Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Senate Forecast - September 2 - NC & MN tighten up

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

Senate Forecast: 56.3, up 0.2 from our previous forecast. There's been movement in both NC and MN, making these seats competitive again.

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), ID (Open), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), OK (Inhofe), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), TX (Cornyn), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)

Also, two seats we've been tracking, NJ and KY, are unanimously safe., but we'll leave them on the chart for now, in case that changes.

The sources are sorted by each sources Senate Projection:

DemConWatch Senate Forecast
State
CurrentEV
.com
538
.com
Open LeftCrystal BallCookCQSSPRoth....
Date

9/2.9/2.8/22.7/29.8/21.9/1.8/6.7/30.
Dem-Strong

1616161212121312
Dem-Lean

11153542
Tossup

20015104
Rep-Lean

24442342
Rep-Strong

1414141313141415
Dem '08 Projection

1818181717171716
Dem '10/'12 Seats

3939393939393939
Dem Senate Projection

5757575656565655
Dem-Gain

66655554

AK (Stevens)
RDDDDLDLDLDLT
CO (Open)
RDLDLDLDLTDLDLT
GA (Chambliss)
RRLRRLRRRRR
KY (McConnell)
RRRRRRRRR
LA (Landrieu)
DDDDDLDLDLDLT
ME (Collins)
RRRRRLRLRLRR
MN (Coleman)
RTRLRLRLTRLRLT
MS (Wicker)
RRLRLRLTTTRLRL
NC (Dole)
RTRLRLRLRLRRLR
NH (Sununu)
RDDDDLTDLDLDL
NJ (Lautenberg)
DDDDDDDDD
NM (Open)
RDDDDLDLDLDDL
OR (Smith)
RRRLRRLTRLRLRL
VA (Open)
RDDDDDDDD








































Notes and Graph below

Here are the seats that span 3 categories:
  • AK (Stevens): Three now at Democratic Strong, Rothenberg still at Tossup
  • LA (Landrieu): 3 at Dem-Strong, Rothenberg at Tossup
  • NC (NEW): CQ at Rep-Strong, EV.com at Tossup
  • NH (Sununu): 3 at Dem-Strong, Cook at Tossup
  • OR (Smith) (NEW): 2 at Rep-Strong, Cook at Tossup
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.