Senate Race Roundup

With positive numbers for Obama all over the country, Democrats are hoping the love will help candidates for other offices down the ticket, particularly in Senate races. The Dems have a simple majority in the Senate with 51 senators in their column IF Joe Lieberman votes (as he often does) with them. Should the Dems pick up ten or even nine seats, they would have enough votes to be able to block any potential filibustering. Below are 15 key Senate races with polling numbers from the RealClearPolitics agreggator. (States in blue are potential Dem pickups. States in light blue are possible, but unlikely pickups.)

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  Virginia: Highly regarded Republican Senator John Warner decided to retire last year leaving the opening for Democrats, who won the other Senate seat with Jim Webb's populist message. The extremely popular former governor, Democrat Mark Warner, leads here by 27 points over the other former governor, Jim Gilmore.
• New Mexico: Tom Udall, the Democratic running for the open U.S Senate seat in New Mexico, leads here by nearly 18 points, and will probably continue to show strongly especially given the release of a powerful new ad featuring Army Sergeant Erik Schei, who was gravely injured by in Iraq and is now forced to communicate through a speaking aid.
• Alaska: We're all wondering if Ted Stevens, the incumbent Republican Senator, can seriously pull it off while under indictment on 7 felony charges. His opponent Mark Begich leads by 1.6 points.
  
• Colorado: If you're Republican, things are kinda bleak here. Democrat Mark Udall, a contender for a vacant Republican seat, leads his Republican opponent by 9.3 points. The National Republican Senatorial Committee just pulled their money out of the race for the Senate here.
• New Hampshire: Republican incumbent and former GHW Bush chief of staff John Sununu is fighting hard in the Granite State against Democratic former Governor Jeanne Shaheen, the first woman elected to that office in NH, who leads by almost 6 points. The conservative and anti-abortion Sununu made a mark co-sponsoring energy and environment legislation and hoped to coast on McCain's coattails, but at the moment Obama leads by 9 points here.
  
• North Carolina: In 2002, Republican incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole (the 72-year old wife of Bob Dole) won handily. But in this year's election against Dem Kay Hagan, Dole has had to fight to gain any ground. Hagan, the niece of Florida Senator Lawton Chiles, is well funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and may be benefitting from Obama's recent rise in the polling here. Or maybe vice versa. Hagan leads in every poll by an average of 3 points.
  
• Oregon: Two-term Republican incumbent Gordon Smith is fighting a serious challenge from Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley which has only intensified following Smith's finessing of positions on the $700 billion bailout. Merkley leads here by nearly 4 points, despite Smith's attempts to link himself to Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama.
  
• Minnesota: Incumbent first-term Republican senator Norm Coleman is the formerly Democratic mayor of St. Paul, who left the Dem. Party in 1996 to join the GOP. He's up against Air America radio host Al Franken in one of this year's more high-profile races, and in a three-way race with the addition of Independent Dean Barkley. Franken leads Coleman by a narrow 2 points, which may increase after Sen. Hillary Clinton comes to Minnesota to campaign today.
• Kentucky: Despite some concenrs about blowback from the ousting of a scandal-ridden Republican governor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be capably defending his seat against the Democratic candidate Bruce Lunsford with a lead of 4 points.
  
• Georgia: The fabulously named Saxby Chambliss, the Republican incumbent who hopes to gain a second term has battled Obama's Democratic registration drive in what the Dems hoped might be a possible pickup state this year. Chambliss leads here by nearly 3 points, against a nearly unknown opponent although that's slim in a race that Chambliss was expected to dominate.
  
• Mississippi: Roger Wicker was the Republican choice to finish out the remaining four years of Trent Lott's Senate term, a seat he's been keeping warm since MS Governor Haley Barbour appointed him to fill it until the November election. In order to do so, though, Wicker had to vacate his House district seat which subsequently went Democratic in a surprise twist in the May special elections. Still, Wicker leads here by 2.7 points, and the Republican National Committee has said that it will continue to put money into supporting his campaign.
  
• Louisiana: Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu was a top target for the GOP this year, but with limited resources and time running out, Landrieu's 13 point lead caused the NRSC to pull its advertising dollars from the Louisiana Senate race.
• Maine: Moderate Republican incumbent Susan Collins will likely win her bid for a third term in her Senate seat, though it breaks her promise to only serve two terms. She leads here by 13 points.
  
• New Jersey: Democratic incumbent Frank Lautenberg's seat looks safe here, as his lead is well into the double digits with 12 points. The Republicans had hoped to take this seat with a popular moderate Anne Estabrook, but she suffered a minor stroke in March and was replaced by former Rep. Dick Zimmer.
  
• Nebraska: Republican former Governor Mike Johanns leads by a comfortable 14 points in this race to replace retiring Senator Chuck Hagel.
  

By the way, here are a few other non-critical races that the Democrats lead in, just for kicks:

• Joe Biden (Delaware) leads by 37 points
• John Kerry (Massachussetts) by 28 points
• Dick Durbin (Illinois) by 29 points
• Tom Harkin (Iowa) by 18 points
• Carl Levin (Michigan) by 25 points
• Max Baucus (Montana) by 33 points
• Jack Reed (Rhode Island) by 52 points
• Tim Johnson (South Dakota) by 25 points
• Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) by 28 points.

Republicans are feeling a crunch -- this isn't their year, and frankly if were in charge of this party (STOP LAUGHING, everyone) I'd tell them that they need to forget this year, save some money and start working NOW on a serious reassessment of their own labels and priorities. In case you missed it, a couple of weeks ago, Republican Rep. Tom Davis (who's quitting this year after seven terms serving the Virginia 11th District) was profiled in a fascinating NY Times Magazine piece, which detailed his frustrations with the governance system and with his own party. "The way Davis sees it, the system has become dysfunctional. Bush has so destroyed the party's public standing and Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. 'You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,' he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey's Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. 'That's what I feel when you say you're from Congress, because there are just so many things we're not doing.'"

Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states — Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey. InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery explained Obama's success in these areas is a result of his strength among independents and voters between the ages of 30 and 44. "That is the most angry group of voters that we have this year, with regard to the Republicans," Towery said. "I see that in almost every poll I look at." Angry? You don't say.

And congratulations COLORADO! McCain is now looking for ways to win the election without winning your state! (Unfortunately, you'll still have to sit though hundreds of his national attack ads and robo-calls, just like the rest of us...)