Senate Forecast - June 30

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This is the DemConWatch Senate Forecast, a summary of the best election projections on the web for the 2008 Senate elections. Be sure to check out our Presidential Forecast and our House Forecast. (See July 5th update at bottom).

DCW Senate Forecast: 55.7 (was 55.5). This number is going to move like a glacier, due to the small number of Senate seats having any contest (14), and the number being the average of 8 sites. Today's movement is mostly due to the adding of a new index at fivethirtyeight.com, as well as OpenLeft moving CO and NH to D-Strong.

The DCW Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2009 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast. Feel free to subtract one if you so desire!)

The following seats are unanimous strong ,and not a pickup (VA), and are not shown in the table below:
Solid Democrat: AR (Pryor), DE (Biden), IA (Harkin). IL (Durbin), MA (Kerry), MI (Levin), MT (Baucus), RI (Reed), SD (Johnson), WV (Rockefeller)
Solid Republican: AL (Sessions), ID (Open), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), OK (Inhofe), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), TX (Cornyn), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)

The sources are sorted by each sources Senate Projection:

DCW Senate Tracker
State	Current	538.com	EV.com	OpenLeft	Crystal Ball	Cook	CQ	Rothenberg	SSP	....
Date		5/20	6/29	6/26	6/18	5/23	6/18	5/20	6/15
Dem		16	13	14	12	12	12	12	12
Dem-Lean		0	2	2	4	1	2	2	2
Tossup		2	4	2	2	6	4	3	2
Rep-Lean		5	6	4	4	2	3	2	4
Rep		12	10	13	13	14	14	16	15
Dem-Prediction		18	18	17	17	16	16	16	15
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Senate Projection		56	57	56	56	55	55	55	54
Dem-Gain		+6	+6	+5	+5	+4	+4	+4	+3
AK (Stevens)	R	T	T	T	T	T	RL	RL	RL
CO (Open)	R	D	DL	D	DL	T	T	T	T
GA (Chambliss)	R	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R
KY (McConnell)	R	RL	T	RL	R	R	R	R	R
LA (Landrieu)	D	D	T	DL	DL	DL	DL	T	DL
ME (Collins)	R	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	R	R
MN (Coleman)	R	RL	RL	RL	RL	T	T	T	RL
MS (Wicker)	R	T	T	T	T	T	T	R	RL
NC (Dole)	R	R	RL	R	RL	R	R	R	RL
NH (Sununu)	R	D	D	D	DL	T	T	DL	T
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	DL	DL	D	D	D	D	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	D	DL	T	DL	DL	DL
OR (Smith)	R	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	R
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D

Here are the seats that span 3 categories:

• CO - Two projections have it as strong D, 4 as Tossup. Udall is up by 9 or 10 points in all 3 June polls.
  
• KY (McConnell): EV.Com has it as a Tossup
• MS (Wicker): Rothenberg has it as a "Clear Advantage" for Wicker, but Rasmussen's poll out on 6/24 shows Wicker with a 1 point lead.
  
• NH (Sununu): Shaheen has opened up a 14 point lead in 2 straight polls, but Sununu has a big money advantage.
  
• NM (Open): Cook, who hasn't updated since May 23, has it as a Tossup. Udall has led by 15 points or more in all polls since Mid-May.
  

The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected solid for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean, 0.5 seats for a a Tossup, 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean, and obviously 0 seats for a solid Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.

July 5 Update: Only one forecaster has changed in the last week, so we'll note it here rather than do a whole new post. Electoral-vote.com has updated as follows: CO: Dem Lean->Dem Strong. KY: Tossup-> Rep-Lean. MN and NC: Rep-Lean -> Rep-Strong. This changes the EV.com projection to 56, +5, and changes the overall forecast to 55.6.