Latest House and Senate Updates, What You Need to Know About Governor's Races

Projection Totals
Senate: 51 Democratic Caucus (49 Dems, 2 Ind), 49 Republican Caucus (48 Reps, 1 Ind)
House: 231 Republicans, 204 Democrats




A lot of new polls since Thursday, but absolutely no rating changes in any of the Senate races. Of note...Washington seems to be getting even closer, which may be a very important race the way this is shaping up. Basically, to win control of the Senate, the GOP needs to hold all the seats that I have in their column ("leans" included) and take both West Virginia and Washington. In my approximation, this still makes Washington approximately "Seat #51".

In the House, we have tightened ever-so-slightly, but the GOP is still projected to win back the House by a wide majority. It's hard to imagine a scenario where they hold on to the House, although stranger things have happened.

The State Houses
I have not been keeping a statistical projection of all the Governor's races in the country as this site mostly focuses on national politics, but they bear a mention as the parties in power after this election will have significant control of the redistricting process after the 2010 census results are released at the end of the year. Every state (except for the ones with only 1 House seat) will be drawing new districts and control of the legislature and the Governor's mansion means the ability to gerrymander for your party.

Here is the landscape for Governor's races:
There are several states that do not have Governor's races this year. New Jersey and Virginia have "odd-year" governor's races, which the GOP won last year. Several other states have even-year elections that match the Presidential calendar. These are:
Washington, Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina and West Virginia.

Arkansas has sort of an odd system where the Governor is on 2-year terms, so the race is up this year and in 2012.

All of the rest are up for 4 year terms this time.

The Democrats have 7 seats not up for re-election and 3 that are not particularly competitive.
The GOP have 6 seats not up and 14 that are not particularly competitive.

This leaves 20 basically locked in for the GOP and 10 for the DEMs.

Of the remaining seats, here is how they break down:
Dems Lead: California, Colorado, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota
Polls Split/Very Close: Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Vermont
GOP Leads: Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin
Independent Leads: Rhode Island

Of the 4 very close races, here are my current statistical projections:
Connecticut: Malloy (D) +2.6%
Florida: Scott (R) +1.2%
Oregon: Dudley (R) +0.8%
Vermont: Shamlin (D) +3.2%

So at this point, I project:
US Governors: 31 Republicans, 18 Democrats, 1 Independent
It isn't quite as bad as it looks for the Democrats, since they will control some very big states with a lot of congressional seats, including New York, likely California and still possibly Florida (although they trail in my numbers narrowly there.) Still, this gives the GOP 30-some Presidential candidates in 2012 and a lot of clout in the states.

Tomorrow I will do my final projections and a full run down / watching guide to the mid-terms. I will be live-blogging on Tuesday after the polls start to close.

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Want Lower Government Spending? Try a Republican Congress and a Democratic President

If you read my earlier post that looked at GDP growth relative to party control of Congress and the Presidency from last week, you will see that the statistics were fairly inconclusive. The economy tended to grow more strongly when a Democrat controlled the Presidency, but the correlation with divided or unified government was not significant.

This post, I thought I would look at the level of government spending relative to party control.

Let me lead in by saying a few things.

Firstly, many of the same limitations that I discussed in my earlier post apply to this analysis as well. It is impossible to control for evolving and varied ideologies of the parties over time and it is also difficult to control for the effects that economic and geopolitical conditions have on spending (wars cost money, recessions drive up the cost of the social safety net, etc.)

Secondly, I wanted to explain my choice of metric. I used change in government spending as a percentage of GDP. The choice to use change in spend rather than absolute spending levels is a judgement call, but one that I believe is most accurate. Government doesn't spin on a dime, so I believe change in spending is more indicative of the impact of political leaders than the absolute number.

Thirdly, I'm not trying to argue in this post whether higher or lower government spending is preferred. Was adding Medicare a good thing or a bad thing? How about the war in Iraq? Should we have added the Department of Homeland Security? These are all individual issues that we could debate at length. The point is, this analysis seeks only to establish correlations, not to conclude whether they are good or bad.

Conclusions by Party in Power:
Presidency
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Democrats: +0.00%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Republicans: +0.16%/year

House
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Democrats: +0.05%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Republicans: +0.22%/year

Senate
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Democrats: +0.08%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) for Republicans: +0.17%/year

Viewed individually, in every body, Republicans in power leads to more spending than Democrats in power. You can also see (no surprise), that the trend overall is up across time.

But what about the interaction of unified versus divided government? Here is where the statistic become very clear:
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) -- Democrat President, Congress All or Partially Republican: -0.47%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) -- Republican President, Congress All or Partially Democratic: +0.02%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) -- Unified Democratic Government: +0.18%/year
Average spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) -- Unified Republican Government: +0.65%/year

Average all divided governments: -0.07%/year
Average all unified governments: +0.34%/year

We see a massive effect here. Divided governments produce lower government spending, unified ones produce higher spending. The effect is significant and meaningful.

Conclusions:
* Democratic Presidents, in general, increase spending at a far lower rate than Republican Presidents
* Regardless of who is President, spending is significantly lower with at least partial control of Congress by the other party
* Of all scenarios, a Republican Congress and a Democratic President produces the lowest spending result.
* The highest spending scenario, by far, is a unified Republican government.
* Interestingly enough, only 16% of the total change in spending is explained by these effects. This speaks to the continued impact of macroeconomics and evolving philosophies.

It's fascinating, because a lot of this flies in the face of conventional wisdom about party governing philosophies.

If you are a fan of lower government spending, you should be encouraged, since we will almost certainly see a next two years of a Democratic President and a congress that is at least partially Republican congress.

I may pick this topic up to do similar analysis on things like taxes and deficit. But between now and Tuesday, this space will be solely dedicated to looking at the mid-term elections.

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Are the Dems Rallying Late?, Some Perspective on November 3rd

Projection Totals
Senate: 51 Democratic Caucus (49 Dems, 2 Ind), 49 Republican Caucus (48 Reps, 1 Ind)
House: 233 Republicans, 202 Democrats




The full court push is officially on. President Obama did the Daily Show, President Clinton is out hard on the campaign trail and both sides are spending ad money at a rate that makes us all want to TiVo programs rather than watch them live. But are the numbers moving at all?

Maybe a little in the final days. Don't get me wrong, the GOP is going to make huge gains, no question about it. And a lot of the races are starting to cement and clarify. But where there is movement late, at least on the Senate side, it seems to be modestly pro-Democrat.

We are probably down to about 7 races where the outcome is truly in doubt. It's tough to close a 5 point gap in less than a week, barring a big surprise and it's rare that my projections are off by 5%.

So let's run those down:
Alaska -- I don't know what the heck is going to happen in this race. The newest poll, from the Hay Research Group, vaults incumbent Republican running as a write-in Lisa Murkowski into the lead, with Joe Miller plummeting all the way to third place. This leaves us with three completely viable outcomes: #1 That Murkowski does in fact win via write-in, #2 That Miller picks up the Murkowski voters who don't want to bother with the write-in or forget when they get to the polls or #3 That the Dems eke one out in a three-way race, in the same manner as they stole a New York Congressional special election last year. I view #3 as a real possibility for the first time this year, which would be a disaster for GOP hopes in the Senate and would leave me laughing about the Tea Party and its influence on the GOP.

West Virginia -- apparently shooting cap and trade is working in coal country as conservative Democrat Manchin vaults back into a narrow lead. This one is still too close to call, but definitely trending blue.

Washington -- this one has seesawed a lot, but appears to be trending red at the moment. Murray is holding on barely, but Dino Rossi is nipping at her heels.

Colorado -- this race seemed almost dead to the Dems but has become close again. Hard not to still have the GOP favored, as Buck has had a lead for months, but if there is a blue surge late, this is one that is ripe for the taking.

Illinois -- this race has consistently stayed close. The GOP was wise to nominate a true moderate in this race in Mark Kirk. It's not 100% over, but this one may be out of reach for the Dems.

Nevada -- will a fringe candidate like Sharron Angle really unseat Harry Reid in purple Nevada? It appears so at the moment. Frankly a case of two horrible candidates and the voters picking the lesser evil. Angle's lead has stabilized and Reid will have to find a bag of tricks late to pull this one out.

Pennsylvania -- Sestak had been surging for about a week but that appears to have abated and Toomey is reestablishing his lead. Funny how the guy who couldn't beat Arlen Specter in a primary may beat the guy who did.

What Happens on November 3rd?
One thing I know is that the Presidential race unofficially starts right after this election. Think I'm jumping the gun? We'll be about 14 months from the first primary. The GOP candidates will need to start lining up donors and support now or they will start to drop off. Expect Palin, Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich and company to start gearing up big time. Also expect a tough ride in Washington with an almost certainly divided government AND a Presidential campaign starting. You think the rhetoric is tough now? You haven't seen anything yet. Of course, my coverage of the 2012 election will begin next week as well, sizing up the electoral map and the GOP field.

I was sent an interesting link from newsy.com, a site that basically aggregates clips from a variety of news sources to show multiple perspectives on a story. It shows a compilation of views on how the President might deal with a soon-to-be-divided government.

The link to the clip is here. It's worth a watch.

Note: As always, I've received no compensation of any form for this link. The folks at newsy sent it to me and I thought you might find it interesting.

More updates over the weekend and, of course, my final projections on Monday night. And, as always, I'll be live-blogging on Tuesday as the results unfold.

Another Note: Some of you have commented on how I have not provided updated graphs on President Obama's approval in quite some time. This has been in order to prioritize content related to the upcoming election. I will provide a full update in a week or so, once we've had a chance to get through the mid-terms and digest the results. For now, suffice it to say that the President's numbers haven't moved a ton...his disapproves still exceed his approves but not by a huge margin.

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8 Days and Counting With No Major Changes, What the Gamblers Say, Poll Selection 101, On Macroeconomics, Just for Fun Predictions

Projection Totals
Senate: 50+ Democratic Caucus (48 Dems, 2 Ind, VP Tie-Breaker), 50 Republicans
House: 231 Republicans, 204 Democrats




Several new polls in the past 72 hours but not a lot of new news to report. My House projection got closer, with generic polling data tightening slightly, leading to a 3 seat swing to the DEMs, but still solidly a projection for GOP control.

In the Senate, only 2 race rating changes and they are both pretty minor and technical. Ohio fell behind my magic (and arbitrary) 20 point threshold again and slips back to a "Likely Hold" versus a "Safe Hold" for the GOP, but at this point, 19 points is pretty much out of reach. Missouri also slips slightly below a threshold, with the current 9.9 point GOP lead moving it back into the "Lean" column versus the "Likely" column, but this is still a long shot for the Dems to flip this seat.

I thought rather than my normal comparison to other major political sites (our friends at electoral-vote.com, electionprojection.com and realclearpolitics.com), I'd take a break and bring back in the gambling money.

For frequent readers, you will know that intrade.com is the website that lets you bet on anything, including politics, in a stock-market style format. Gamblers tend to follow the polls pretty closely and are often pretty good at predicting election outcomes, although, I would argue based on the record of this site over the past 2 years, not nearly as good as a statistical study of poling data.

At any rate, here are intrade's odds on our closest races (all calculated based on the ratio of the contract price of one candidate to another)

California: DEM favored 3:1
Washington: DEM favored 5:2
Alaska: GOP favored 2:1 (vs. all others)
Colorado: GOP favored 3:2
Nevada: GOP favored 2:1
Pennsylvania: GOP favored 3:1
Illinois: GOP Favored 2:1
West Virginia: GOP Favored 4:3
Kentucky: GOP favored 6:1
Wisconsin: GOP favored 6:1

So, the gamblers pick the same winners as our projection, but not necessarily but the same order in terms of odds. I find a few of the odds a little surprising (how can Kentucky have the same odds as Wisconsin?), but generally not that surprising.

Why I Don't Use Partisan Polls
You may notice that in several races, my projections differ pretty significantly from those of other sites. This is partly due to the use of multiple methods of weighting and averaging, versus many sites that simply use a "most recent poll" or a simple average of recent polls. However, one issue that is pretty fundamental is the use of partisan-affiliated polls.

I do not use polls from partisan-affiliated firms such as Public Policy Polling in my averages. My reason is simple...if you are paid by or affiliated with a party or candidate, I cannot presume objectivity in your polling methodology.

In the West Virginia race in particular, there is a Public Policy Polling poll that shows Gov. Manchin leading by a whopping 10 points, whereas non-partisan polls all show him trailing by small margins. Now, it could well prove out that PPP is right and all the other polls are wrong. But PPP is a Democratic-affiliated firm, so I can't trust the sample selection and weighting, especially so close to an election.

Macroeconomic Issues
A fair criticism of my analysis of GDP growth versus parties in power (and one that I owned up to in my long list of caveats on the limits of such an analysis) is the impact of macroeconomic events far beyond the control of government on economic growth.

In that spirit, I'll commit to doing a similar analysis on three statistics that are directly in the control of government: taxes, spending and deficits. Results this weekend.

Some Just for Fun Predictions
None of these will happen (I hope), but just to have some fun in the current political environment, imagine what could happen:
(1) Alvin Greene wins the South Carolina Senate race with 76% of the vote, despite polling 30+ points behind immediately before election day. Greene attributes his wins to grass roots campaigning and then goes on to admit that he doesn't know what grass roots are or what a campaign is. Diebold swears by the unfailing accuracy of its voting machines.

(2) Christine O'Donnell pulls off a surprise upset in Delaware and immediately declares that she is, in fact, a witch and cast a spell on voters entering the booth to vote for her. She commits to making the cause of her life over the next 6 years Witch and Warlock rights.

(3) Marco Rubio wins big in Florida on Tuesday and announces Presidential exploratory committee on Wednesday. Sarah Palin criticizes his lack of experience.

(4) Harry Reid loses to Sharron Angle and declares that he will spend time with family and work on important social issues such as "breaking down barriers for negros".

(5) Rand Paul wins in Kentucky and declares that he really meant all the crazy stuff he said during the campaign (okay, this one probably will happen!)

More updates later in the week.
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Some Statistical Analysis of Parties in Power

Due to my endorsement of Republican Jon Runyan in my home House district (NJ-3), I was recently quoted on the site westanddivided.blogspot.com, a site dedicated to promoting the notion of divided government, a split in control between Congress and the White House. The site's author is supporting Republicans in the mid-terms, since we know the Democrats will control the White House for the next 2 years, but anticipates, presuming the GOP victory projected on this site and elsewhere, that he will be supporting President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012 in order to maintain divided government.

There is certainly some anecdotal evidence to support the notion that divided government works. The time period from 1995-2000 perhaps best illustrates this trend, as that period was typified by strong economic growth and a balanced federal budget while Congress was mostly controlled by the GOP and President Clinton was in office. Many would also site the period from 1983-1989, when Democrats controlled Congress and Ronald Reagan was in office, which saw a similar strong economic uptrend (although without the balanced budget, in that case.)

All of this got me to wondering...is there a statistical correlation between divided government and economic growth. So, I decided to run the numbers. I chose the last 60 years as my time window and looked at GDP growth figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Before sharing the results, let me provide a lot of caveats and potential criticisms of this methodology:
(1) GDP Growth is a Trailing Indicator of Policy
It could be argued that economic growth in the present is not as driven by the economic activities of the present as it is by the policies of the past. For instance, it would be hard to blame President Obama for the onset of the "great recession" (you could argue whether his policies have helped or hurt the recovery, but that is another discussion), but certainly his Presidency has born the brunt of the economic contraction associated with this recession. So the potential lag between power and policy and between policy and economic result will no doubt make this analysis imperfect.

(2) All Republicans and Democrats are Not Equal
John F. Kennedy cut top bracket taxes. Richard Nixon instituted price controls. Bill Clinton reduced welfare benefits. George W. Bush vastly expanded Medicare benefits and spending. I could go on and on. The point is that being a Republican or Democrat is not entirely indicative of economic policy or philosophy, so any statistical analysis that treats Republicans and Democrats as a group ignores the vast difference in policies of Republicans and Democrats over time.

You could also certainly argue that the parties have evolved over time, with Republicans having a strong deficit reduction focus prior to Ronald Reagan and more of a low tax / supply side philosophy from Reagan on. Likewise, Democrats have evolved to favor a more progressive tax system from approximately Jimmy Carter on, whereas support for such a system was less consistent before then.

This poses some problem with looking at the effect of one party versus another, but has less of an effect on the analysis of whether divided or unified government works better.

(3) GDP Can Be a Mirage
You could certainly argue that growth in the 2000s, built on the back of leverage and the housing bubble was unsustainable, so giving "credit" for that growth in a statistical analysis might seem incorrect. Similarly, the stock market bubble of the late 90s artificially inflated growth.

So you could argue whether GDP is the ideal metric to measure this sort of thing on, but I struggled to come up with a better metric.

(4) The Time Window is Arbitrary
I chose the last 60 years because it is after World War 2, which was a unique historical event that might severely distort the analysis and because it approximately represents the modern political era and parties. But this choice is arbitrary and a different time window might yield different results.

(5) Correlation Does Not Indicate Causation
Murders and ice cream consumption can statistically correlated in every major American city. Does that mean that ice cream causes murder? Of course not. Murders peak in the summer, when more people are outside coming in contact with each other. Ice Cream consumption peaks in the summer because of the heat. The heat causes both effects, which causes them to be correlated.

What does this have to do with this analysis? It means that just because one party controlling a particular body of government correlates to stronger or weaker growth does not mean that one party controlling a particular body of government CAUSES stronger or weaker growth. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

(6) Past Results Do Not Project Future Performance
Things change. Even if there is an ironclad correlation, it may or may not continue to be true in the future.

Having caveated all that, let me share with you the results of my statistical analysis.
First, let's look at the overall average economic growth based on control of individual institutions:
Average GDP Growth by House Control:
Republican -- 3.3%
Democrat -- 3.1%

Average GDP Growth by Senate Control:
Republican -- 3.2%
Democrat -- 3.1%

Average GDP Growth by Presidential Control:
Republican -- 2.6%
Democrat -- 4.0%

So, you can see...Democratic President's tend to do a LOT better than Republicans in terms of economic growth, and Republican control of each individual body of Congress tends to do modestly better than Democratic control of those bodies.

In terms of unified government (defined here as one party having control of both Houses and the Presidency) versus divided government (defined as all other combinations), we see:
Average Growth - Divided -- 2.8%
Average Growth - Unified -- 3.7%

But since we've already established that Democratic Presidents have higher average growth than Republicans, so we need to tease out that effect. If we break these scenarios apart by party control of the Presidency, we get:
Democratic President -- Unified -- 4.1%
Democratic President -- Divided -- 3.8%
Republican President -- Unified -- 2.7%
Republican President -- Divided -- 2.6%

So, interestingly, if anything, divided government slightly depresses economic growth rates versus unified government, regardless of which party is in office.

So why does the initial analysis show that Republican control of the House and Senate produces slightly higher growth if Democratic Presidents produce higher growth and unified government is better? Simply because we've HAD divided government more often than not with Democratic Presidents than we've had unified GOP governments, which means that Republican Houses and Senates have been associated far more often with Democratic Presidents than with Republican ones. So, basically, the GOP House and Senate gets a halo from the statistical effect known as co-linearity.

Conclusions:
* Statistically, Democratic Presidents have a much stronger record on economic growth than Republican Presidents in the past 60 years. The difference is statistically significant, but explains only 12% of the year-to-year variation in economic growth.
* Unified governments slightly outperform divided governments, but the difference is not statistically significant.

Bottom line: On GDP growth, the evidence runs against divided government being a benefit over the past 60 years, but the statistics aren't strong enough to form a definitive conclusion. Macro events appear to have a much larger impact than what party is in control of what body of government. This is probably not a compelling enough case to convince anyone (myself included) to switch his or her vote.

Disagree with my conclusions? Have some different statistics worth looking at? Let me know.

Photo Finish in the Senate But Not In The House, NPR's Foolish Decision

It's going to be a crazy finish to a campaign season that has a mere 11 days left in it:




So, at the moment, the projection is an evenly split Senate, with 50 votes caucusing with the Dems and 50 with the GOP, which, given that Joe Biden is constitutionally the President of the Senate, makes for the slimmest of Democratic majorities.

But let's look at how many close races there are:
Let's first grant as a given that any race that has a 20%+ spread at this point is completely out of reach for the other party. Let's also grant that races that have 10-20% spreads are extremely unlikely to shift.

This leaves us 11 races that are within 10 points.
A Democratic sweep of all of those races yields a 1 seat loss for the Dems and a 1 seat Independent pick-up, with a continuation of a 56/41/3 Senate, with a 58-42 working majority for the Dems. Pretty unlikely, it would seem, but not impossible.
A Republican sweep of all of those races yields an 11 seat gain for the GOP or a 52/46/2 GOP majority. Not as unlikely, as you'll see below.

Let's say you think the 5%+ races are out of reach and let's just look at the races that are very close to toss-ups:
A Democratic sweep of those races yields a net gain of 2 for the GOP and a gain of 1 Independent and therefore a 54/43/3 Senate with a 56-44 working majority for the Dems.
A GOP sweep of those races yields a net gain of 11 seats or the same 52/46/2 GOP majority (52-48 working majority) as the 10 point scenario (since there are no races where the Dem is favored by between 5 and 10 points)

So, at this point, I think the likely range of possibilities is that the Democrats will control between 48 and 56 working seats after November, a very large range for so close to the election because of the broad number of races that are exceptionally close.

My Current Projection: 48 D/50 R/2 I (50+D/50R)
realclearpolitics (no toss-ups): 49 D/49 R/2 I (51D/49R)
electoral-vote: 48 D/49 R/ 2 I / 1 Toss-Up (50-51D/49-50R)
electionprojection: 49 D / 49 R / 2 I (51D/49R)

So, all close, but all projecting a Democratic-controlled Senate at this point.

In the House, my current generic polling average of averages has GOP at +8.5%. The range of my averaging methods puts the GOP lead at between 7.4% and 9.0%.

My current projection: 234 Republicans, 201 Democrats
realclearpolitics (splitting toss-ups): 236 Republicans, 199 Democrats
electoral-vote (splitting toss-ups): 218 Republicans, 217 Democrats
electionprojection: 234 Republicans, 201 Democrats

It has always been my theory that generic polling gives a far better view of the macro shift in the House than trying to cobble together the few and far-between polls in individual congressional districts. We'll see if that ultimately proves true, but it is interesting to note how close my projection is to sites that are doing that detailed analysis. Electoral Vote appears to be a Democratic dream scenario. I don't see how they can hold the House, barring a big move in the next week. There is one outlier Newsweek poll that actually shows them with a 3 point lead, but unless it is supported by some other polls, it is just that, an outlier.

Juan Williams Fired for Saying What Many Are Thinking
In case you haven't actually seen the quote that got Juan Williams fired from NPR (from an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News):
"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot, you know, the kind of books I've written about the Civil Rights Movement and this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Let me state the obvious: that it is not right to assume that someone is a terrorist because they dress in Muslim garb. Let me also state what should be another blindingly obvious fact: if you have flown in the past decade and been on a plane with a group of people who were obviously Muslim, you more than likely got at least a little bit nervous. It isn't logical (the overwhelming majority of Muslims aren't terrorists) and it isn't fair (those Muslims didn't do anything to be branded terrorists), but it's also basic human nature. We should fight that nature and not let those feelings influence our actions. But is admitting to those feelings and talking about them really a fireable offense for a network that claims to want to spawn intelligent political dialogue?

NPR has ever right to fire Juan Williams...heck, journalists have been fired for a lot worse reasons than this. But SHOULD they have? Absolutely not.

How can we ever overcome Eric Holder's statement about being "basically, a nation of cowards" on race if we can't even have a dialogue? Holder's words ring more and more true every time I think about them. What a shame that we are a country that doesn't talk about tough issues.

Mid-Week Short Update, Bloopers and Blunders

Brief Election Update
I'm not expecting a lot of big shifts when I do my next full publication of numbers. Polling this week is tracking fairly close to my projection from the weekend:
Most of the close races are holding to form (no big movement from my last post) -- California, Washington, Kentucky, West Virginia and Wisconsin all seem to be holding to form, although California and Washington may be getting a little tighter.

Alaska continues to fascinate, with a new poll showing write-in Murkowski dead even with GOP nominee Joe Miller. Conventional wisdom would still favor a Miller victory, but given the high level of publicity around this one, it's not completely outside the realm of possibility for Murkowski to pull off a second-in-history write-in Senate campaign. For you history buffs, the only successful write-in Senate candidacy was Strom Thurmond in South Carolina in the 1940s, which, a friend of mine from South Carolina likes to point out, proves once and for all that a majority of South Carolinians CAN, in fact, write.

Pennsylvania is suddenly back on my radar, with a couple of new polls showing Joe Sestak with a surprising sudden lead, albeit a very marginal one. This race had looked dead for the Dems until recently. A GOP Senate without a Toomey win is almost unimaginable. The math just doesn't work.

How Can So Many Politicians Be So Dumb?
This year has been an outright gaffe-fest on both sides of the aisle. Some of my favorites:
Democrat Dick Blumenthal in Connecticut claiming he served in Vietnam, when it was an easily verifiable fact that he did not.

Republican Christine O'Donnell not knowing what the First Amendment said was a real hoot. Not knowing with the 14th Amendment was was almost as funny.

Democrat Harry Reid's quote about President Obama "having no negro dialect" would be a riot if it weren't so sad.

Republican Rand Paul's "I support but oppose" the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the best libertarian dance routine I've seen in a while.

Republican Sharron Angle's support of prohibition is great...especially for a candidate from a state whose entire population is in Reno and Las Vegas.

And that's before you get into the House and look at the candidates that dress up as Nazis. Oh what a year.