Monday, September 1, 2014

Ratings Update: September 1, 2014

Just in time for the Labor Day campaign season kickoff, here's some ratings changes:

Governorships:
  • Hawaii. On August 9, Gov. Neil Abercrombie earned the dubious honor of being the only governor in Hawaii history to lose renomination. It wasn't even close, either: state senator David Ige killed it by over 30 points. Regardless of whether Abercrombie had won or not, however, I'd still have switched this race to TOSS-UP because 2010 Republican nominee Duke Aiona's lead over both Gov. Abercrombie and Ige can't be ignored. In fact, it's only Hawaii's natural partisan lean that's stopping me from calling it leaning Republican.
  • Illinois. Incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn is trailing. Sometimes by narrow margins, sometimes by really wide ones, but definitely trailing. He's the Democratic governor most likely to lose his head in November, and probably the governor second-most likely to do so overall, behind Republican Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. LEANS REPUBLICAN
  • Michigan. Michigan moves back in line with its Great Lakes neighbor Wisconsin, as Gov. Rick Snyder maintains a small lead over former Rep. Mark Schauer. The lead is consistent--in only one poll has Rep. Schauer led, and that was well within the margin of error--but it's a small one. LEANS REPUBLICAN

In the Senate:
  • Colorado. The Rocky Mountain State is quickly approaching toss-up territory, as Democratic Sen. Mark Udall's lead over Rep. Cory Gardner has remained pretty consistently at barely positive values. With Rep. Gardner catching up in fundraising dollars (although still lagging behind), Colorado is shaping up to be one of the closest races this fall. Our average puts it at a dead 43.2-43.2 tie. TOSS-UP
  • The Kansas Senate Crapshoot. Both races in Kansas have become a real mess this year, more so than anyone would have predicted six months ago. In the gubernatorial race, House Minority Leader Paul Davis received a collective endorsement from 104 Republicans, many of them moderates in the state Senate. So far that race hasn't changed from its toss-up status, but it may affect the other major statewide race--the election to the Senate, where incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts barely beat off a primary challenge from Tea Party activist Milton R. Wolf last week. Polling suggests that while Sen. Roberts looks much the favorite to win, he's not as sure a winner as Republican candidates in open seats like South Dakota and Montana. The spanner in Sen. Roberts's works is likely independent candidate Greg Orman, who had a short-lived run in the 2008 Democratic primary for the same Senate seat. As a former Democrat, Orman should be a blessing for Sen. Roberts, but as it turns out he siphons votes off pretty much evenly from both Sen. Roberts and Democrat Chad Taylor. This race is now be LIKELY REPUBLICAN--Sen. Roberts should still win today, but there's plenty of time for Taylor to improve and catch up. That is, if Orman doesn't catch up first.
  • Kentucky. I said before that Illinois's gubernatorial leaned Republican simply because Gov. Quinn was trailing--sometimes by a lot, and sometimes by a little, but definitely trailing. The same goes for Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who trails Sen. Mitch McConnell by a small but consistent margin. And while in Illinois Gov. Quinn can hope to draw support from the state's large Democratic base, Sec. Grimes seems to have maxed out her base in the Bluegrass State. That edge could be decisive for Sen. McConnell, so this race now LEANS REPUBLICAN.
  • Montana. Once "likely Republican", I no longer have any qualms about calling this one SAFE REPUBLICAN. Appointed incumbent Sen. John Walsh's implosion from a plagiarism scandal has left Montana Democrats scrambling for the least-bad from a pool of color-me-unimpressed candidates. Because they still haven't been able to get popular former Gov. Brian Schweitzer to run, they've had to settle for state representative Amanda Curtis, a little-known Democrat without name recognition or personal popularity to compensate for the state's dislike of President Obama. Even the mightiest of screw-ups shouldn't give Republican Rep. Steve Daines a chance to lose.
UPDATE to the update: Kansas just became even messier. Or less messy, depending on how you think about it. It's less messy in that because Democrat Chad Taylor has dropped out, it's now just a two-way race between Democrat-turned-independent Greg Orman and incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. But it's messier in that Republicans' chances of keeping the seat in GOP hands have just dropped significantly due to the fact that Taylor was essentially spoiling Orman votes and not the other way around (unusual for an independent candidate). The only poll out for this particular matchup is a PPP survey from about two and a half weeks ago, which put Orman ahead of Sen. Roberts 43-33. (In the same survey, a Taylor-Roberts matchup put Sen. Roberts ahead 43-39.) It is, however, just one poll, and fundamentals like candidate quality (Sen. Roberts is a three-term incumbent senator while Orman's only political experience was a failed candidacy in 2008) and the state's partisan lean (Kansas's Cook PVI is R+12, 12th-highest in the nation) suggest that 1) this poll suffers from the fact that most people didn't expect an Orman-Roberts matchup to materialize and 2) with 2 months before Election Day, the polls should revert significantly back to the fundamentals. But with nothing else to go by, I'd put Sen. Roberts at no safer than Sen. McConnell is in Kentucky. LEANS REPUBLICAN

There is one more caveat here, though: Orman has not decided whether he'll caucus with the Republicans or the Democrats should he win. Sure, he's a former Democrat with positions relatively closely aligned with Chad Taylor's, but he hasn't committed yet (much like Sen. Angus King did before his victory in Maine in 2012). So it may turn out that Orman wins, but the composition of the Senate doesn't change at all. Currently our projected party balance will be predicated on his caucusing as a Democrat--keep in mind, of course, that if he doesn't, control of the Senate could easily flip. It's that tight.

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