2010 Senate

With Tuesday night’s upset by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the GOP gained more than just a 41st vote to disrupt the Obama agenda. As attention turns to the midterm elections in November, the Republican Party has strong momentum. A few months ago, even GOP leaders said that taking over the Senate was a pipe dream, and it is still not probable. But as some independents sour on the Democratic Party, the possibility for a GOP majority can no longer be dismissed out of hand. More likely, next year’s Senate will still have a Democratic majority but be much more closely balanced between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, it is likely that the Republicans will gain at least 3 to 5 Senate seats in November. Even more startling, in the aftermath of the Massachusetts special election, Republicans would do even better IF the general election were being held today. The Crystal Ball projects that the Democratic majority in the Senate would be reduced to just 52 seats if November’s contests were somehow moved to January. Luckily for the Democrats, the election is not today. By November the economy may be in much better shape, and some of the current controversies

As the most recent Crystal Ball ratings showed, Democrats are benefiting from the equal split of Senate seats up in 2010. Even though Democrats have a large majority of senators, it just so happens that both Democrats and Republicans are defending 19 seats each in the upcoming midterm election, which makes it exceedingly difficult for the GOP to gain enough seats to capture the Senate. However, the balance shifts dramatically in 2012 and 2014, when Democrats have 24 and 20 seats on the ballot to the GOP’s 9 and 13 seats. The chart below is a list of the seats on the ballot in 2012 and 2014. Clearly, Democrats will need a strong performance by President Obama in his 2012 reelection race if they are to avoid losing seats. Moreover, if there’s a second Obama presidential term, the “sixth year itch” in 2014 could be a doozy. When one combines both 2012 and 2014, Democrats will have to defend 44 Senate berths, while Republicans will be much freer to roam the landscape on offense, having only half as many seats (22) to worry about.

Editor’s Note: Senior columnist Alan Abramowitz is concerned about the Senate from a progressive prospective. He has offered this commentary, with which liberals will surely agree and conservatives will beg to differ. A few months ago, many progressive Democrats were elated when Al Franken was finally declared the winner of the disputed Senate seat from Minnesota. Franken’s victory supposedly gave Democrats a “filibuster-proof” 60 vote majority so Republicans would no longer be able to block progressive legislation or extract major concessions in exchange for their support. But the progressives’ joy was short-lived. Despite the largest Democratic majority in decades, the Senate still has not passed a health care reform bill and it is not clear when, or even if, it will. If the Senate does pass a bill it will almost certainly provide less generous benefits than the one passed by the House of Representatives. Climate change legislation, which passed the House months ago, remains stalled in the upper chamber. And only a handful of President Obama’s judicial nominees have been confirmed. The Senate remains without question the greatest obstacle to the Obama Administration’s domestic policy agenda and the hopes of progressives for changing the nation’s priorities. The main problem,

Now that we’ve put the 2009 races to bed, we can start to focus heavily on 2010. Since our last update in June (available here), some critical Senate contests have undergone a transformation of sorts. We still don’t know the status of them all, since a few critical candidacy decisions remain to be made. But overall, the picture is getting clearer for the 36 Senate contests to be decided in 2010 (38 if you add the Massachusetts special to be held in January and the Texas special that might be held in May). Let’s stress this from the outset: Democrats will almost certainly retain control of the Senate. Some bloggers aside, few of the top analysts on the Republican side question this conclusion. The GOP’s real hope is to cut the Democratic margin by a few seats, so that they can regain the power to stop legislation (assuming they stick together–a giant “if”). And this will be a significant development, should it happen. As we can already see, Senate Democrats can have difficulty passing major legislation even with 60 seats. There are some moderate Democrats who can easily defect, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Mary Landrieu

Follow Larry Sabato on Twitter. So much has happened recently in many of the 2010 Senate contests that you would think we were in the middle of the election year. We’re still seventeen months out from Election Day, yet the battles are turning white hot in many states. Let’s take a look at what has occurred in recent weeks in more than a dozen states featuring the big showdowns of ’10. For a comprehensive outlook on Senate 2010, please see our earlier three-part series (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). It is important to start with what hasn’t changed. Democrats are nearly certain to maintain control of the Senate at the midterm election. At worst for them, Democrats will lose a couple seats from their current 59-member majority (soon to be 60 with the probable addition of Minnesota’s Al Franken over the summer), and at best they’ll gain several seats to reclaim the kind of majority they last enjoyed in the early years of the Carter administration. Republicans who hope for another 1994-style landslide are dreaming, absent a massive downturn in popularity for President Obama. There are certainly Democrats in trouble: Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut is still weak,

Two weeks ago we discussed the basic framework for 2010’s thirty-six Senate elections. Last week we reviewed the seventeen Democratic Senate seats that are on the ballot in the midterm year. Now let’s see how the nineteen Republican-held seats for 2010 are shaping up in the initial stages: Robert Bennett (R-UT): Bennett should seek and win his fourth term unless he surprises us with a retirement announcement. And why would he? At 77, he’s a mere child in the senior reaches of the Senate–not to mention Utah, where clean living habits appear to yield long life. Young Turk Republicans are talking up a possible primary challenge to Bennett from David Leavitt, the brother of former Utah Governor Mike Leavitt (R), and state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is also ambitious–though he is likely to run only if Bennett doesn’t. Democrats have no one except Congressman Jim Matheson (D-UT), and it would be foolish for Matheson to give up his hard-won seat for a long-shot Senate bid. REPUBLICAN HOLD. Kit Bond (R-MO): OPEN SEAT. More bad news for Republicans: The retirement of Senator Bond after four Senate and two gubernatorial terms means that yet another GOP seat is open to a Democratic

Last week in the Crystal Ball, we looked at the historical background of off-year Senate elections and laid the groundwork for the earliest possible projection of the 36 contests on the ballot in 2010. This week we call the Senate roll among sitting Democrats to see who appears safe and who might be in trouble. Next week, in our final round-up, the Republican seats will be under the microscope. In many cases, since all candidates have not announced and the party nominees have not been chosen, it is impossible to do more than set the scene for an upcoming Senate battle. In other states, we already have a good idea about the likely match-up. And now, in alphabetical order and without a drum roll, here are the Democratic Senate players of 2010: Evan Bayh (D-IN): Indiana is never easy for a Democrat, but Bayh isn’t any old Democrat. His long record of electoral success in the Hoosier State gives him a big leg up. Barack Obama’s victory here in 2008 suggests that the state isn’t as Republican as many have thought. A few names are being lightly discussed, but the GOP apparently has no big names willing to take Bayh

It’s never too early for the Crystal Ball to look ahead to the next election. But unlike the Wizard of Oz’s phony orb (when he’s still the Kansas medicine man who peeks into Dorothy’s purse for photos of Auntie Em), we try to run an honest Ball. That means we have to tell you that the early outlook presented over the next couple of weeks will change often in the next two years, perhaps dramatically. There are so many things we cannot know. How will Barack Obama perform as president? How popular or unpopular will he be in two years? Will the economy respond to his prescribed treatment or, as is often the case, will it follow its own cantankerous path? Will the withdrawal from Iraq go well or not? Will we make progress in Afghanistan? Will terrorists strike again at home or abroad? Will other international events in the Middle East and elsewhere sidetrack Obama’s reforms? Will major scandals affect the Obama administration or Congress? Our darn crystal ball is cloudy just yet. We may have to take it into the shop. And then there’s the frustration of projecting congressional contests when we don’t even know the identities of