Senate Forecast - November 16 update

by: Matt

Mon Nov 16, 2009 at 10:18:41 AM EST

Senate Forecast: 59.3 (-0.7), down from 61.3 (+1.3) (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).

It won't surprise any readers here to see the forecast down significantly from our last update in August. It's been a slow and steady decline, as the bad polling news has continued to drip out all fall. The only question is will the forecast level off, as the individual rankings catch up to the latest polls? Or will the polls keep getting worse?

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.