Senate Forecast - January 17 update

by: Matt

Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 20:34:19 PM EST

Senate Forecast: 58.1 (-1.9), down from 59.3 (-0.7) (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).

Also, we are not including MA in the numbers and charts. If we lose on Tuesday, we'll adjust the baseline.

A lot of the damage came from ND, but NV and AR aren't looking pretty either. Only good news came from CT, with Dodd's retirement. Will it take more retirements to improve the Democrat's chances in November?

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.