We now know the outcome, more or less, of the Washington State US Senate race-and it looks like it's going to be Patty Murray, D-(Actual No-Kidding Progressive), over Dino Rossi, R-(Guy Who Will Be Running Again For Something As Soon As He Can).
Murray managed to win in a State that is far more "purple" than you might think, in a vote-by-mail election that guarantees at least a few days of uncertainty.
You have to do some unusual math to figure out how these elections will go, and we're going to walk through how this race got called by NBC just a couple hours ago.
The past week has featured a lot of wild Senate news, meriting another update in the overall forecast. From post-primary polling in Arkansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, to pre-primary polling in California and Nevada, to the Blumenthal scandal in Connecticut, and now to Dino Rossi's likely entry into the Washington Senate campaign against Patty Murray, quite a few things have changed.
Oddly enough, the changes appear to almost precisely cancel each other out, resulting in virtually no change from the May 19th update. Democrats experienced marked improvement in California, Pennsylvania and Nevada, which offset their backslides in Washington and Kentucky. Overall, the last time Democrats were in a better position than this was on February 11th.
Note that I am now projecting J.D. Hayworth as the winner of the Republican nomination in Arizona, despite John McCain holding a 11.7% lead over the last three polls of that primary. The reason for this is that a lead of 11.7% is a pretty bad starting point for an incumbent, much less a former Republican presidential nominee. With numbers like that, my gut tells me there is no way McCain survives the anti-incumbent and teabagger waves this year.
Thirteen campaigns, from Wisconsin through Kentucky in the chart below, are really and truly competitive right now. If Democrats were to somehow sweep them all, they would actually gain a seat, and take 60 going into 2011. If Republicans were to capture them all, they would take a 53-47 majority in the Senate. This means both that control of the Senate is in play, and also that a huge amount will depend on the quality of individual campaigns from here on out.
Senate forecast overview, May 24th
Dems
GOP
Not up for election
41
23
Incumbent party safe
6
10
Sub-total
47
33
Current polling
5.08
14.92
Projected total
52.08
47.92
Notes: Because they caucus with Senate Democrats, Independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman are considered Democrats. For now, Charlie Crist is considered more likely to caucus with Republicans, and as such is included in the GOP's overall total.
The 20 Senate seats that might switch partisan control The chart below looks only at a broadly defined definition of "competitive" campaigns. Campaigns where incumbent party currently leads by 18.5% or more are considered "safe" and not listed.
Dino Rossi just came on TV, losing 51-49, and talked about how his campaign will go on throughout the week. Only, King County, Gregoire's base county, hasn't really come in yet. That means that Rossi has a few days of vote counting before he concedes. The trends were good in that race and these results bear that out.
In Washington's eighth, Darcy Burner is ahead by 5100 votes, but the count has not moved for hours and the counting machines are really slow and three hours behind. The trend at the end was against Darcy Burner in this one, and my guess is she'll wind up behind by the end of the night as the more Republican poll voters are counted. Still, with these initial results she's definitely in a good position to take the seat.
... Pierce absentees are coming in, and Darcy lost 1000 votes. That's a really good result.
One of the subtexts of the conflict in Seattle is the local kingmakers, which includes the media and the Republican establishment, fighting against labor and progressives. Today I came face to face with the Seattle press corps, a sad group of people facing impending layoffs who nonetheless manage to evoke no sympathy (this was written in anger, now I feel sympathy). I was in Seattle to report on Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi's deposition; Rossi is involved in the most heated gubernatorial race in the country, a rematch of the 2004 razor thin match between him and current Governor Christine Gregoire, a competent and moderately progressive Governor. Rossi is a sleazy conservative supposed slum lord who wants to lower the minimum wage and build sprawl everywhere he can. The builders in the state (the BIAW) love Rossi, obviously, and they are pouring massive sums of money into the race, flooding the airwaves in what will be a $40M+ election. Labor is backing Gregore with large sums of money as well, though not quite as much.
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