SSP’s Competitive Senate Race Ratings: Final 2010 Changes & Chart

Barring any unexpected last-minute developments, below you will find our final senate race ratings changes and a complete chart of all of our ratings. To see how much things have changed since we issued our first ratings of the cycle in January of 2009, please click here.

Final Senate Race Ratings Changes:

  • IN-Sen: Likely R to Safe R
  • KY-Sen: Tossup to Lean R
  • NH-Sen: Lean R to Likely R
  • NY-Sen-B: Likely D to Safe D
  • OH-Sen: Likely R to Safe R
  • WA-Sen: Lean D to Tossup

Final Senate Race Ratings Chart:

Likely D Lean D Tossup Lean R Likely R
DE (Open) CA (Boxer)

CT (Open)
AK (Murkowski)

CO (Bennet)

IL (Open)

NV (Reid)

PA (Open)

WA (Murray)

WV (Open)
KY (Open)

MO (Open)

WI (Feingold)
AR (Lincoln)

FL (Open)

LA (Vitter)

NC (Burr)

NH (Open)

Safe R:

     IN (Open)

     ND (Open)

135 thoughts on “SSP’s Competitive Senate Race Ratings: Final 2010 Changes & Chart”

  1. Castle would have won in a walk, Lowden would be up double digits and saved GOP a lot of money to spend elsewhere, Grayson in KY would have saved the GOP a lot of money to spend elsewhere, Norton would be a Lean R.  Is Raese a teabagger or establishment?

    Of course Dems did themselves no favors with Marshall and Giannoulias or spending $10M to primary Lincoln.

  2. AK a tossup? I wish. Lean R maybe. What poll supports a toss-up?

    KY only lean? MO only lean? The poll margins there are much wider than the lean D’s.

  3. getting to sleep tonight and tomorrow night with all this anxiety is going to be awful. I am preparing for Wednesday to be awful (first polls close at 7 AM my time). most importantly I feel helpless that I can’t do any phone banking or volunteering from Japan.

    I love having a passion for electoral politics but at this point please just make it end.

  4. It’s amazing how fast things change in politics.  There isn’t a thing that you wrote in your initial ratings last year that I would have had much disagreement with at the time, but it’s so different now.  This is why I am not bothering to think much about the 2012 Senate races; things will look vastly different then.  Several surprise candidates appeared who were on nobodies radar and there were unexpected retirements.  This is actually a bigger danger for the Dems next cycle because they just has so many more seats to defend.  But two years away…who knows.  The GOP nomination for Prez is actually a lot closer as those people will start running the day after tomorrow and the first contests will be in Jan ’12.

    I’ll make only one prediction for 2012 Senate races; Scott Brown holds on in MA.

  5. and saying manchin loses.  I know most of the polls show him ahead and he could very well win, in fact, he’s slightly favored, but i think he’s oversold himself as a conservative D.  Note, i am NOT saying he’s going to lose b/c he’s not progressive enough, I understand that he needs to be appealing to the state.  That being said, I think for a lot of voters who want a check on Obama and/or the senate to be republican they’ll go to the polls and figure, “if manchin agrees with so many Republican policies/disagrees with so many democratic ones, why not just vote for R and get 100% of what I want instead of 70%?”  I could easily be wrong though.

  6. as candidates in 2012 and going forward.  Fight for the moderate votes because taking one away is a net of +2, with the GOP being down a vote and the Dems being up a vote.

    Catering to the progressive wing has the net result of 2.0 for the Dems.  If the Progressive stays home at worst it’s a 1 for the Dems.  

    This upcoming congress will be dominated by the middle.  I expect a Gang of 12-14 to be formed in the Senate that will be run by the “centrists” serious thinkers – McCain, Graham, Snowe, Collins, Kirk, Hoeven, Corker/Brown on one side and Lieberman, Nelson, Webb, Conrad, McCaskill, Bacaus, Manchin on the other.  

    In the House, the GOP will have a 15 seat majority, but now having to vote for something than against everything their caucus will fracture enough that blue dogs and moderate Dems in the House will be needed to get anything passed.  

    The newly elected teabaggers will be marginalized, because of Obama’s veto pen and the need to get things though both House and Senate.    

  7. Boxer 46, Fiorina 38 (and there is a substantial cell phone effect). Boxer would be winning anyway, but her margin with CPOs is considerably higher.

    Also: Brown 49, Whitman 38

Comments are closed.