in the wings to create some separation with Smith, but the incumbent has little ground game of his own and possesses a general blandness that doesn’t generate much enthusiasm among the Democratic base. Unions will be there for him, and Pennsylvania will go for Obama again, barring a total collapse of the president’s campaign. But Casey seems to be fumbling on the goal line, and it’s an open question how well he’ll respond to the first real challenge he’s faced in his two senate campaigns.

Rating: Lean Democratic

 

Virginia

Jim Webb narrowly picked this seat up for Democrats in 2006, but didn’t find Washington politics much to his liking. He’s retiring after one term, and former governor and DNC chairman Tim Kaine is the Democrat looking to succeed him. Kaine is no Mark Warner, but he was still generally popular when he was running the state. The man opposing him is the man Webb beat six years ago: former governor and senator George Allen.

Allen was undone by the infamous “macaca moment” in 2006 but people forget how strong a resume Webb had, and how forcefully his message resonated in the darkest days of the Iraq War. Allen has avoided anything as destructive this time around, while Kaine has hewed to the center and run a largely mistake-free campaign. In purple Virginia, that has meant a race that was basically even all year, with virtually every poll showing a tie or a margin within two points in either direction. Kaine appeared to be opening a lead in late September, finally posting a handful of polls with leads ranging from 5-10 points. Then came the Romney surge, and now the race appears to be reset at its previous even state.  As a result, forecasting it is is nigh-impossible: both will be funded as much as needed, and both will be hoping their party’s presidential nominee helps nudge them to victory. Virginia probably won’t be as blue as it was in 2008 when Obama won by a decent margin and Warner trounced his way to a Senate victory, but it doesn’t need to be. Going back to Allen would seem strange for the “new Virginia” but not shocking; Bob McDonnell is arguable more stridently conservative than Allen’s Bush-era orthodoxy. In a race that is seemingly tied in every way, we’ll give the edge to the only candidate who has shown the ability to open a lead – however fleeting that was. For the moment, this tilts to Kaine.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

 

Wisconsin

A month or two ago, this seemed like one of the Republicans’ best pickup opportunities. They had nominated the once-popular four-term former governor Tommy Thompson. Democrats had nominated Tammy Baldwin, a very liberal congresswoman from a safely-Democratic Madison-based district – in other words, little experience chasing independent and Republican voters. In my mind, this race was at least Lean Rep in late August.

But after the primary, Thompson did…nothing. He barely made any public appearances, ostensibly rebuilding his warchest and “resting” after a difficult primary that at one time seemed poised to be won by upstart businessman Eric Hovde. He’s back on the trail, but he’s making mistakes, like forgetting how many houses he owns. It increasingly feels like Thompson got into this race thinking it would be easier, and that now he doesn’t feel like fighting for it. Accordingly, Baldwin has led in every poll but two in the past month – usually by 2-4 points, but occasionally by significantly more.

Should Baldwin emerge victorious, she will be the first openly lesbian senator in the United States. It’s not the outcome I expected six weeks ago, and she surely hasn’t seen the last of negative advertising barrages. But Thompson, as popular as he once was, is yesterday’s news and his last public service was in the Bush administration – not a winning resume item in his home state. If Romney can pull ahead in Wisconsin as he occasionally threatens to do, that will help Thompson to muddle through. But right now, the advantage is with Baldwin.

Rating: Tilt Democratic

When Matt and I started this up, we wanted a quick-and-dirty working title. Using our respective surnames seemed simple and appropriate enough. However, the flexibility of the name “Kelly” means that one could just as easily mistake our site for the work of someone named “Kelly Clausen.” There are in fact Kelly Clausens out there – it’s a good Irish name, of course – which makes it even less helpful to use that moniker for our own branding. So with a packed fall schedule on the docket (more on that in a minute) now is a good time for a change.

Within the Margin evokes the thought of polling data, and obviously if you’re going to talk about campaigns and elections, you’re going to talk about polls. But they are really good number-crunchers out there, putting out quality work that helps to inform our own, so our focus is not purely data-driven. We want to look at stories, character, and ramifications for governing.

And we want to put together some ratings and predictions. We want to be your go-to source for finding out the state of play in the House and Senate races across the nation. So we’ll have lots of coverage to that effect between now and November 6, along with some discussion of debates, messaging and so forth. Everything’s fair game. Time permitting, we’ll take a quick look at the gubernatorial races around the country, and bring it all back to the local scene for the New York state assembly and senate races. And I suppose we’ll weigh in on the presidential race too. It’s ambitious, but the adrenaline is flowing as summer gives way to fall and E-Day approaches.

Obviously, we want to call the outcomes correctly, but the goal is also to bring some tasty tidbits about the political geography and demography we’re dealing with. An enormous quantity of hours has been spent assembling a database of present and historical facts (ok, sometimes it’s more like trivia) to inform our race ratings and make for interesting reading. I’m optimistic that there’s something we can bring to the table for a diverse group of readers, from those with a casual interest in elections to the junkies who have their own strong opinions about how things will turn out on any given early-November Tuesday.

So update your bookmarks, kids: https://withinthemargin.wordpress.com. We look forward to hearing from you.