Analysis of Next Week's Mid-Terms

It has been eight months since I last wrote about the Senate elections that will be held next week. Since then most of the news has been good for Republicans, they have made gains in about ten states and lost ground in just three. Considering they only need to gain six seats to take the Senate, this is a very good sign for them. The blog FiveThirtyEight, at the time of writing, predicts that the Republicans have a 64% chance of controlling the Senate, with the most likely scenario being one in which they control 52 seats to the Democrats 48. I will now review each close state and then make my updated prediction.

Kansas:

When I posted my Senate elections update in February I didn’t even mention Kansas, other than to put it into the “Safe Republican” column of my table. Incumbent Senator Pat Roberts only real worry was a primary from Tea Party challenger Milton Wolf. Roberts managed to survive the primary, but he came out severely damaged by revelations that he no longer owned a home in Kansas. This helped to promote an image of him being an out-of-touch member of the Washington elite.

You might expect the story to end there as Kansas is a very red state, the last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was in 1932! Roberts also had two serious challengers; Democrat Chad Taylor and an independent Greg Orman, who split the anti-Roberts vote. These two factors combined to offset his weakness and made it look likely that he was going to scrape to victory in the Sunflower State. Then came the bombshell that blew the race wide open, the Democrat Chad Taylor dropped out of the race and endorsed the independent! This meant that the anti-Roberts vote was no longer split between two candidates, seriously jeopardising Roberts’ chances! At the moment this race is probably the closest in the country, don’t be surprised if it ends up going to a recount.

Rating: Tossup

Iowa:

When I wrote about Iowa earlier this year I noted that the trend was positive for the Democrats. They had one candidate in the primary, Bruce Braley, compared to six candidates in the Republican primary. To make it even better, Braley was leading all candidates in the polls. With less than a week until the election this has changed completely. According to the HuffPost pollster average, Republican Joni Ernst is leading Braley 47% to 45.3%. I am genuinely shocked by this; Iowa is a purple state which would lead you to expect that extremes of right and left would not fare well in Iowa. However Ernst is a hardcore Tea Partier; she wants to abolish the IRS, the EPA and the Department of Education. She supports abolishing the federal minimum wage, and at least partially privatising Medicare. She also supports a personhood amendment which defines life as beginning at conception, effectively making all abortions illegal as well as some forms of hormonal birth control.

In a presidential election year she would probably lose, as the voters she turns off (women, ethnic minorities and young people) all turn out in larger numbers. My only explanation for how Ernst is doing so well is that the Republican vote is especially energised, whilst the independent and Democratic vote is depressed.

Rating Tossup

If all this was starting to get a bit much, have a break and watch this rather hilarious campaign ad from Joni Ernst.

Georgia

Back in February it was difficult to say how Georgia was going to play out due to the number of people running in both primaries, eight in the Republican and five in the Democratic. On the Republican side you have David Purdue, a businessman. On the Democratic side there is Michelle Nunn, the CEO of a charity, Points of Light, and the daughter of popular former Senator Sam Nunn. At the moment Nunn is doing surprisingly well in the Peach State, considering that it is a red state. Purdue is not helped by the relative unpopularity of Georgian Republicans. Governor Nathan Deal is trying to fend off a serious challenge from former President Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter. It has caused Republicans to have a completely split message, Purdue is telling Georgians that the economy is terrible and that you should blame Obama and the Democrats. Whilst in the other race Deal is telling Georgians that the economy is doing great and that he should get the credit. Not exactly a consistent message that will win over independents come Election Day.

Current rating: Tossup

Colorado

I previously rated Colorado as likely Democrat, and it looks like I could be totally wrong.  The main reason for this belief was that I thought Ken Buck would win the Republican primary. In 2010 Buck had failed to unseat a much weaker Democrat in more favourable conditions. However it was Cory Gardener who won the Republican primary, he immediately showed that he had learnt from Buck’s mistakes. Gardener has been a supporter of controversial personhood amendments, and is still a co-sponsor of a federal bill that would make the position the law. However he claims that he has changed his mind (70% of Colorado voters rejecting a personhood amendment in 2010 may have been very persuasive). In the summer he declared his support for over-the-counter contraceptives. He is hoping to close the gender gap, or at least not to provoke women into turning out to vote against him.

Interestingly there is a personhood amendment on the ballot again in Colorado, if Mark Udall can successfully tie Gardener to the amendment then he might be able to scrape a win on Election Day.

Current rating: Leans Republican

Cory Gardener has plenty of reasons to smile, he's winning
a race that many expected him to lose.
Source: www.thinkprogress.com

North Carolina

In a mid-term election year with a Democratic President, you might think that a Democratic Senator in a Republican leaning state would have little chance of success. Especially considering her poor approval ratings, in a poll released on the 20^th of October, 41% of voters approve of Senator Kay Hagan job against 50% who disapprove. However, conditions in North Carolina may mean that she holds onto her Senate seat.

In 2012 Pat McCrory won the governorship of North Carolina, this meant that for the first time in over a century, Republicans controlled both the governorship and the legislature. They used this opportunity to pursue a very right-wing agenda. This has not gone down well with North Carolinian voters, in the poll mentioned before the legislature boasted an approval rating of just 25%. It has not been difficult for Hagan to tie her Republican challenger, Thom Tillis, to the failures of state Republicans considering he is the Republican leader of the State House of Representatives.

Current Rating: Leans Democrat

Kentucky

Kentucky is one of two states which actually might exchange a Republican Senator for a Democratic one (remember Greg Orman in Kansas is an independent). Back in February Kentucky was possibly the closest race in the country, eight months later it has slowly drifted towards the Republican. Flipping Kentucky would be a massive coup for the Democrats, even if they lost control of the Senate, as the incumbent Republican, Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate!

Toppling Mitch McConnell has been made possible by his serious unpopularity in Kentucky. In recent years he has been the most unpopular Senator, with a majority of Kentuckians saying they disapproved of his performance. Luckily for the Democrats they secured a very strong candidate in Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Secretary of State for Kentucky.

However as we get closer to polling day it looks increasingly likely that Mitch McConnell will hang onto his Senate seat by a narrow margin. At one point the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (the committee tasked with getting more Democrats elected to the Senate) actually stopped running ads in Kentucky, although they reversed that decision a week ago.

Current Rating: Leans Republican

If you need another break, here is 2 minutes of Mitch McConnell released by his campaign. The first ten seconds are particularly hilarious, a smile just doesn't look right on Mitch.

Louisiana:

If the Republicans want to take back control of the Senate, then the really need to win Louisiana. If they lose Louisiana then they probably won’t control the Senate. Interestingly if Republicans are successful then this will be the first time they have won this seat since 1877! It will also be the first time they’ve held both of Louisiana’s Senate seats since 1872.

The incumbent Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, a committee that is essential to the economy of Louisiana thanks to the oil industry. If Landrieu wins and the Democrats lose control of the Senate then she would become the ranking member on the committee instead. This would mean that she is still extremely important, are Louisianians really going to give up Landrieu for someone who will have no influence over the Committee that has most relevance to their state? Probably.

At the moment it looks highly likely that the Republican challenger, Bill Cassidy, will beat Landrieu to become the next Senator from Louisiana.

Current Rating: Leans Republican

Arkansas:

The Natural State has become significantly more Republican since Mark Pryor first got elected in 2002. When he assumed office, Democrats still dominated Arkansas; they had both Senators, both State Houses, three of four of Arkansas’ US House Representatives. Only Governor Mike Huckabee was a Republican, and that changed in 2006 when Mike Beebe won the election. However the state has gotten consistently more hostile to Democrats in the past few years. In 2010 Pryor’s fellow Senator Blanche Lincoln was crushed by her Republican opponent, John Boozman, and the Republicans made gains in the State Houses and the US House. In 2012 Democrats lost control of both of the State Houses and their final US House Representative was defeated. Pryor is now the only Democrat representing Arkansas in Congress, in 2008 there was only one Republican.

Pryor was always going to face a tough re-election, even if he was the most conservative Senate Democrat in 2013, according to the American Conservative Union. It is looking very likely that Pryor will lose to Tom Cotton, current polls have Cotton up four points and FiveThirtyEight gives Cotton an 83% probability that he will win.

Current Rating: Leans Republican

Here's a campaign ad from Mark Pryor, if you couldn't tell that he was from a very conservative state with a lot of Evangelical Christians, you certainly can from this ad!

There is one more race I want to talk about that I think is interesting, but is not close (in my opinion); Alaska. To those of you paying attention to the mid-terms this year may be very confused by my Alaska rating. It has been constantly talked about as one of the closest races, either party could win. FiveThirtyEight currently has Alaska as the third closest race, and the HuffPost Pollster Average has Republican Dan Sullivan leading Democrat Mark Begich by 3.6%, not the widest margin. As well as that ballot initiatives on the minimum wage and marijuana legalisation will almost certainly drive up turnout amongst Democrats, in a way that may be hidden to pollsters. But it is the potential for a skew in the polls that has left me so certain that Democrats will lose this race. Alaska is notoriously hard to poll, in 2008 polls for the US House seat were off by an average of 12.5%! The polls have also been consistently skewed in favour of Democrats, this is true of every race since 2000. The average skew in favour of Democrats is 7.2%, which is an awful lot. This is why my rating for Alaska is likely Republican.

One of the really interesting things that could happen this November is the potential that we won’t know who controls the Senate the quite a while after Election Day. Three states have the potential to throw a spanner into the works: Kansas, Georgia and Louisiana.
In Georgia and Louisiana if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, then the top two candidates fight it out in a run-off. In Louisiana the run-off is almost certainly going to happen, the run-off will be held on the 6^th of December. The Georgia run-off is less likely but still has a good chance of happening. However Georgia’s run-off won’t happen until the 6^th of January, which is three days after Congress gets sworn in! This could mean we don’t know who controls the Senate in the next Congress until after Congress actually begins. The reason why Kansas could through a spanner into the works is that Orman has said that he could caucus with either party. If the Senate is split then this would mean that for the next two years Orman would probably be the most important person in American politics after President Obama. He has said that even if he decides to caucus with one Party, he could change his affiliation if he dislikes how that Party is running the Senate!

For the prediction on how each state will vote, plus what happens if the polls are skewed click here.