Ratings Update: June 30, 2014

It's that time of the month again!

One in the Senate:

Louisiana. Sen. Mary Landrieu has literally for months now trailed in most polling; the only polls in which she ties or maintains narrow (i.e. within the margin of error) leads are those polls which do not filter for likely voters--and especially in midterm elections, those polls tend to skew toward Democratic candidates. On the average--which, admittedly, is dominated by one poll conducted twenty days ago (the others have been two months old or older)--she trails Rep. Bill Cassidy 44-49. As we saw in Mississippi, there's plenty that can turn around between an election and the runoff (which is almost a certainty in Louisiana this year), but Sen. Landrieu faces a much tougher climate than Sen. Cochran, an old Republican in a heavily Republican state, did. LEANS REPUBLICAN

Governorships:

Michigan. Previously this was LEANS REPUBLICAN, but I'm not seeing any signs of life from the campaign of former Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer, who has lagged significantly behind incumbent Gov. Rick Snyder in every poll since February. And that's all there really is to it. Now if only OpenSecrets.org would publish fundraising for gubernatorial races. It could change the rating here. Or it might not. LIKELY REPUBLICAN

Nevada. This was originalLy a LIKELY REPUBLICAN. Incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval was never in too much danger here, and he won renomination with 90% of the Republican vote. Meanwhile, there's very bad news for Democrats: in the primary, 2010 lieutenant governor loser Bob Goodman won the nomination with less than 25% of the vote. Nevada is unusual in that on every ballot it offers the option to elect "None of These Candidates"; Nevada Democrats were so disappointed with their range of choices that a 30% plurality voted for "None of These Candidates". Can Gov. Sandoval ask for anything better? SAFE REPUBLICAN

Oregon. Two polls showing a close race and the utter failure of the state healthcare exchange (so bad that even Healthcare.gov was an improvement over it) gave the impression in April that Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber was in a bit of trouble, which is why I labeled it LEANS DEMOCRAT at the time. No longer! More recent polling has put him up by double digits, and while the failure of Cover Oregon is by no means forgotten by Beaver State voters, it likely won't be the issue they vote on in November. LIKELY DEMOCRAT

Wisconsin. Unlike Rep. Schauer in Michigan, businesswoman Mary Burke, while suffering in polls early on, appears to have caught up pretty well in polling, and certainly much better than Rep. Schauer has done. Considering that Wisconsin is a state that performed a complete 180 in 2010 from Democratic control of the Senate, Assembly, and governorship to Republican control of all three, Burke is in fact doing better than previously expected, when we put the gubernatorial race at LIKELY REPUBLICAN. Of course, against Gov. Scott Walker, considered a leading Republican contender for the 2016 presidential election, we didn't expect her to do that well in the first place. LEANS REPUBLICAN 

EDIT: Originally I said Michigan was previously a TOSS-UP; in fact it was previously LEANS REPUBLICAN. The text has been edited to reflect that.