Coming out of the 2008 election, the lineup of Senate seats up in 2010 seemed very favorable to the Democrats. With the announcements of the retirements (or likely retirements) of Senators Judd Gregg (NH), Christopher Bond (MO) and George Voinovich (OH) it looked even more favorable. All three of those states went for George W. Bush in 2000, but in 2008 Barack Obama won two of them and came within an eyelash of winning the third (MO).
But now as the political coffeepot percolates, the lineup is suddenly looking less unfavorable to Republicans. Yes, they’ve still got seven seats at high risk.
FL: Incumbent Mel Martinez, not a strong candidate, is retiring. Republican Governor Charlie Crist may run, and would be a very strong general election candidate. But former House Speaker Marco Rubio is already in the race and says he’ll stay in even if the not-very-conservative Crist runs. Aside from Crist, no potential candidate for either party shows special strength in a state where it’s hard to get name identification.
KY: Incumbent Jim Bunning almost lost in 2004 and looks very weak now, but the word is that he will retire. But Democrats recaptured the governorship in 2007, and certainly have a good chance in an open-seat Senate race.
LA: Senator David Vitter, thanks to his personal misconduct, looks a little shaky in a state which otherwise should be a lock for a Republican incumbent.
MO: Bond’s retirement leaves Democrat Robin Carnahan the favorite against the winner of the Republican primary, between former House Majority (and Minority) Whip Roy Blunt and former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman. Blunt’s years of Washington experience don’t really match the ideal candidate profile for 2010.
NH: Judd Gregg would hold this seat, but Democrats swept this state in 2006 and 2008. Still, a recent poll shows former Senator John Sununu a bit ahead of Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes.
NC: In polls Senator Richard Burr has trailed Attorney General Roy Cooper, who admirably cleared the Duke lacrosse team defendants. But it’s not clear whether Cooper will run.
OH: The most recent poll shows the two leading Democratic candidates, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fischer and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, ahead of former Congressman and OMB Director Rob Portman. None of these candidates is known in depth statewide. That’s seven Republican seats at risk, four in state carried by Barack Obama. But as I see it there are now eight Democratic seats at risk as well—though at the moment they seem a little safer on balance than the Republican seats.
AR: It’s not clear whether Senator Blanche Lincoln will have a serious opponent. But Arkansas was solidly Republican for president in 2008, and Lincoln was nervous enough to make it known publicly that she would no longer back the labor unions’ card check bill.
CO: Appointed Senator Michael Bennet has an impressive resume but little name identification and in a recent poll ran a little behind Republican challengers.
CT: Senator Christopher Dodd is in deep, deep and deserved trouble.
DE: A recent poll shows Congressman-at-Large Mike Castle leading Attorney General Beau Biden by a wide margin. It’s not clear that Castle will run, but he would have a lot more influence as a Republican in the Senate than in the House. Delawareans know their candidates very well, and both candidates are well-liked, but evidently one trumps the other, as Governor Tom Carper did against veteran Senator Bill Roth in 2000.
IL: Senator Roland Burris but still has some potential to survive a multicandidate primary with an electorate that may be 25% or even 30% black. Even if he doesn’t, Republican Congressman Mark Kirk seems to have serious prospects of winning a general election.
NV: Harry Reid’s job approval has been low, and fast-growing Nevada produces a lot of new voters every six years who don’t know much—or much positive—about him. However, Democrats did a great job of registering new voters here in 2008 and it’s not clear Reid will have a serious opponent.
NY: Recent polls suggest former Governor George Pataki might be competitive against appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
PA: As I wrote yesterday, Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic party doesn’t make him a shoo-in. Tom Ridge would clearly be competitive, and another Republican might be as well, against Specter or against a Democrat who beats him in the Democratic primary.
That’s eight Democratic seats that are in various degrees of jeopardy. Note that seven of them area in states carried by Barack Obama. Four (CO, DE, IL, NY) are in states where vacancies were caused by the victory of the Obama-Biden ticket or Obama’s Cabinet appointments.
As Nate Silver argues at fiftythirtyeight.com, there’s still more peril for Republicans than Democrats here. I disagree with some of his rankings of which seats are most likely to shift parties, but he’s well within the ballpark.
One thing to keep in mind here: we’re not necessarily going to see replications of the 2008 presidential voting patterns in these states. Voters are splitting their tickets more frequently than they did in 2000 or 2004. In the 2008 election, 34 congressional districts that voted for Barack Obama elected Republican congressmen, while 49 districts that voted for John McCain elected Democratic congressmen. That’s a total of 83 districts, nearly one out of five in the House, that split their tickets.
In contrast, in the 2004 election, only 18 congressional districts that voted for John Kerry elected Republican congressmen, while 41 districts that voted for George W. Bush elected Democratic congressmen, a total of 60. The 2004 election came at what turned out to be near the end of a long period of pretty static voting behavior, so it’s not too surprising that voting for president and Congress converged. In the period we’ve been in since some time in 2005 or 2006, when voting behavior has been more volatile, it’s not too surprising that there are more split tickets.
There is one other factor that might work more strongly for Republicans than it is today, and that is the argument that you shouldn’t give all power to one party. The Specter switch plus the likely seating of Al Franken will give the Democrats at least a theoretical veto-proof majority of 60 votes in the Senate. Barack Obama will be asking voters to add to that, while Republicans will be asking them to subtract from it. The latter argument tends to test better in polls, though I should add that responses to theoretical or procedural questions are not always reliable guides to behavior. One of my longtime rules in politics is that all procedural arguments are insincere, including this one.
Anyway, bottom line: Lots of different and unusual things could happen in the 2010 Senate races.
