Senate and House Races to Watch

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
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Let's start with the Senate.

The RCP Senate page rates 11 senate races as toss-ups.

Arizona: Flake (R) vs. Carmona (D) This one looks like it will probably go to the Republican.
Connecticut: McMahon (R) vs. Murphy (D) This hardly looks like a tossup. Even Rasmussen has the Democrat up by 6.
Indiana: Mourdock (R) vs. Donnelly (D) There has been an 8 or 9 point shift in favor of Donnelly since Mourdock's comments about rape pregnancy being God's will. Rasmussen has Donnelly up by 3 and another poll has him up by 11. However, there seem to be a lot of undecideds, and Obama is not expected to win Indiana. I still give Donnelly the edge.
Massachusetts: Brown (R) vs. Warren (D) Warren seems to have the edge here.
Missouri: Akin (R) vs. McCaskill (D) McCaskill seems to have the edge here.
Montana: Rehberg (R) vs. Tester (D) Only 3 polls here and the average is a tie. This one really is a tossup as far as I can see. The most recent poll is a Rasmussen, which has Tester up by 1.
Nevada: Heller (R) vs. Berkley (D) Heller is the incumbent and most of the polls show him in the lead. SurveyUSA is a good polling firm and they have Heller up by 6 in the most recent poll, which has a large sample size.
North Dakota: Berg (R) vs. Heitkamp (D) Berg seems likely to win this one.
Ohio: Mandel (R) vs. Brown (D) Brown seems likely to win this one.
Virginia: Allen (R) vs. Kaine (D) This one also really does seem to be a tossup. Kaine leads by 0.8% in the RCP average.
Wisconsin: Thompson (R) vs. Baldwin (D) This is another one that can actually be called a tossup. Baldwin leads by 1.0% in the RCP average.

Of the 11, 5 seem likely to go to the Democrat, 3 seem likely to go to the Republican, and 3 are real tossups. That gives the Democrats 51 seats, the Republicans 46, and 3 that could go either way. Seems likely that Democrats will keep control of the Senate.



On the House side, the generic congressional preference doesn't show a strong preference for either party. Ken Rudin thinks that Republicans will retain control of the House.
He has a list of 50 House races to watch.
The ones that interest me the most:
FL 18 Patrick Murphy vs. ALLEN WEST
IL 08 Tammy Duckworth vs. JOE WALSH
MN 06 Jim Graves vs. MICHELE BACHMANN

The Allen West race seems very close. Polls are either tied or well within the margin of error.

Walsh seems to be in bigger trouble.
Walsh appears to be in the midst of an even more uphill battle. Of 500 likely voters in Illinois' 8th congressional district, 54 percent favored Democrat Tammy Duckworth, compared to 40 percent for Walsh, with a 4.4 percent margin of error. The Tea Party freshman turned heads in July when he accused Duckworth, a double-amputee Iraq War veteran, of not being a "true hero."
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As far as Bachmann's race goes, all signs seem to point to her victory. Not many polls, but she's been ahead in each one. She's obliterated her opponent in fundraising. And the district is strongly Republican. But, we can still hold out some hope. Here's a blog post I found on this race.
 
Any time press grudgingly suggests the GOP may make some gains, the Republicans will do better than is predicted. A statement? No, a prediction based on previous elections. File it away and see what happens in a few days.
 
Guess who endorsed Obama?
Linda McMahon Doorhanger: Vote For Obama … And Me

Connecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon has been telling voters lately that it’s okay to vote for President Obama as well as her. Now she’s taking it a step further — and getting about as far away from her own party’s nominee for president as she can — and actually urging voters to cast their ballots for Obama as well as in the final days of the campaign.

McMahon campaign doorhangers that Democrats say they’ve discovered in minority neighborhoods this weekend couldn’t make it more clear: “Vote Barack Obama For President and Vote Linda McMahon For Senate,” they read. It’s a surprising suggestion from a Republican who, along with her husband, has given $150,000 to help make Romney the next president of the United States.

The McMahon campaign says she’s still backing Romney.
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Interesting that they are only distributing these door hangers in minority neighborhoods. :|
Some kind of cynical campaign ploy methinks.

The RCP average of polls shows her 5 points behind her Democratic opponent.
 
Besides the presidential election, there are 2 races I'm interested in, for the purpose of keeping 2 of the most despicable, disgusting, putrid, slimy politicians I have ever seen out of the Senate.

1) Todd "Neanderthal" Akin
2) Elizabeth "Lie-awatha" Warren

Sherrod Brown is also a nasty piece of work.

Unfortunately, if things hold it looks like I'm gonna be 0-4.
 
What's the deal with Sherrod Brown?

ETA: Polls suggest that Akin probably won't win, so you'll probably be at least 1 for 3. Not sure who your fourth is.
 
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First, under the current situation, no party controls the Senate if they don't have 60 votes, thanks to the misuse of the filibuster.

Yahoo had an article predicting virtually no change in effective control of either house.
 
This is something I didn't know:

Tammy Baldwin Will Be America’s First Openly Gay Senator

Also looks Heitkamp pulled an upset in ND. :D
And the three I thought were tossups also probably went to the Dems, although there is still some counting to do in Montana.

So Democrats beat my expectations here, winning 9 of the 11 races that RCP considered tossups.

ETA:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/senate/big-board

The NYT shows that Berg was "expected to win narrowly", so that was an upset win for Democrats. They may end up actually increasing their lead in the Senate this year, which is surprising considering that they had to defend many more seats than Republicans.
 
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In the House it looks like Democrats probably gained a handful of seats, but Republicans retained their majority.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/house/big-board

No love in Utah for Mia Love it seems.

Allen West is probably gone in FL. He's behind with 100% reporting, although it's close so there may be a recount.

Michele Bachmann appears to have survived in a squeaker. Oh well.
 
Still waiting to hear on Giffords old seat being fought over by Barber and McSally. McSally had a small lead awhile ago. Really do not want to be represented by McSally.
 
Am I bad for cheering that Mia Love lost? Fox had nearly promoted her to Secretary of the Interior, they gave her so much coverage. Her insipid little face was on about three times a week, commenting on something that the mayor of Podunkville had no business commenting on.

Getting rid of Walsh and West was great because they are demagogues. Love will turn up again, I'm sure, but it's nice to see her beaten after they played her up as the New Hope of the GOP.
 
Beerina said:
Any time press grudgingly suggests the GOP may make some gains, the Republicans will do better than is predicted. A statement? No, a prediction based on previous elections. File it away and see what happens in a few days.
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I guess we can file this with the Dick Morris predictions.
 
Cain said:
Very pleased to see Warren win.
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I thought Brown was the "right" kind of Republican? Socially moderate, works across the aisle, etc.

Not referring to you specifically, just generally speaking, it seems like "moderates" will still find a reason to vote against this "right" type of Republican, even while they assure us that he is the type of candidate we need to be fielding.

NoahFence for example, stated a short time ago that he would be voting for Brown. Then, following the election, stated that he had cast his vote for Warren because of some committee position in the Senate that he didn't want to chance being filled by a Republican.
 
mikedenk said:
I thought Brown was the "right" kind of Republican? Socially moderate, works across the aisle, etc.
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I think many did think that. I know I did. I was wrong. He turned out to be just another nutter in the GOP tree.
 
mikedenk said:
NoahFence for example, stated a short time ago that he would be voting for Brown. Then, following the election, stated that he had cast his vote for Warren because of some committee position in the Senate that he didn't want to chance being filled by a Republican.
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I think I helped him with that decision by bringing Ted Cruz to his attention.

Daredelvis
 
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