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Democrats seem to be losing the battle for enthusiasm
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
09/25/09 1:28 PM EDT
There’s a pretty good story in the Washington Post on how Democratic fundraising has plummeted this year. Reporter Paul Kane in his lead paragraph ascribes this to “complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers.” Kane points out that individual contributions to the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee are down 40% as compared to this point in the 2007-08 cycle.
| Democratic candidates | pres. % | poll % | Candidates |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 63-36 | 44-41 | Kirsten Gillibrand-George Pataki |
| California | 61-37 | 49-39 | Barbara Boxer-Carly Fiorina |
| Connecticut | 61-38 | 39-49 | Christopher Dodd-Rob Simmons |
| Nevada | 55-43 | 43-50 | Harry Reid-Danny Tarkanian |
| Colorado | 54-45 | 36-45 | Michael Bennet-Jane Norton |
| Republican held Seats | |||
| New Hampshire | 54-45 | 38-46 | Kelly Ayotte-Paul Hodes |
| Iowa | 54-44 | 30-56 | Bob Krause-Charles Grassley |
| Ohio | 51-47 | 40-41 | Lee Fisher-Rob Portman |
| Missouri | 49-49 | 46-46 | Robin Carnahan-Roy Blunt |
The only state where the Democrat has a clear lead is California; the other four Democratic-held seats would appear to be in varying degrees of jeopardy. Two of the four Republican-held seats also appear to be in jeopardy, but none of them appears to be in as much jeopardy as Dodd or Reid (no one has thought that Grassley would be in trouble in any case).
The picture you get from these numbers is quite different from the one you get from Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com website, which lists the Missouri and New Hampshire seats as the two most likely to change party, followed by Connecticut, Nevada and Ohio, and which doesn’t include New York as one of the 15 most likely to change party.
During the 2008 cycle Silver used an ingenious method of updating his list of which states were most likely to vote for Obama or McCain, with impressive results; he doesn’t seem to be doing that, at least at this point in the cycle, for Senate races. Perhaps Silver is simply waiting until there are more poll results for each of the Senate races, which might well be sensible given his methodology; but he might want to revisit his rankings some time soon.
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