After a summer break from posting I am back as the nation enters the final lap of the 2014 election cycle.  Today I am going to review the state of the Senate and discuss where the GOP sits in terms of taking control (pretty much a given now) and by what margin.

Since Labor Day the pollsters have migrated from their “registered voter” models to “likely voter” models. The former model tends to show Democrat strength, the second model looks to who is likely to vote, and in non-Presidential election years turnout has favored the GOP.  As it will again this year.

But the turnout model used to estimate “likely voters” is tricky. There may be a national mood that is not seen in the state races until very late. In the end, it is a combination of who is willing to be polled, and from that group who is going to the polls. biases in the first step (who is talking to pollsters) can impact the accuracy of the latter (who ends up voting).

Swing voters and non-party aligned voters are hard to estimate because they are not into politics and may not vote. Irritation with DC is so high they won’t even talk to pollsters. So even when the bases of the parties responsd as usual to pollsters, the wild card is independents and swing voters

My feeling is the GOP is in for a real good year, and here is why.  Three current Democrat senate seats have been pretty much given to the GOP column by pollsters. These are (with the current Realclear Politics poll averages in parenthesis R-D-I)

• Montana (54-19-n/a, R+19)
• South Dakota (42-29-16, R+13)
• West Virginia (53-34-n/a, R+19)

The next three races are more than enough needed to win control of the Senate, and each is on the verge of tipping into the GOP win column:

• Louisiana (47-41-n/a, R+6) [runoff since incumbent is at 33% in the open election on Nov 4th]
• Arkansas (45-42.5-n/a, R+2.5)
• Alaska (44-42.7-n/a, R+1.3)

These are all sitting Senators running in the low 40’s.  This means they are very unlikely to win given the fact once an incumbent falls below 45% they are just not going to get the undecideds to break for them (being the known quantities they are).  If an incumbent is stuck below 45% at this point, they have tapped out their support.  The other 55% are shopping for an alternative (which can include sitting home).

The next group  of Democrat incumbents are also at or below 45%, but the state polls have yet to give the GOP challenger a lead.  But I am sure it will arrive come November 4th:

• Colorado (43.4-44-n/a, R-0.6)
• North Carolina (40.6-45.1-n/a, R-4.5)

Add in the President’s horrible approval numbers and how independents are fleeing the Democrats and I see all of these 8 being picked up by the GOP.  Plus Iowa (open seat).

So R+9 just using normal off year dynamics, the 6th year itch against the President’s party, etc.

Now layer in the Immigration Issues seething across the country, the international bungling of ISIS, the shrunken work force, the shrunken paychecks, the shrunken and more expensive healthcare and you have another layer of headwinds battering the Democrats.

I think the country is so fed up with DC most independent and swing voters are not responding to pollsters.  Thus the pollsters cannot tune their turnout models.  The ones answering the phones are party supporters, and their addiction to politics will skew the polls for a while

But come November 4th the swing voters will hold their nose and focus just long enough to send a signal to DC. And that message is people are fed up with the way things are going. Voters find government mostly the source of problems, not the solution.  The recent rise in ‘independence’ movements is a sign of how tiresome government nagging and bungling has become. So are the many incumbents of both parties in trouble.  Long term GOP senator Roberts of Kansas is one such sign of the Libertarian fever beginning to rise.

So I am very bullish on the Senate this year, and I expect a late breaking wave to hit DC upside the head.