I had a nice conversation with the president of the Dartmouth College Democrats the other day about our latest ratings.
Apparently he was pretty happy with them--I don't want to chalk it up
to partisan wishful thinking, but I feel that might be at least part of
the reason he's pretty optimistic about Democratic chances in
Mississippi. (By the way, that isn't something to be ashamed of--go ask
Nancy Pelosi what she thinks about the chances of a Democratic House
majority in 2014. I guarantee you that she won't scare away donors by
telling the truth.) While he's happy with our current predictions that
have Democrats just barely holding onto the Senate (at this time, we're
saying 50-50, with Vice President Joe Biden providing the tiebreaking
vote), he did question some of our other ratings that maybe weren't as
friendly to Democrats as he thought they should be.
As
a result, we think it's fair that we should address two of his
concerns, and maybe justify some of the ratings we maintained and
therefore didn't include in the last update (because who wants to hear
again about all 72 elections in a single post?). We're not changing any
of the ratings; this is just a brief recap of the ones that seemed
questionable to him.
