Obama moves Senate races to GOP
Their bitter 55-minute debate had just ended. Greg Orman walked across the stage, looked Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in the eye, shook his hand and smiled.
“You said, ‘Harry Reid’ 38 freaking times,” Orman, running as an independent, told Roberts, according to a person with direct knowledge of the exchange.
It probably didn’t come as much of a surprise. Since falling back in the polls last month, Roberts has taken every chance to portray Orman as a foot soldier for President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A similar dynamic is underway in South Dakota: After former Gov. Mike Rounds found himself in a surprisingly tight three-way race earlier this month, Republicans have spent the past 10 days tying his two opponents to national Democrats.
The GOP efforts appear to be working in both races, which have moved back in the party’s direction in recent days after a flurry of speculation that they might be prime pickup opportunities for Democrats.
While Orman could still win in Kansas and South Dakota is still unpredictable, the shifting dynamics underscore how Obama’s deep unpopularity remains the biggest advantage for Senate Republicans — not just in conservative battlegrounds but in swing states as well. Even though Republicans lack an agenda this year or a defining issue to bring voters to the polls, 2014 is at risk of becoming all about Obama — and that could be devastating for Senate Democrats.
“I think Obama being so unpopular is the biggest factor in this election,” said Tom Jensen, a Democratic pollster with the firm Public Policy Polling. “And I think at the end of the day, it may be too much for a lot of the Democratic Senate candidates to overcome.”
Despite his own unpopularity in Kansas, polls show Roberts back in a dead heat with Orman, after trailing the independent in some surveys earlier this month. The senator and his GOP allies have blanketed the airwaves with nearly $3 million in the past two weeks alone, roughly $1 million more than the amount the independent and his allies have shelled out in that time frame.
Meanwhile, a Republican poll on Thursday found Rounds up double digits against Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler, and several top Democrats privately agreed that the race still appears to be a long shot. The shift came after a $1.3 million GOP ad campaign over the past 10 days.
Democrats’ concern about the Obama effect isn’t confined to those two states. Each day seems to offer fresh polling bound to make Democrats nervous, showing that their candidates need to win a significant amount of support from voters who now disapprove of the president.
A CNN-ORC poll out Thursday found Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire up 2 percent against her GOP challenger, Scott Brown, with just 39 percent of voters approving of the president in a state he carried twice. In Colorado, another must-win for Democrats, Sen. Mark Udall has trailed in a series of recent polls, including a USA Today-Suffolk University survey this week that showed him down 7 points against GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, with Obama’s disapproval rating at 57 percent.
And in Iowa, a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday showed state GOP Sen. Joni Ernst maintaining a small lead over Rep. Bruce Braley, up 2 points in a state where a clear majority voters continue to hold an unfavorable view of the president. Though Ernst’s lead was within the margin of error, that has been the case in a series of recent polls.
Still, even as the map looks ripe for a GOP Senate takeover, at least 11 battleground states remain within or right at the margin of error, according to an average of public polling. That means if Democrats succeed in driving up turnout as they’ve vowed to do all year — particularly in states like Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina — they could tilt the electorate by one or two points in their direction and win enough races to hold the Senate.
What could also shift the electorate one way or the other is the huge influx of spending in the final weeks. Since August, there have been 108 new super PACs formed, according to the Federal Election Commission. The six national party committees on both sides have spent 88 percent of the $820 million they have raised so far, out of the $4 billion that the Center for Responsive Politics predicts will be spent overall by all groups and candidates this election cycle.
No comments:
Post a Comment