There are all sorts of speculations based on polls conducted when the people are not yet tuned in. Here in California, Jerry Brown has not started campaigning for Guv. and said he will start after Labor day. In the meantime, his rival has already spent tons conducting a negative TV ad campaign. So obviously, the polls will be in favor of Whitman now or indicate a close race. The same is the case with the Senate race between Boxer and Fiorina where Fiorina began her campaign since the Republican primary in March. I presume, this is the situation across the country.
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Signs point to Republican Senate gains
By Gerald Helguero | September 5, 2010 7:20 AM EDT
With just under two months left until the 2010 U.S. general election, the balance of power in the U.S. Senate appears set to swing from the Democrats to the Republicans.
"2010 was always going to be a Republican year, in the midterm tradition. It has simply been a question of degree," according to Larry J. Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
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Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, gives her acceptance speech during her election night party at a hotel in Anaheim, California June 8, 2010.
In this year's Senate race 39 of 100 Senate seats are being contested. Sabato expects that Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control of the Senate, which would involve gaining 10 senate seats, but are more likely to end up with between 8 and 9.
"GOP leaders themselves did not believe such a result was truly possible just a few months ago," he said in a letter published in the Center for Politics site on Sept. 2 .
Eleven of the Senate races are considered a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report. Key incumbents in those races include Sen. Harry Reid, D-NV, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI. There are newcomers from both parties in the Pennsylvania and Florida contests. Races in Colorado, Illinois, Washington, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Hampshire are also up for grabs, according to the report.
The Cook Political Report expects Republicans to gain between 7 to 9 seats. There are currently 57 Democrats, two independents that caucus with the Democrats, and 41 Republican in the Senate.
Republicans hold a 10 percentage point lead in the latest weekly tracking of voting preferences for the 2010 congressional races, according to the most recent weekly Gallup generic ballot poll.
The organization found that, based on candidates of differing party affiliations and experience, Americans are most likely to prefer "a Republican who has not served in Congress," a choice embraced by 38 percent of those polled. The next closest choice was "Democrats serving in Congress" at 24 percent.
Sabato says the scenarios for the election largely depended on "how quickly, the deeply troubled American economy recovered from the Great Recession." Democratic hopes of an economic revitalization have been dashed, he said.
"The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd," he said.
Another Gallup poll asking potential voters from August 23 to 29 how much "thought they had given to the elections," showed 54 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats had given "quite a lot of" or "some" thought to the election.
Meanwhile, minority and young voters, who made a significant impact in the 2008 election, appear to have reverted to previous levels of interest, according to the group. While whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they had given "quite a lot of" or "some" thought to the 2008 general election, that figure was now 42 percent for whites and 25 percent for blacks. While the difference in attention between young adults (18 to 29) and older adults (30+) was just 12 percentage points in 2008 -- 75 percent to 87 percent -- that gap has increased to 23 point -- 19 percent to 42 percent.
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