Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove
The GOP should be primed to pick up a number of House seats, maybe a Senate seat or two and probably a handful of Governorships.
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House seats are tougher to predict, but you can still expect 95%+ of incumbents to get re-elected due to the gerrymandering that always goes on in the state legislatures to protect both parties. There will be the typical 30-35 seats that are always up for grabs that moved to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 that will start to move back to the middle.
The Senate seats in 2010 are really a mixed bag. Interesting that the former seats of both the President and the Vice-President (a full term in IL, a 4-year term in DE) are considered either toss-ups or leaning Republican at this point (especially if Mike Castle runs for the DE seat), which are the only 2 "retiring" Democrats. There are 6 retiring Republicans (FL, KS, KY, MO, NH, OH) where conventional wisdom seems to be that the first two are pretty safe, the second two are toss-ups and they'll lose at least one, if not both, of the last two. The other seats to really watch will be AR (Blanche Lincoln), CT (Chris Dodd), LA (David Vitter), NV (Harry Reid), ND (Byron Dorgan), and PA (Arlen Specter).
Governorships play more on local issues, but there are 37 up in 2010. 19 or 20 of them won't have an incumbent, due to term limits or retirements (WY is still an issue): KS, ME, MI, NM, OK, OR, PA, TN, and WI for the Democrats; AL, CA, FL, GA, HI, MN, RI, SC, SD, and VT for the Republicans. The others: Dem incumbent - AR, CO, IL, IA, MD, MA, NH, NY, OH; Rep incumbent - AK, AZ, CT, ID, NE, NV, TX, UT. No question that the CA, IL, NY, and TX races are going to draw the most attention (NY for the possible ouster of an unpopular governor by his own party, TX for a intraparty fight between Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison, CA because it's a mess, and IL because a large number of IL governors end up in jail). Republicans would seem to have a good shot of taking the KS, TN, and WY seats, while Democrats look to pick up CA, HI, and VT. Most political reports have a lot of states in the toss-up category at this point.