Senate Forecast - September 2 - NC & MN tighten up

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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	Current	EV .com	538 .com	Open Left	Crystal Ball	Cook	CQ	SSP	Roth	....
Date		9/2.	9/2.	8/22.	7/29.	8/21.	9/1.	8/6.	7/30.
Dem-Strong		16	16	16	12	12	12	13	12
Dem-Lean		1	1	1	5	3	5	4	2
Tossup		2	0	0	1	5	1	0	4
Rep-Lean		2	4	4	4	2	3	4	2
Rep-Strong		14	14	14	13	13	14	14	15
Dem '08 Projection		18	18	18	17	17	17	17	16
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Dem Senate Projection		57	57	57	56	56	56	56	55
Dem-Gain		6	6	6	5	5	5	5	4
AK (Stevens)	R	D	D	D	DL	DL	DL	DL	T
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	DL	T	DL	DL	T
GA (Chambliss)	R	RL	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R
KY (McConnell)	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	R
LA (Landrieu)	D	D	D	D	DL	DL	DL	DL	T
ME (Collins)	R	R	R	R	RL	RL	RL	R	R
MN (Coleman)	R	T	RL	RL	RL	T	RL	RL	T
MS (Wicker)	R	RL	RL	RL	T	T	T	RL	RL
NC (Dole)	R	T	RL	RL	RL	RL	R	RL	R
NH (Sununu)	R	D	D	D	DL	T	DL	DL	DL
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	D	DL	DL	DL	D	DL
OR (Smith)	R	R	RL	R	RL	T	RL	RL	RL
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D

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.