Don't look now, but accountability is actually on the upswing in the United States Senate. Currently, five incumbent Senators are polling at under 50% in primary elections: Bennet (CO), Bennett (UT), Lincoln (AR), McCain (AZ) and Specter (PA). Here is a chart showing recent polling on those five campaigns:
While some of these campaigns might not seem very close, as Nate Silver noted yesterday, primary campaigns can fluctuate very rapidly. Any incumbent under 50% in a primary is in trouble, as long as the primary challengers has sufficient resources.
This is remarkable, given that there have been only four successful primary challenges against incumbent U.S. Senators over the last 30 years combined. Unless I am missing some, the only four successful challengers were Al D"Amato (1980), Carol Mosley Braun (1992), John Sununu (2002) and Ned Lamont (2006).
The election cycle could turn out to be a watershed for primary challenges to Senate incumbents. While some in the Village will inevitably decry this as another sign at "extremes" have taken over both parties (you know, extremists like Bill Halter, Andrew Romanoff and Joe Sestak), the more means by which Senators are held accountable to the public, the better. That US Senate remains, by design, a large undemocratic institution that is unaccountable to the general public. A wave of successful primary challenges against incumbents in both parties would help change that, and thus provide a boast to our democracy.
Update: In the comments, Anthony de Jesus notes that more than four US Senators have lost primary challenges since 1980:
The biggest miss is Mike Gravel, who was successfully primaried by Clark Gruening in 1980, ironically the grandson of the incumbent Senator who Gravel defeated in a primary in 1968.
In addition to Jacob Javits (who lost to D'Amato) and Gravel, Richard Stone of Florida and Donald Stewart of Alabama (who served two years after winning a special election) also lost primaries.
Also, in 1996, Sheila Frahm, who was appointed to fill Bob Dole's seat, lost a primary to Sam Brownback.
Still, even if a total of eight Senators have lost primary challenges since 1980, and six since 1982, this election cycle could still stand out for having an unusually large--possibly even a record--number of Senators who lost primary challenges. And that would be a good thing.
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