The coming electoral rout

The latest polls are very interesting, and are very bad news for the Democrats. Real Clear Politics shows us the current electoral landscape for the Senate races:


There are two things that stand out here. First, eight of the ten competitive races are shifting in favor of the Republican candidate. The Republican doesn't lead in all of these, but the momentum is shifting towards the GOP almost across the board. Second, the two races that show the opposite (gains for the Democrat, even if they aren't necessarily ahead) are the two where the Tea Party candidate beat the GOP Establishment candidate in the primary (Alaska and Delaware).

So what does this mean? First, the Alaska and Delaware polls reflect a disruption to the voter's default state, as a new person they've never paid any attention to is now one of the choices. My prediction is that this will settle down in a couple of weeks as people hear more about them, and as the election gets closer. In other words, the only thing keeping the Democrats from losing momentum across the board is unexpected GOP primary results. This will be temporary.

Second, as we get closer to election day, we'll see more of a shift towards the Republicans. The reason is that the economy is mired firmly in the "double dip" portion of the recession, the Democrats control Washington and Washington is doing nothing that seems like it will help, and the hard core base of the Democratic party is increasingly incensed that their candidates are running away from the hard-left accomplishments of the last two years (ObamaCare in particular). Meanwhile, Republican and Independent voters are champing at the bit to throw the bums out.

Turnout is everything, and looks increasingly to be breaking in the GOP's favor. That means you can likely subtract 2 points from the (D) column and add 2 to the (R) column, and undecideds will break 2:1 for the Republican.

RCP currently shows 44 safe Democrat seats, 3 likely Democrat seats, 2 "Leans Democrat" seats, and 6 "Toss Up" seats. If you factor in the momentum I just described, Connecticut and Washington are probably the only two from the "Leans Democrat" or "Toss Up" categories that will actually go Democrat. That's 49 seats in the (D) column two months from now.

Putting that in perspective, the Democrats will have lost 11 seats between the elections of 2008 and 2010. I can't seem to easily find out where that stands in the annals of electoral routs, but it seems safe to say that it's pretty high on the list.

Mind you, I think that this is A Bad Thing. I think that winning both the House and Senate will give aid and comfort to a clueless Republican leadership, and delay the necessary housecleaning. That housecleaning is inevitable, but we're much better off it it comes early rather than late.