The Enthusiasm Gap and Senate Control

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The American Conservative: The Enthusiasm Gap and Senate Control

By DANIEL LARISON • October 21, 2014, 4:53 PM

 

Jonathan Bernstein looks at latest Senate projections for the midterms:

The result is that prediction models are converging at 52 Republican seats, not 54 or more.

 

I’m not playing that down. No matter what the opportunities, I doubt there has been a single point during this election cycle when Republican strategists would not have been satisfied with winning seven seats to reach 52. And just as Democratic hopes to hold a majority are still realistic, so are Republican dreams of an even larger landslide.

 

All Republican candidates have a few significant advantages this year.

 

Obama’s approval rating is poor, Democratic turnout in a midterm election is normally lower than in presidential

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Senate Breakers Report October 21, 2014 Breaking Better

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary) | October 21st, 2014 at 05:00 PM

Since I last looked at the Senate races 11 days ago, the picture of the home stretch has started to come a little more clearly into focus, albeit with a frustratingly large number of undecided voters still showing up in the polls even in states that have already begun early voting. The high number of undecideds is one of several reasons to question the reliability of this year’s polls, although the most likely reason for a surplus of undecideds is that some of those folks are just going to end up staying home – a result that would be good news for GOP candidates who have pulled out to a polling lead (as in Colorado, Iowa and Kentucky) but not so good for candidates in North Carolina and New Hampshire who are crouched in striking distance but still need to be persuading people. However, if you look at the broader trends in the presidential approval and generic ballot polling, you can see that things are again looking up for Republicans – if they can only capitalize on those opportunities.

http://www.redstate.com/2014/10/21/senate-breakers-report-october-21-2014/