I am assuming the September momentum will carry on through election day in North Carolina (more later), Colorado, and Iowa. I am not concerned with New Hampshire, Shaheen seems to have that sewed up against the (phony) carpetbagger. And in Michigan Land appears to be toast.
That combination gives the Democrats 49 Senators and the Republicans 47 as I am conceding Kentucky. Grimes needs a better campaign manager, one that understands that the EPA has saved our sorry butts time and time again, and ask Lincoln…no the other one, if you need progressives to win an election.
That leaves Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas, Georgia and Louisiana up for grabs. The Democrats need one, and the Republicans need all of them.
Georgia and Louisiana are not going to be decided on November 4th. Both are too close, so a runoff will be needed in both cases, but for my headline conclusion that only has to happen in one of those two states.
And oh what fun November is going to be after the 4th if the Senate on the line. The GDP of the runoff state(s) is going to skyrocket as the Koch brothers (and the like) try to buy that one.
Will turnout be a problem? I don’t think so as the whole world will be aware that there is an important race going on. Every GOTV resource is going south people.
I really don’t know much about Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas so I'll encourage others to have their say in the comments.
But I do know about North Carolina (the valley of humility between two mountains of conceit**), so let me pontificate about that.
In North Carolina Obama job approval is actually higher than one would expect, higher than the national average. 48% in the latest Rasmussen.
The Democratic coalition has a lot of practice organizing the GOTV. We had a really intense primary in 2008 and we were a battleground in both 2008 and 2012 (don’t get me started about 2010). In 2014 we don't yet have lines of people waiting to vote, but we do have lines of people patiently waiting to pick up their walk packets.
Kay Hagan is a really good retail politician. Thom Tillis is not.
We were really proud of our gains in education and love our university system (and not only for the great basketball). And we are all really pissed off that Tillis is screwing with it.
Thom Tillis "ain’t from around here" (Tillis had moved to Cornelius, North Carolina, a northern suburb of Charlotte, in 1998 after living in Florida, New Orleans, Nashville, Atlanta and cough, cough Washington DC.) Hagan was born Janet Kay Ruthven in Shelby, North Carolina.
African-Americans know how to turn out to vote in North Carolina.
Military families love Kay Hagan. Thom Tillis eliminated the tax income credit that benefited a lot of service people.
The media actually likes Kay Hagan so the media is kind of slanted and Reverend Barber is really great press.
While in a normal year Kay Hagan’s moderate image would encourage progressives to stay home, Thom Tillis is doing such a great job at motivating our base all by himself (bless his little heart). He really has done every possible thing to piss us off, education, health, environment, terrible tax policy, abortion, cutting health care to the blind, aged and disabled, marriage rights, fracking, and possum torturing. Oh and we lost nine thousand jobs in June and almost twenty thousand jobs in July link and then there is the matter of the budget deficit that was put off until after the election. Anybody in North Carolina want to be like Kanas?
Now the red team fans always vote for the red team, but unfortunately for Thom Tillis there are actually a lot more Democrats registered in North Carolina and a lot of them are Hagan kind of people (she is a Jim Hunt protégé).
We are proud of the environment here in North Carolina and if we are going to pollute our rivers we would much rather do it with our own pig farms than let some corporation do it with their coal ash.
Oh and somebody put something called the Research Triangle Park right smack in the middle of the state that seems to attract progressives like flies to an Atlantic Beach pie.
So I think we have got this one.
And one more thing -- the big dog is coming to Chapel Hill September 30th link.
**Now that the north has successfully invaded Virginia through Fairfax county, Virginia is a whole lot less conceited.