Senate Forecast - October 3

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

Senate Forecast: 57.0, a big jump of 0.5 from the previous forecast. The first 5: VA, NM, CO, AK, NH look good. Here's NH, which has been closing, but has stabalized, with Shaheen still in the lead:


NC and OR are now pure tossups. And the big news, of course, is in KY, which is now competitive.

The Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2009 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast. Feel free to subtract one if you so desire!) A history of the Forecast going back to November 2006 is at bottom and in the left sidebar.

Be sure to also check out our Presidential Forecast and our House Forecast.

The following seats are unanimous strong and are not shown in the table below (We do show VA as it is a pickup):

Solid Democrat: AR (Pryor), DE (Biden), IA (Harkin). IL (Durbin), MA (Kerry), MI (Levin), MT (Baucus), RI (Reed), SD (Johnson), WV (Rockefeller)
Solid Republican: AL (Sessions), ID (Open), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), OK (Inhofe), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), TX (Cornyn), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi). (Note that 2 projections have Cornyn at RL. If that continues, we will add the seat to the chart).

DemConWatch Senate Forecast
State	Current	EV .com	Open Left	Roth	538 .com	Crystal Ball	CQ	Cook	SSP	....
Date		10/3.	10/3.	9/29.	9/28.	10/2.	9/26.	10/2.	9/28.
Dem-Strong		14	13	13	15	13	13	12	13
Dem-Lean		1	4	5	2	4	4	3	4
Tossup		7	2	1	2	2	2	6	2
Rep-Lean		1	5	3	2	4	3	2	2
Rep-Strong		12	11	13	14	12	13	12	14
Dem '08 Projection		18.5	18.2	18.1	18.0	18.0	17.8	17.8	17.6
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Dem Senate Projection		57.5	57.2	57.1	57.0	57.0	56.8	56.8	56.6
Dem-Gain		6.5	6.2	6.1	6.0	6.0	5.8	5.8	5.6
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	52
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	DL	D	D	D	D	D	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	DL	D	53
LA (Landrieu)	D	D	D	DL	D	DL	DL	DL	DL
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	D	DL	DL	T	DL	54
AK (Stevens)	R	T	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	55
NH (Sununu)	R	T	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	T	DL	56
NC (Dole)	R	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	57
OR (Smith)	R	T	T	DL	T	T	RL	T	T	58
MS (Wicker)	R	T	RL	RL	R	RL	T	T	RL	59
MN (Coleman)	R	T	RL	RL	RL	RL	RL	T	RL	60
KY (McConnell)	R	T	RL	RL	RL	RL	R	RL	R	61
ME (Collins)	R	R	R	R	R	RL	RL	RL	R	62
GA (Chambliss)	R	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R	63

Click for Notes and Graph

Here are the seats that span 3 categories: CO, KY, OR, MS,

The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected solid for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean, 0.5 seats for a a Tossup, 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean, and obviously 0 seats for a solid Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.