The Run-Down: March 31, 2014

To start off, we're going to give basically the crash-course summary of this election, of who wants what to happen.

Thirty-six elections to the Senate will happen on November 4, 2014: 33 "class 2 Senate seats" as well as three special elections in Hawaii, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Currently, the Democrats have a majority in the Senate, with 53 Democratic senators as well as two independents in Vermont and Maine who are caucusing with the Democrats. Republicans, therefore, need to pick up six seats in order to capture the majority (in the event of a 50-50 split, Vice President Joe Biden would be able to cast a tie-breaking vote).

It's way easier than it sounds. The quirk of Senate elections is that if a senator is elected in a presidential election year, that senator's next election is guaranteed to be in a midterm year, and vice-versa. Midterm elections have historically been horrendous for the president's party: only twice since World War II (in 1998 and 2002) has the president's party gained seats in a midterm election. Even in a neutral or sort-of-okay year, we'd expect the Democrats to lose seats in the Senate. However, this year the Democrats' problem is much worse simply because they did so well six years ago, in 2008, when Senator Obama's popularity allowed him to win the presidential election and swept in a number of Democrats on his coat-tails. As a result of their stellar performance in 2008, not including the special election seats (which are safe for one party or the other, as described below) Democrats now must defend 21 seats, while Republicans only have 12 to defend. Even worse for the Democrats, the GOP seats this year consist of the safest ones that they were able to defend in 2008, while the Democratic seats include many marginal victories they won in competitive states like North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alaska.

It's definitely an ugly picture for Democrats this year. Of course, that was the story about 2012: 2006 was a wave year for Democrats who capitalized on George W. Bush's unpopularity, and Democrats were expected to lose seats in the face of anemic growth and pretty high unemployment. Nevertheless, the GOP was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating unelectable, right-wing candidates, allowing Democrats to actually gain two seats.

Here's all of the seats up this year, from most toss-up-y (that's a word now) to the safest for either party.

1. Louisiana, TOSS-UP. Mary Landrieu is the first of four "red-state Democrats", Democratic senators from states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. She and Republican front-runner Bill Cassidy, a congressman from Louisiana's 6th congressional district, are pretty much dead even according to our polling averages. Landrieu faces a net disapproval rating, in no small part due to Louisiana's distaste for the Affordable Care Act, which Landrieu voted for in 2009. However, she has a few pluses in her favor. First is a history of being a strong candidate: she has held her own in three very close elections in Louisiana in the past, thanks to Louisiana's unique "jungle primary" system, in which all candidates are listed on the same ballot and only the top two candidates advance to a runoff election if neither obtains a majority. Second is sterling name recognition: her brother Mitch is mayor of New Orleans and their father, Moon Landrieu, was mayor of New Orleans in the 1970s until he was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Carter. Finally, she is running as the lone Democrat in the election, while Rep. Cassidy faces competition for the Republican base in state representative Paul Hollis and retired air force colonel Rob Maness.
2. North Carolina, TOSS-UP. Kay Hagan is running neck-and-neck with her strongest Republican challenger, Speaker of the House Thom Tillis. Like Landrieu, Hagan's approval numbers are suffering due to the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act; unlike Landrieu, Hagan's 2008 victory was a major upset, defeating incumbent senator Elizabeth Dole by a comfortable eight-point margin. While Hagan seems to be treading water in the polls and in her approval ratings, Tillis by no means has his primary wrapped up: he faces candidates with conservative appeal, like Tea Party activist Greg Brannon and Baptist pastor Mark Harris. Meanwhile, even if Tillis wins his nomination, the North Carolina House of Representatives is almost as unpopular as Hagan is.
3. Alaska, TOSS-UP. Alaska's 2008 Senate election was a fluke; Republican incumbent Ted Stevens had been in the Senate since 1968 and probably would have won handily if he hadn't been convicted of seven felony counts a week before the election. Say what you like about Alaska, but they don't elect felons. Mark Begich won narrowly in 2008 in one of the closest elections that year, but six years later he has a record of being friendly to labor unions on which he can run. Meanwhile, the Republican primary is still a toss-up: both Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and former Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Daniel S. Sullivan are trailing Begich by about the same margins and are polling pretty much even with each other in the primary. Meanwhile, the wild card is 2010 loser Joe Miller, who defeated Lisa Murkowski in the primary and managed to lose to her write-in campaign in November. Were Miller to win the GOP nomination we'd look at changing this to a Leans Democrat, but for now we rate Begich's chances as only slightly better than Hagan's.
4. Georgia, TOSS-UP. This Republican-controlled seat is a toss-up because Saxby Chambliss's retirement has left no clear successor in the Republican Party. In particular, establishment Republicans are wary of pulling a Todd Akin and nominating someone like Rep. Paul Broun, who, despite sitting on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, denounced evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory as "lies straight from the pit of hell". Currently, they shouldn't be worrying too much--leading in the most recent polls is Georgia Ports Authority board member David Perdue, who so far has not denounced any scientifically-established facts as being from the pits of anywhere, hell or otherwise. Meanwhile, Democrats quickly coalesced around the candidacy of Points of Light CEO Michelle Nunn, who, while lacking in political experience, does have experience running a non-profit and might appeal to older Georgia Democrats who still cherish their memories of her father, beloved senator Sam Nunn.
5. Kentucky, TOSS-UP. Democrats couldn't help but keep their drool off Kentucky when Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announced she would be challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in July 2013. It doesn't help McConnell that he faces an insurgent from the right, the Tea Party-favored business Matt Bevin, in his primary. It also doesn't help that McConnell's approval rating in Kentucky is lower than Obama's--and the president lost Kentucky by more than 20 percentage points in 2012. Notable, accomplished election forecasters like Nate Silver and Larry Sabato have repeatedly dismissed the competitiveness of Kentucky; we feel that it's worth a closer look. Grimes has been leading in our polling average for several polls now; she's also receiving support from two well-known and popular Democrats in Kentucky politics. One is her father, Jerry Lundergan, once the chairman of the state Democratic Party; and two is former President Bill Clinton, who carried Kentucky in both of his elections. Still, McConnell has not been idling: he has amassed a much larger war chest than Grimes and should defeat Bevin easily in the primary. 
6. Arkansas, LEANS REPUBLICAN. Mark Pryor didn't have a Republican challenger in 2008; he took home almost 80% of the vote and carried every county (the other 20% voted for the Green Party). Six years later his state is another that heavily opposes his vote for the Affordable Care Act, which Republican front-runner Rep. Tom Cotton is capitalizing on. Cotton is leading in polls in a state that has become very unfriendly to Democrats over the last 10 years or so. Depending on the economy and the effects of the Affordable Care Act, we could see either a repeat of 2010 or the closest election of the year.
7. Michigan, LEANS DEMOCRAT. Retiring Sen. Carl Levin won over 60% of the vote in 2008: the state still is fundamentally a Democratic one (as most of the Great Lakes states are). In addition, Democrats have settled on Rep. Gary Peters as their nominee. However, the GOP has also settled on its candidate, Terri Lynn Land, who was elected Secretary of State at the same time that Michiganders elected Democrat Jennifer Granholm to the governor's mansion. In addition, Land has raised slightly more money than Peters has, while Peters continues to lead slightly in our polling averages.
8. Iowa, LEANS DEMOCRAT. Iowa is similar to Georgia this year in that Democrats have settled on a very solid candidate while Republicans are still scrambling to figure out who theirs is. Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley is pretty much settled in as the nominee to succeed retiring Sen. Tom Harkin. Meanwhile, former Reliant Energy CEO Mark Jacobs appears to be leading the GOP pack, but he has not polled anywhere near the 35% required to avoid a convention nomination. Braley currently leads all Republican candidates in the polls.
9. Colorado, LIKELY DEMOCRAT. Colorado has taken quite a turn for the Democratic in the past few election cycles; liberal governor John Hickenlooper is doing very well in polls as well. Sen. Mark Udall is likely to face Rep. Cory Gardner in November, but Udall leads in polls and has demonstrated better fundraising capabilities.
10. Montana, LIKELY REPUBLICAN. Picture Arkansas, only much worse because the Democrats lack an incumbency advantage. That's Montana, where Sen. Max Baucus was set to retire in 2015 before President Obama appointed him ambassador to China. In Baucus's place Gov. Steve Bullock nominated Lt. Gov. John Walsh to the Senate, in an obviously political move designed to give the nominee apparent more Senate creds. (Baucus has never been to China and does not speak a word of Mandarin. This, unfortunately, is nothing new for Obama's ambassadorial appointees.) Meanwhile, Republicans have a solid candidate in Rep. Steve Daines. The two polls out show Daines with a substantial advantage.
11. West Virginia, LIKELY REPUBLICAN. Another red state that Democrats really have no business representing in the age of Obama. Democrats held onto this seat for as long as they did only because of Sen. Jay Rockefeller's conservatism and popularity within his state. Republicans have a strong candidate in Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. Democrats have also settled on their candidate, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, but the state, while largely Democratic, votes overwhelmingly Republican at the federal level. 
12. South Dakota, LIKELY REPUBLICAN. Popular former Gov. Mike Rounds is the favorite to win the Republican nomination and the election in November. You know you're in bad shape when the best you can come up with to replace retiring Sen. Tim Johnson is a former advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Rick Weiland. It's no surprise that Rounds led by 20 points in the last poll.
13. Minnesota, LIKELY DEMOCRAT. You'd think that this would be one of the more vulnerable Democratic seats, seeing as Sen. Al Franken won it in the closest Senate election in recent memory. Franken knows this, too, which is why he spent 2012 supporting fellow Democrats in the Senate and has been reaping the rewards of those favors in fundraising this year. Minnesota Republicans don't really have a strong candidate here--or even a front-runner yet.
14. New Hampshire, LIKELY DEMOCRAT. Sorry, Scott Brown fans. Actually, we were originally very set against listing the former Massachusetts senator as the Republican front-runner--if anything, we felt that his move to New Hampshire was preparation for a 2016 presidential run--but once Brown started defending himself against accusations of carpetbagging, we felt we had to put him here. Incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is an experienced politician with a long history in New Hampshire politics, leads Brown comfortably, and can all too easily pull out the carpetbagger attack if it comes to that.
15. Hawaii, SAFE DEMOCRAT. This is the longest of the long shots here for Republicans--there's a lot of vitriol in the Democratic primary between the late Sen. Daniel Inouye's chosen successor, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, and the senator that Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed, Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz. Former member of the Hawaii House of Representatives Campbell Cavasso gets a free pass through the Republican primary, but he really only has a chance of the Democratic primary gets really vicious and expensive. We might bump it up to Likely Democrat at that point.
16. Mississippi, SAFE REPUBLICAN. Mississippi is the Democrats' equivalent of Hawaii--former Rep. Travis Childers has a shot at this if--and this is a gigantic Leviathan of an if--Tea Party favorite state Sen. Chris McDaniels manages to knock off incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in the primary. It's possible--Cochran has not seen a competitive election since he won the seat in 1978. But it's probably not happening.
17. Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia, SAFE DEMOCRAT. For all the talk of former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie taking on Sen. Mark Warner in Virginia, we really do have better things to talk about. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia thinks that it's because Virginians became fond of the "hack versus the partisan" narrative established in 2013's gubernatorial election, in which the hack won. It doesn't work so well here since Mark Warner hardly counts as a partisan, at least not to the degree that Ken Cuccinelli did last year. Personally, I suspect it's because Roanoke College is short on polling funds this time of year and can only afford to poll in Virginia.
18. Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma class 3 special election, South Carolina, South Carolina class 3 special election, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming,  SAFE REPUBLICAN. If Democrats manage to win any of these elections, they won't have to worry about winning any of the other ones. A victory in any of these deep-red states (or, in the case of Maine, a victory against a very popular moderate incumbent) would be indicative of a massive Democratic wave in a midterm election year.