Senate Forecast - July 28 update

by: Matt

Tue Jul 28, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM EDT

Welcome to the latest edition of the 2010 DemConWatch Senate Forecast, a summary of the best Senate forecasts in an easy overview table.

Senate Forecast: 61.4 (+1.4), down from 61.7 (+1.7) (See the latest House Forecast here).

The Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2011 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast).

Lots of changes since our last forecast on May 7. While the overall forecast has gone down a bit from 61.7 to 61.4, that masks quite a bit of movement in both directions in the rankings. Harry Reid is still waiting for a serious contender in Nevada, and Ohio has also moved a tad more Democratic based on some recent polls.

But there's been more movement towards the GOP, starting with Florida, where Charlie Crist has turned what was a Tossup into an almost safe seat for the GOP. There was also movement towards the GOP in IL and CT. 

There are also some anomalies in the data.  CrystalBall has not updated since February, and their ratings in CO (T), PA (RL), CT (D) and FL (T) are all quite out of date. If they don't update their rankings, we'll remove or replace them in our next Forecast (although the overall numbers might just cancel out anyway). Also, if Mike Castle decides to run for Senate in Delaware, there will be major movement in the red direction. Finally, a recent Illinois poll of Alexi Giannoulias (D) vs Mark Kirk (R) is needed to figure out if this is a safe Democratic seat, a Tossup, or somewhere in between. (The last poll, from April, had it at 35%-35%.

The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected Solid/Likely (D)  for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean (DL), 0.5 seats for a a Tossup (T), 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean (RL), and obviously 0 seats for a solid/likely (R) Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.

The Senate seats are sorted by the likelihood of the seat being won by a Democrat, so the most solid Democratic seats are at top, the most solid Republican seats are at the bottom, and the Tossups are in the middle. Rankings are sorted with the most favorable to the Democrats on the left.