Down To The Wire: It’s Do-Or-Die For Dems In The Senate

As campaigns around the country draw to a close, several races remain much tighter than the original map led strategists to believe. Though many forecasters say the Republicans are still favored to take the Senate, several key races remain within the margin of error in polling averages. Many are still reluctant to put their dime down on a winner.

Combine that with a year in which third-party candidates have thrown a wrench in to many party plans and more than one race likely to go into overtime runoff races, this election year has been a bumpy ride for both parties.

The following key races will determine who gets control of the Senate come January.

New Hampshire

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has led Scott Brown in the vast majority of polls, but the race remains too close for Democrats’ comfort. Recent nonpartisan polls find Brown trailing by as much as 8 and winning by as little as 1. Shaheen remains the odds-on favorite, but this is far from a done deal.

Keep a close eye out, because Democratic strategists say if New Hampshire falls, it will be a brutal night for their party — something close to a GOP wave election.

Iowa

Going into the 2014 midterm cycle, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) was the heavy favorite to win the race for outgoing Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) seat, but state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) has come out as a surprisingly formidable opponent and polling has consistently shown Ernst leading Braley. But the race is also tightening to a small two or three point lead.

It may come down to the Democrats’ much-touted ground game, but many have cast doubt on whether that will work out in Iowa.

North Carolina

Sen. Kay Hagan has been the exception to the rule of endangered southern Democrats in the Senate this cycle. She’s managed to keep a consistent low single-digit lead over North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, the Republican nominee in the race.

Hagan’s had some success reminding voters that Tillis is strongly connected to the state legislature’s unpopular Republican agenda that inspired the Moral Monday movement. Tillis has been blamed for everything from cuts on education to calling Hagan bad at math.

Kentucky

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may be in for the toughest reelection night of his 30-year career against the hard-charging Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), who has defied brutal headwinds in conservative Kentucky to remain within striking distance.

McConnell remains the favorite, though. It’ll be a slog for Grimes, but if her ground game is as strong as her campaign boasts, she might pull off one of the greatest electoral upsets in modern history.

Louisiana

It’s highly unlikely the Louisiana race will wrap up on Election Day, because a quirk in state law requires a candidate to win an outright majority to claim victory. Other candidates on the ballot are collectively pulling about 15 percent. The most likely scenario is that Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and Republican Bill Cassidy head to a runoff, which will take place on Dec. 6.

That’s a daunting match-up for the Democrat, who trails Cassidy by an average of 7.5 percentage points and has lost ground in a head-to-head contest recently.

Georgia

In the last few weeks of October, Republican David Perdue has seemed to take a small lead over Democrat Michelle Nunn in Georgia’s race for U.S. Senate. But Georgia is like Louisiana in that it requires a candidate to break 50 percent on election night to win outright, and the race is likely to go to a runoff between Perdue and Nunn.

The real question, then, is which side can keep up voter turnout efforts to come out on top in the runoff on Jan. 6.

Kansas

Things were never likely to stay as ugly as they looked for Sen. Pat Roberts after Democrat Chad Taylor withdrew in early September and independent Greg Orman started to pick up momentum. But it’s easy to forget how bad they looked: By late September, Orman was commanding a 6-point lead, per the polling averages, and even led by as much as 10 points in some polls.

But, as TPM documented, national Republicans rushed to rehabilitate the almost non-existent Roberts campaign. Top operatives rushed in, major money got spent, and big-name surrogates arrived on the stump. Orman is still holding onto a slim edge — 2.2 points, according to PollTracker — but the race is effectively a toss-up on Election Day.

Colorado

This race has become a worse case scenario for Democrats: An incumbent senator with a famous name, in a state where Obama won twice. If they can’t hold Colorado, it’s hard to see how they hold the Senate. But at the moment, that’s what the polling averages say will happen. Sen. Mark Udall has fallen from a comfortable 4-point lead in early September to a 2-point deficit to Rep. Cory Gardner.

Whether it is Gardner’s well-groomed candidacy or a one-note campaign that isn’t as sharp the second time, there will be plenty of time for hindsight if Udall falls. What Democrats are banking on is another strong turnout operation to pull off another unexpected Senate win in Colorado when the polls said they were going down.

Alaska

Alaska is much the same story as Colorado, except it was always expected to be a tougher climb for Sen. Mark Begich in a state that routinely votes strongly Republican in presidential races. It is also a notoriously tough state to poll and, in line with that conventional wisdom, the polling has been all over the place. Begich has gone from down nearly 7 points to up by almost 2 in the final month of the campaign.

Most of the independent polling lately has shown Republican Dan Sullivan with the advantage. Begich’s campaign has spent years building what might be the most impressive — on paper — ground game in the country. They’ll likely need flawless execution to save the seat.

Arkansas

The Arkansas Senate race was supposed to be competitive until the end, but it has gradually been slipping away from Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor over the last couple of months. Republican Tom Cotton has extended his lead in polling averages; a University of Arkansas poll last week found him trailing by a whopping 13 points.

Cotton is the clear favorite in this battleground contest, and a defeat for him would be an election night disaster for Republicans.

South Dakota

This race looked briefly like it might be an unexpected opportunity for Democrats to make a seat that was supposed to be an easy GOP pick-up competitive. Back in the final weeks of September, Republican Mike Rounds was hovering at 34 percent with Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler just a few points behind. Anything can happen in a three-way race that close.

But on the eve of Election Day, and after both sides have poured more money into the campaign than they anticipated, Rounds has reasserted control. He holds a 13.5-point lead, according to TPM’s PollTracker average. South Dakota turned into the race everybody originally thought it would be.