Asymmetrical Information

Sometimes it pays to goo_gle just so that you don't look like a fool.

44 Democrats plus 57 Republicans would equal 101 Senators, Jane. There are only 100 Senators total, two per state.

There are 44 Democrats and 55 Republicans and one independent in the body (Jeffords).

Democrats need to win six seats plus Jeffords' seat to take control of the chamber because Vice President Cheney sits as President of the Senate, ex-officio.

BTW: goo_gle is a restricted word on Jane's comments page.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation, but seems to me like the Democrats don't have to get a majority in the Senate. They just need seven reliable bodies in addition to the 44 they already have to keep Frist from using the nuclear option. Snowe and Chafee they already have, so they would need five out of the other seven.

It's more complicated than that. The Senate can invoke the nuclear option with 50 bodies (plus Cheney). They currently have 48. But three of the seven Republicans in the "Group of Fourteen" that signed the filibuster deal a few weeks ago have signalled that they'll basically go nuclear if the Dems try to filibuster on ideology.

Snowe and Chafee are probably the two most likely to vote against a filibuster. But the Dems have their own problem children from conservative states, who may have to bust the filibuster. Supreme court justices aren't like lower court appointments; a filibuster will be noticed by a lot of voters, and angry voters may force those senators to defect. My understanding is that there are more Dinos than Rinos in the Senate.

I don't think it is at all safe to say that Virginia won't send a Democrat to the senate until we know if Mark Warner is running or not. Recent polls have shown him to be running either slightly ahead or slightly behind Allen, with Allen's approval numbers quite low. I don't think Montana is a lock either, considering Conrad Burns is not popular, was given a good run by a then unknown and the Montan Democratic party seems to be revitalized. On the whole, I agree that the Democrats won't take the senate, but I do see opportunity for them to make modest gains.

Pennsylvania... Santorum (R) might be in real trouble. PA went for Kerry with 51% of the vote and Santorum won with only 53% of the vote last time. Now, Santorum does have incumbent's advantage... but this is one that has a real shot of going away.

Florida - Bill Nelson (D) has incumbent's advantage, but he was the new guy when he got elected so that advantage is minimized when you look at the fact that Florida voted for Bush with 52% of the vote in 2004. I'd say that this seat has as much as shot of going away as Santorum's does.

Missouri is where it gets interesting. "That Dead Guy's Wife" (D) is not likely to win this time around. MO went for Bush with 53% of the vote in 2004 and there were some really weird circumstances in 2000... I'm seeing this seat switching for sure.

Nebraska is also interesting. Ben Nelson (D) won as a new guy with 51% of the vote... but Nebraska went 66% for Bush in 2004. On top of that, Nebraska is the state in which that judge just recently overthrew a State Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. This is a state where the argument about the importance of Senators willing to vote on Bush's nominees is likely to resound a bit more than elsewhere in the country. I don't see this guy keeping his seat.

Washington is kind of interesting insofar as their senator (D) won as a new guy with only 49% of the vote (never a good sign). Washington state went for Kerry with 53% of the vote, so that's in her favor... but the governor's election came down to a kabillion little recounts and the governor position was won by a truly dinky margin. Given that it's an off-year election, the Republicans may have a bit of an advantage and they may still be fired up after that battle over the governor seat. This is nowhere near a safe seat.

All that to say...

The Republicans are picking up two Senate spots for sure (Missouri and Nebraska). They have a shot at Florida and a much longer shot at Washington.

The Democrats, however, only seem to have one shot at picking up a Senate spot. Santorum's seat in Pennsylvania.

It seems to me that the most likely outcome is the Republicans picking up Missouri and Nebraska (assuming nothing really strange happens between now and then... awful assumption, I know).

If there is a real shake up, the Republicans could get Missouri, Nebraska, and Florida and the Democrats could pick up Pennsylvania.

I agree with the general sense that a Democratic majority is all but impossible, but I take issue with the specific inclusion of Montana in the same category with all the others. Burns is a weak incumbent who nearly lost in 2000 to now-Governor Schweitzer. The state has a much larger union tradition than other western states and one of the few well-organized and relevant Democratic Parties. They have strong statewide officials competing to take on Burns, who has grown into the type of obnoxious, arrogant bloated plutocrat that makes Washington look bad. John Kerry couldn't come close to winning a statewide election on Montana, but local Democrats have done very well, even for federal races.

Especially since ousting Snowe and Chafee--the Republicans in the most heavily Democratic states--gains you almost nothing, politically speaking.

Not true. They've been reliable votes for nearly all of Bush's nominees to the bench with a few trivial exceptions and lots of worthless public angst. Not that it matters, because Snowe will not be defeated and Chafee has a good if not overwhelming chance to stay.

For the Democrats to pick up a net of three seats would be enough of a victory to change the winds in Washington and make Bush seem like a lame duck. I don't know if it will happen, but it would be a huge leap forward for the Democrats without changing the majority, just as the 2004 elections were a huge leap to the right for the Senate despite the Republicans' holding a majority (with Zell Miller as the 52nd Republican in all but name) before the election.

Although you appear to project a steady decline to irrelevance for Senate Democrats, I see potential for much bigger changes one way or another as the Bush era matures and then passes. Senate elections will not be copies of the 2004 electoral college map for the next decade's worth of elections.

Missouri already has two Republican senators, Bond and Talent. Talent beat Jean Carnahan in a special election in 2002, after she was appointed to fill the first two years of the term her late husband won in 2000. Governor Mel Carnahan was in a tight race against John Ashcroft in the weeks leading up to the 2000 election, and was killed in a small plane crash on the way to a campaign stop. Talent is already building a sizeable war chest, and has a pretty good resume for an abbreviated first term senator. The Democrat bench in MO is also pretty short. The Dems will need more than luck to win this seat.

Whoops, you're absolutely right, Mailman.

I was working off of a chart of election winners in 2000.

Minnesota's seat has a very good chance of going to a fairly conservative Republican. The days of Minnesota being a reliably safe place for Democrats are long gone, on all but the Presidential level, and even that level is shifting somewhat.

Bush made Kerry fight hard to win Minnesota, and had he picked a little more than 100,000 votes, it would have been interesting to see how much national attention Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty would have garnered. A midwestern governor who can simulteaneously appeal to social conservatives, and suburban voters without strong party affiliation, is an electoral nightmare for Democrats on the Presidential level. If Pawlenty has a very strong performance in his '06 re-election bid, I still wouldn't totally count him out as a player in '08, for the VP slot if nothing else. A Democratic candidate who has to fight to the death to keep Minnesota, and likely Wisconsin (central-western Wisconsin's population is growing rapidly with people who use to live, and still work, in the Twin Cities) has very little chance to get 270 electoral votes.

Will, didn't Minnesota Republicans get shellacked in state races last year? 16 Republicans lost their seats in the House, and even Kennedy had a close race against Patty Wetterling in the most Republican district in the state.

Yeah, Brittain, they gave back some gains, but the Minnesota legislature is still split about 50-50. It really is an evenly split state. Kennedy beat Wetterling 54%-46%, and Wetterling had extremely high name recognition for somebody running for the first time. Dayton decided to not run because he knew he'd likely get his head handed to him, since he had amply displayed his idiocy in his first term.

The seat is really up for grabs, but the Republicans might have a slight edge given it looks as if the Democrats are more likely to beat themselves up in the primary.

The seat is really up for grabs, but the Republicans might have a slight edge given it looks as if the Democrats are more likely to beat themselves up in the primary.

The reason I have a hard time accepting that is because Democrats counted on this dynamic saving us in Senate races in Florida, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, and it didn't make a difference. Oklahoma and S.C. are both substantially more Republican than Minnesota is Democratic, but those battered Republican nominees went on to win by landslide wins when the battering should have made the final results narrower.

The Democratic candidate will make the senate race a referendum on George W. Bush and the Republican administration because Mark Kennedy has identified himself so strongly with them over the last five years and would be going to the Senate to make them stronger and more conservative. This dynamic has benefited Republicans in other states; I am willing to bet that Minnesota leans Democratic enough that the dynamic will help any competent Democratic candidate for Senate in 2006.

Well, Brittain, if Democrats attempt to nationalize the race, they best be very, very, careful in doing so,and not get too closely associated with interest groups,like MoveOn, which are critical to fundraising for Democrats. The reason why Kerry had to fight so hard to carry Minnesota was in large part due to those interest groups' harming the Democrats on national security issues. Yes, there are many with reservations regarding the war in Iraq (and nobody knows what the situation will be in 15 months), but that doesn't mean that they will vote for a nominee who is seen as being closely associated with the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party.

Actually, this is just a repeat of the Democrats' conumdrum; they are financially beholden to interest groups which have little credibility on national security, which means they start out so far behind with white men, and have to fight so hard to retain married white women, that winning elections becomes very difficult. Sure, a very talented campaigner reduces the difficulty greatly, but one can't count on that, and even then it ain't easy. Few are as talented as Bill Clinton, but even he needed a window of opportunity in which national security had receded in importance in the minds of a large part of the electorate.

The reason why Kerry had to fight so hard to carry Minnesota was in large part due to those interest groups' harming the Democrats on national security issues.

Whatever the national reasons, in the end Kerry won Minnesota with 51% to Bush's 48%, making the state three points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. By way of comparison: states that voted three points more Republican than the nation as a whole include Arizona, Arkansas, and Virginia, but NOT Missouri, Florida, Colorado, or Nevada, which were not that strongly Republican.

Since 2000, Bush picked up only one point while Kerry improved three points over Gore, which shows that whatever the issues were in 2004 vs. 2000, they played differently in Minnesota than they did in the country as a whole and in red states (most of which swung more heavily Bush) in particular.

I think that the destructive influence of allying with the villainous MoveOn.org gets overplayed by conservatives on the Internet, who are much more attuned to their ideological opponents than normal voters are, but YMMV. Maybe you're right. On the other hand, if I'd offered advice following the '96 and '98 elections for Republicans to insult their Christian right supporters and ditch them lest they lose elections, I'd have been fully justified by past elections and proven wrong by subsequent events. And the Christian right is a group with much higher name ID than Move On!

Brittain I don't understand this paragragh:

"Since 2000, Bush picked up only one point while Kerry improved three points over Gore, which shows that whatever the issues were in 2004 vs. 2000, they played differently in Minnesota than they did in the country as a whole and in red states (most of which swung more heavily Bush) in particular."

As to the Christian Right and MoveON, associating with the Christian right does not automatically harm your chances with the electorate's largest demographic. I'm not a Republican; I have nearly as little affinity for the George Bush's domestic agenda as I did for John Kerry's or Al Gore's. However, because the Democrats' nominee is almost forced to adopt a nearly McGovernite stance on national security issues (look at how disdainfully Lieberman is viewed within his own party), the Democrats have very little chance to gain my vote. Yeah, I'm more politically attuned than most in my demographic, but there is a visceral distrust of Democrats on national security among the majority of white males, and perhaps a near majority of married white females, and if you're not trusted on national security, all other issues fade in importance. I sincerely wish the Democrats would change this dynamic.

Jaybird,

I think its ludicrous to state that the GOP will be pick up the Nebraska seat for sure. If anything, Nelson is at least a slight favorite to win at this moment. While it is true that the state went for Bush bigtime, he won't be on the ballot. Anyway, Nelson has thrived on running ahead of the nation Democratic party. It's not like his a novice pol who won a freak election. He won two terms as governor and so far, one as senator. The last time he ran for gov., he won by landslide in 94, when the GOP won just about everything in sight.In 2000, he won, despite the fact that Bush trouned Gore in NE. Also, he's already beaten his most likely GOP opponent (Don Stenberg) and there's no indication that Stenberg has gotten any stronger as a candidate. Nelson, on the other hand, is now an incumbent, unlike the last time these two faced off. I wouldn't count this as a definite GOP pick up.

It'll be interesting, Eamon, to see how much Nelson is influenced to run away from the national Democratic Party in the upcoming Supreme Court Wars, in order to avoid giving his challenger an avenue of attack.

Will, I think he already has. He's generally opposed Democratic filibusters on judges and supported Bush's picks. He doesn't make a big deal about it or attack Harry Reid, but he doesn't vote with the Democrats. The Democratic leadership shrugs its shoulders and lets him do it because, well, Nebraska.

"Even before we consider incumbent advantage, it is safe to say that ... Montana... [is] not going to send Democrats to the United States Senate."

Really? There's already one Democratic Senator from Montana, and Montana moved towards the Democrats in 2004 in terms of state offices. Larry Sabato, for example, does not exactly count current Republican Senator Burns as a shoo-in: [http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/2006/senate/?state=MT]

"Republican Senator Conrad Burns had a close call in 2000 while seeking his third term. Democrat Brian Schweitzer almost defeated him, but Schweitzer is now governor of Montana and not running. Yes, there are some able lower statewide officeholders who could challenge Burns, but this time Burns is taking nothing for granted. At least initially, we give him the edge."

Will,

To a large extent, I think Nelson already has run away from the national party. He voted for most of Bush's judges and only supported the filibuster of one judicial nominee. Wasn't he a member of the group the brokered the filibuster deal?

Especially since ousting Snowe and Chafee--the Republicans in the most heavily Democratic states--gains you almost nothing, politically speaking.

Except that gaining control of the Senate is an enormous gain, politically speaking (you know, little things like selecting committee chairs, etc.). Any seat the Dems pick up matters.

As far as Maria Cantwell's seat up here in Washington goes, the Republican near-winner in the governor's race, Dino Rossi, has ruled out a Senate run, so Cantwell's chances to hold her seat are probably pretty strong.

Mark, as regards regaining the Senate, as I said before, the numbers just ain't there. And while of course it would be great for Dems to do so, it wouldn't help them on judges, since they can't bottle a Supreme Court nomination up in committee.

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