Unlikely Voter

The Washington Post found that among Registered Voters, Tim Kaine and George Allen are tied at 46 in the Virginia Senate race.

Virginia Virtucon’s Riley thinks that’s a bit misleading, though.

I’m happiest when all the polls in a race match up. It means we have a very good idea of how a race is going for the candidates in it.

So, naturally, I’m not happy about the Massachusetts Senate race right now. Seeing a 10 point swing from poll to poll, giving both candidates opposing 5 point leads, means we have to dig deeper to figure out what’s going on.

I’m glad that we’re now starting to have a better idea of the shape of the Senate race, as we settle down on who the candidates are going to be, and how they’re polling against incumbents (or each other, in the case of open seats). Soon I will update my Senate projections with actual data.

In the meantime, we’ve got the first Missouri Senate poll in two months. Sarah Steelman polls an absolute majority over incumbent Claire McCaskill.

I’m a proponent of applying mathematical principles to poll analysis because our intuition is often wrong. The human mind deals poorly with randomness.

However I don’t feel I need any math to conclude that Connie Mack IV runs better against Bill Nelson than do other Republicans in the Florida Senate race.

Senate polling comes and goes lately, and primary polling is even harder to get. Pollsters seem to get more attention when they make these premature Presidential general election matchups.

But we got some Maine Senate polling from PPP just in time to get wind of some possible machinations in that race. Could Democrats be clearing the way for independent Angus King?

Medal of Honor recipient, former Senator, and former Governor Bob Kerrey has announced he will run for Senate in Nebraska to replace Ben Nelson, the man who replaced him in the Senate. Common sense suggests a multiple-time statewide winner with a distinguished personal history would be a favorite to win the open seat.

New polling however suggests Kerrey is a large underdog to Republican Jon Bruning.

While everyone focused on Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in Ohio, a major Senate matchup was finalized in the state. Treasurer Josh Mandel was chosen as the Republican challenger to Senator Sherrod Brown.

Brown took advantage of a crippled Ohio GOP and a second midterm wave to knock off a two term incumbent. But can he keep this battleground state seat?

Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst wants to be the next Senator from Texas. All he should have to do is win the Republican primary. The last Democrats to represent Texas in each Senate class were Lloyd Bentsen and Lyndon Johnson.

It’s looking good for him too, but not as good as it could be.

It’s that time again, when we start looking at the Congressional elections of this cycle. The House is a mess to project thanks to redistricting, so let’s start with the Senate this year.

It’s early though, so I’m calling my initial projection a “naive” projection, because I don’t know who the candidates are going to be, not yet.

I know I’m a week late to this; I had a busy two weeks there and am only now catching up this week. I do believe this poll is worth a mention anyway, though. But the Club for Growth polled Republicans in Indiana, the site of arguably the biggest TEA party primary loss in 2010, on their choice for Senator in 2012.

The conventional wisdom has always been that incumbents under 50 are vulnerable. But what do they say about incumbents under 40?