Here We Go

You may have noticed our 2010 Senate and House election projections on the lefthand sidebar over the past six months.  Given that the backswing of Da Pendulum was visible fully fifteen months ago, or not even five months into the Age of Hopenchange, it seemed the natural thing to do.  I [ahem] inaugurated the (homemade) sidebar widgets the day of the ObamaCare ramdown.  Starting with the traditional Labor Day fall campaign kickoff, I will be posting daily updates detailing the, um, details that underlie the scoreboard numbers when there's any change to report.

Now to methodology.

With the Senate scoreboard, I average for each race the polling of the most recent available seven day period.  That makes the numbers as near to "real-time" as possible.  A handicap of that would be that until the campaign's final days, there won't typically be enough polling of any particular race to provide a broad sample for averaging.  That isn't a problem for me, though, because I don't use or cite or even pay attention to Obamedia polling since I simply do not trust the source.  I want REAL numbers, not leftwingnut propaganda.

Rasmussen is my polling anchor.  Because he generates numbers I like?  No.  Because he uses a likely voter screen that produces the most accurate numbers in the polling business?  Yes.  Remember, Rasmussen called Obama's seven point victory margin over John McCain two years ago on the button, just as he did George W. Bush's three point win over John Kerry in '04.  State level races are inevitably a little more hit & miss, but Scott Rasmussen's methodology is the best there is.

I also include independent pollsters Mason-Dixon and Survey USA in the mix.  To date there hasn't been enough overlap for weighting to be practical.  If it does, I'll probably go 50-25-25, particularly in light of SurveyUSA's trend of late of producing GOP-skewed results that I don't want to get roped into liking too much.

For the House scoreboard I do NOT track every single race.  Yes, I'm a politics junkie, but I DO (blessedly) work for a living, and I DO need to sleep.  Plus not even RealClearPolitics is that ambitious, much less an evenings & weekends blogwarrior hack like myself.

Rather, I whipped up a spreadsheet back in March that lines up all 435 congressional districts and the margins of victory each Democrat enjoyed in 2008 (since Da Pendulum is swinging the GOP's way, I didn't need to bother with the margins of survival of their remnant).  I then took the aggregate Donk victory margin in all House races and computed the difference from the current Rasmussen generic congressional ballot poll, and deducted that difference from individual Democrat 2008 victory margins to see how many seats in the aggregate were likely to flip from "blue" to "red".  I also made allowances for Republican seats, like those of Senate candidates Mark Kirk of Illinois and Mike Castle of Delaware, that were being vacated and likely to be Donk pickups, and ones that were one-time and likely unrepeatable flukes (Charles Djou of Hawaii, Joseph Cao of Louisiana) - though if the Big Red Wave is big enough, they might yet survive.

The first results indicated a sixty-two seat Republican pickup.  The largest gain to date (equalled this week) has been sixty-seven, and the lowest I've seen since March has been fifty-three.  So suffice it to say, a GOP House next year isn't a question of if, but by how much.

Since I don't track individual House races, there's no such detail to report in daily posts, and they'll focus on the Senate races.

Now that the disclosures have been made and the foundation laid, let's get busy.

SAFE REPUBLICAN (GOP +10 or more)

ALABAMA: SHELBY 59%, Barnes 32% (hold)

ARIZONA: McCAIN 55%, Glassman 34 (hold)

ARKANSAS; Boozman 65%, LINCOLN 27% (pickup)

DELAWARE: Castle 49%, Coons 37% (pickup)

FLORIDA: Rubio 40%, Crist 30%, Meek 21% (hold)

GEORGIA: ISAKSON 57%, Thurmond 30% (hold)

IDAHO: CRAPO 63%, Sullivan 24% (hold)

INDIANA: Coats 50%, Ellsworth 29% (pickup)

IOWA: GRASSLEY 55%, Conlin 35% (hold)

KANSAS: Moran 61%, Johnston 28% (hold)

KENTUCKY: Paul 55%, Conway 40% (hold)

LOUISIANA: VITTER 54%, Meloncon 33% (hold)

MISSOURI: Blunt 54%, Carnahan 41% (hold)

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Ayotte 51%, Hodes 38% (hold)

NORTH DAKOTA: Hoeven 69%, Potter 22% (pickup)

OKLAHOMA: COBURN 67%, Rogers 24% (hold)

SOUTH CAROLINA: DeMINT 63%, Greene 19% (hold)

UTAH: Lee 58%, Granato 28% (hold)

LIKELY REPUBLICAN (GOP +5-10)

ALASKA: Miller 50%, McAdams 44% (hold)

NORTH CAROLINA: BURR 49%, Marshall 40% (hold)

OHIO: Portman 47%, Fisher 41% (hold)

PENNSYLVANIA: Toomey 48%, Sestak 42% (pickup)

LEANS REPUBLICAN (GOP +0-5)

COLORADO: Buck 49%, BENNET 45% (pickup)

WASHINGTON: Rossi 50%, MURRAY 47% (pickup)

WISCONSIN: Johnson 47%, FEINGOLD 46% (pickup)

LEANS DEMOCRAT (Donks +0-5)

CALIFORNIA: BOXER 47.5%, Fiorina 46% (hold)

ILLINOIS: Giannoulias 45%, Kirk 45% (hold - "tie goes to the champion" or "I don't do 'tossups'")

NEVADA: REID 47.5%, Angle 45.5% (hold)

LIKELY DEMOCRAT (Donks +5-9)

CONNECTICUT: Blumenthal 47%, McMahon 40% (hold)

WEST VIRGINIA: Manchin 48%, Raese 42% (hold)

SAFE DEMOCRAT (Donks +10 or more)

HAWAII: INOUYE (hold)

MARYLAND: MIKULSKI 58%, Wargotz 33% (hold)

NEW YORK: GILLIBRAND 50%, DeGuardi 33% (hold)

                     SCHUMER 63%, Townsend 26% (hold)

OREGON: WYDEN 56%, Huffman 36% (hold)

My "leaners" generally translate to everybody else's "tossups," and happen to split 50-50, which hasn't been the way close races have shaken out in recent cycles, much to our bitter chagrin.  If that trend continues in this go-'round (and really, it's almost owed to us), an eight-seat GOP gain falling two seats short of the majority would become an eleven-seat table run that would absolutely ruin Al Franken's next four years, assuming he bothered sticking around that long once the more-fun-than-a-barrel-of-Colemans majority gig became a, well, "job".

Between that and looking forward to the scowling, growling Chucky Schumer as Minority Leader, his smug SOB mode tucked away indefinitely, I don't know how I'd contain myself on Election Night.

But I hope I get to find out.