Poll: Dems Might Lose Senate
A new poll shows how Democrats might lose control of the Senate in 2010:
It’s a hope so audacious that few Republicans will even acknowledge it out loud: the possibility that the balance of power in the Senate might be up for grabs in November. The GOP would have to take 10 seats, knocking off virtually every targeted Democratic incumbent and sweeping the open seats held by both parties.
A new poll conducted for American Crossroads, the independent conservative group founded by Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, suggests the 2010 landscape might be just volatile enough to give Republicans at least a chance at that prize.
The survey, which gauged voter sentiment in 13 of the states with the country’s most competitive Senate races, showed Republican Senate candidates averaging a high single-digit lead over their Democratic opponents, offering the same snapshot of an angry, uneasy electorate shown in poll after poll this year.
The Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies conducted the poll, testing 1,300 likely voters across the 13 states, for a small state-by-state sample of 100 respondents. That means that for the individual races, the survey’s margin of error is so wide as to render the results effectively meaningless.
But taken together, the results suggest Republicans have an opening to make substantial gains this fall, even to the point of putting the Democrats’ 59-seat majority in peril. In eight seats currently held by Democrats – Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington – Republican candidates average an edge of seven points over their Democratic opponents, leading 47 percent to 40 percent.
In five Republican-held seats – Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio – GOP candidates hold an average lead of eight points, 45 percent to 37 percent.
The survey tested specific candidates – Republican nominees or frontrunners against their Democratic counterparts – in every state except for Colorado, where this week’s primaries remained too close to call. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was listed as an independent candidate in his state’s Senate race.
Pollster Glen Bolger ran the survey, modeling it on an NPR-sponsored poll that Public Opinion Strategies conducted in June with the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. That poll found that in the 70 most competitive House districts, voters leaned to Republican candidates by eight points, 49 percent to 41 percent.
Bolger told POLITICO the American Crossroads poll gave a similar snapshot of the Senate campaign, explaining: “Individual races may turn out okay, but the overall wave is as strong against [Democrats] as it is against Democrats in the House.”
Click here to read more.
