Brushing aside media hype that the GOP’s drive to win the Senate is hung up on close races in South Dakota or Alaska, noted elections expert Larry Sabato and his University of Virginia political team predict that the Republicans are poised for victory.
“It is indisputable that Republicans will have more critical victories to celebrate than Democrats when all the ballots are counted, and they have a strong and increasing chance to control the next Senate,” he said in his just released weekly “Crystal Ball” report.
While not venturing into how the Ebola crisis could impact the elections, Sabato has reworked his findings and put more states into the leaning Republican category, but noted that the GOP could still be one seat shy of winning an outright majority of 51, thus killing the “Biden majority.”
Still, Sabato and Kyle Kondik suggested that it might be GOP “payback” time for Obama’s 2012 reelection.
“While Democrats have the one-up bonus of just needing 50 seats for a Senate majority, Republicans have many more practical pathways to 51. We’ve compared it in a general way to 2012, when President Obama had many more ways to accumulate 270 electoral votes than did Mitt Romney. In the zero-sum game of politics, maybe it is payback time,” he wrote.
Key findings:
— Alaska has been moved to leaning Republican.
— Louisiana and Georgia have been moved into the runoff category.
— Kansas, where Republican Sen. Pat Roberts has been chasing independent Greg Orman, has been shifted from leans Orman to toss-up.
— South Dakota is Republican.
“Our projection remains a five-to-eight seat Republican gain in the Senate, and with less than three weeks to go, we would much rather be holding the cards Republicans have been dealt versus the ones dealt to the Democrats as both sides play for a Senate majority,” said the Crystal Ball.
“Despite the likelihood of two runoffs, it’s not impossible to imagine the GOP having a good enough night that they get to 51 seats without Georgia or Louisiana: That would mean holding all of their present seats (minus Georgia, at least on Election Day) and capturing (in order of least to most GOP difficulty) Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, Iowa, and Colorado. That would represent a great night for the GOP, and they have at least a decent chance in all seven races (North Carolina could be the eighth).”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
