Senate Forecast - September 27

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Senate Forecast: 56.5, up 0.1 from the previous forecast. Movement in NC and OR bring 58-59 seats more easily within Democratic grasp, even as a longshot like GA moves out of reach.

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), OK (Inhofe), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)

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

DemConWatch Senate Forecast
State	Current	CQ	EV .com	538 .com	Cook	SSP	Crystal Ball	Open Left	Roth	....
Date		9/26.	9/26.	9/20.	9/25.	9/17.	7/29.	9/19.	9/14.
Dem-Strong		13	13	15	12	13	12	11	13
Dem-Lean		4	3	2	3	4	5	6	2
Tossup		2	4	1	6	2	1	2	4
Rep-Lean		3	2	3	1	2	4	2	2
Rep-Strong		13	13	14	13	14	13	14	14
Dem '08 Projection		17.8	17.8	17.7	17.6	17.6	17.3	17.2	17.0
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Dem Senate Projection		56.8	56.8	56.7	56.6	56.6	56.3	56.2	56.0
Dem-Gain		5.8	5.8	5.7	5.6	5.6	5.3	5.2	5.0
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	52
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	DL	D	D	D	D	DL	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	D	DL	D	DL	DL	D	53
LA (Landrieu)	D	DL	D	D	DL	DL	DL	DL	T
AK (Stevens)	R	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	54
NH (Sununu)	R	DL	T	D	T	DL	DL	DL	DL	55
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	T	DL	DL	DL	T	56
NC (Dole)	R	T	T	RL	T	T	RL	RL	T	57
OR (Smith)	R	RL	T	RL	T	T	RL	T	T	58
MN (Coleman)	R	RL	T	T	T	RL	RL	T	RL	59
MS (Wicker)	R	T	RL	RL	T	RL	T	RL	RL	60
ME (Collins)	R	RL	R	R	RL	R	RL	R	R	61
KY (McConnell)	R	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R	62
GA (Chambliss)	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	63

Click for Notes and Graph

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

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.