Election Forecasts 2010: Senate

I will be, over the next several days and weeks, producing my own forecasts for the new makeup of the U.S. Senate. I will admit, I rely on my own research and instincts for different races, but I also rely on Nate Silver's calculations over at Fivethirtyeight.com, polling calculations provided by Real Clear Politics, and other varied sources. I AM NOT a statistician, nor a polling professional, but I do have a reasonably astute understanding of the political environment. Eventually I'll be attaching maps of these races.

There are 37 seats up for election; only 15 to 20 are considered to be "in play". The Republicans need to win a minimum of 9 seats of those 15 or so in order to win control of the Senate, and this is if Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) from CT decides to caucus with the Republicans (unlikely). Therefore to be reasonably assured of Senate control, Republicans should make sure at least 10 seats are in their column. At this time, there is not evidence to support that case.

At this time there are only 9 seats that I would consider to be competitive, they are as follows: WA, CA, NV, CO, IL, WI, WV, FL, CT. If you don't live in these states, sorry, the election's pretty much been closed out. Only one of these seats, Florida, is currently a Republican-held seat.

That means that the remainder of the seats are relatively safe. Given this assumption, Republicans will almost certainly win (overturn) 4 Democratic seats in the Senate; ND, AR, PA, and IN. So it is almost certain that our baseline makeup of the Senate is 47 Democrats and 44 Republicans. This means that there will not be less than 47 Democrats or less than 44 Republicans.

According to my understanding of the races, it is likely that WA, CA, and CT will go to the Democrats. It is also likely that CO, WI, and FL will go to the Republicans. That brings our (reasonably confident) baseline to 50D to 47R.

That leaves 3 races that are too close to call: WV, IL, and NV. I think one way or another they'll probably break 2-1 for the R's. That leaves us with a forecast of 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans. This is within the consensus of most political analysts. It should be noted though that my own forecast carries a swing of three seats. I think it's possible that the Senate could end up like this: 53D to 47R, or like this: 50D to 50R.

The good news for the Democrats in this is that it is highly UNLIKELY that Republicans will manage to retake the Senate. Even if there is a tie, VP Joe Biden can cast a tie-breaking vote. The bad news for Democrats is that if they had trouble getting things accomplished with 59 seats, they'll certainly find themselves in gridlock with only 51 seats. Couple that with the significant possibility that Republicans DO take over the House, and you can expect our government to come to a screeching halt this January.  

I'll have a closer look at some of these races in the future, particularly the 9 races I've focused on for this post.