Cook's Last Forecast
Political Wire asked Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report for his latest forecast on Tuesday's elections.
With just over 72 hours to go before the polls close, it's very hard to imagine how the House majority does not turn over, it's a question of how big this thing will be. As the magnitude of the House wave began growing a month or so ago, and the prospect of a 20 or more seat gain became increasingly probable, I decided that no matter how big it got, I was not going to say or write a number bigger than 35. After a certain point, you aren't really counting or even estimating, you're pulling numbers out of the air. I didn't and don't see any point in that. Let's just say it's 20-35, but that the possibility of this getting bigger, is very real. I'm just not going to throw any higher numbers out.
House Republican incumbents and House Republican members running for Senate and Governor have everything going against them that all Repoublican candidates this year have, but they are also bearing the full brunt of the scandals as well. It doesn't seem to hurt any other type of GOP candidates as much as House members.
The Senate is a very different situation and there are some very strange things going on.
In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum is gone. While the margin in Ohio is not nearly as wide, it's very hard to see how Mike DeWine makes it back either.
The strange ones are Conrad Burns and Lincoln Chafee in Montana and Rhode Island, respectively. Both races are basically even, pretty remarkable considering how dismal their prospects looked just a couple weeks ago. While even is a bad place for a Republican to be going into Election Day in this kind of environment, both have some momentum at this point.
Conversely, George Allen and Jim Talent, are dead even as well, but with no momentum, and that is very, very dangerous under these circumstances. Talent/Republicans have a fabulous field organization in Missouri, if Talent pulls it out, it might be the ground game that does it, but this is very tough for both.
In Tennessee, while Democrats are boasting of a very strong African-American early voting program, this race really does appear to have slipped away from Democrats. Ijd be surprised to see Corker lose to Ford now.
In terms of Democratic-held seats, Cantwell and Stabenow in Washington and Michigan are done deals, Menendez has pretty fair lead in New Jersey, and will probably win with points to spare, but it's volatile enough that I am still holding back.
A lot of people thought we were crazy when about ten days or so we moved the Maryland open seat to Toss Up, I am very very comfortable with that move and most recent polling shows that it has narrowed up a great deal. Cardin is still up but not by a lot. Sometimes candidates and campaigns matter, and Steele has outperformed Cardin in both respects.
The bottom line is that it is more possible today than a couple weeks ago that Republicans could hold their losses to just four, or it could end up being the six that seemed more likely to many then. Seven seat gain seems pretty much out, but then again three isn't very likely either. Republicans would need a lot of breaks to keep losses to four, a 51-49 majority, but it is quite plausible. Some may be very close, but all but Missouri and Montana are east of the Mississippi River, which doesn't necesarily mean an early evening, but that the story lines of the evening will develop early.
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