Senate Forecast - September 14

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

Senate Forecast: 56.4, up 0.1 from the previous forecast, with only three of our seven projections updating since the last post. Rothenberg had been the lowest forecast, but has now come up from 55.0 to 56.0, nicely raising the baseline.

The 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!) A history of the Forecast going back to November 2006 is at bottom and in the left sidebar.

For analysis of the races, be sure to check out the latest installment of Sunday with the Senators.

Be sure to also check out our Presidential Forecast and our House Forecast.

The following seats are unanimous strong and are not shown in the table below (We do show VA as it is a pickup):

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), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)
Almost Solid Republican: ID (Open), OK (Inhofe), TX (Cornyn). OpenLeft has expanded its definition of Lean, adding these 3 states. I will not add them to the chart unless other projections also move them to Lean, but the categories are included in the overall numbers.

Also, one seat we've been tracking, NJ is unanimously safe., but we'll leave it on the chart for now, in case that changes.

The sources are sorted by each sources Senate Projection. The right column counts the "road to 60".

DemConWatch Senate Forecast
State	Current	Open Left	538 .com	Crystal Ball	Cook	EV .com	CQ	SSP	Roth	....
Date		9/5.	9/2.	7/29.	8/21.	9/13.	9/1.	8/6.	9/14.
Dem-Strong		13	16	12	12	14	12	13	13
Dem-Lean		3	1	5	3	2	5	4	2
Tossup		3	0	1	5	2	1	0	4
Rep-Lean		8	4	4	2	3	3	4	2
Rep-Strong		8	14	13	13	14	14	14	14
Dem '08 Projection		18.5	17.6	17.3	17.3	17.2	17.1	17.0	17.0
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Dem Senate Projection		57.5.	56.6	56.3	56.3	56.2	56.1.	56.0	56.0
Dem-Gain		6.5	5.6	5.3	5.3	5.2	5.1	5.0	5.0
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	52
NM (Open)	R	DL	D	DL	DL	DL	DL	D	D	53
LA (Landrieu)	D	D	D	DL	DL	D	DL	DL	T
NH (Sununu)	R	DL	D	DL	T	D	DL	DL	DL	54
AK (Stevens)	R	T	D	DL	DL	T	DL	DL	DL	55
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	T	DL	DL	DL	T	56
MN (Coleman)	R	T	RL	RL	T	T	RL	RL	RL	57
MS (Wicker)	R	RL	RL	T	T	RL	T	RL	RL	58
NC (Dole)	R	T	RL	RL	RL	RL	R	RL	T	59
OR (Smith)	R	RL	RL	RL	T	R	RL	RL	T	60
ME (Collins)	R	RL	R	RL	RL	R	RL	R	R	61
GA (Chambliss)	R	RL	R	R	R	RL	R	R	R	62
KY (McConnell)	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	63

Notes and Graph below

Here are the seats that span 3 categories: AK, LA, NC, NH, OR

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.