Election 2010: How bad is it for Democrats?

“In contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving ‘quite a lot of’ or ‘some’ thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42 percent vs. 25 percent, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections,” according to Gallup’s Lydia Saad. “As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54 percent to 30 percent lead over Democrats in ‘thought given to the election’.”

Professional political prognosticators are weighing in along the same lines.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, sees it this way:

“Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats’ self-proclaimed ‘Recovery Summer’ has become a term of derision, and to most voters – fair or not – it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered.”

Could the GOP take over the House?

At the moment, Sabato predicts, “Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net.” In the Senate, he writes on his web site, “Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react).”

Charlie Cook doesn’t go quite that far. His latest outlook is for Republicans to gain 35 seats in the House (four fewer than they’d need to take control) with a net GOP gain in the Senate of 7-9 seats.

“The odds still favor Democrats holding their majority, but that is no longer given,” Cook wrote in the National Journal on Saturday. And with a campaign war chest that needs to be doled out most effectively, Democrats are going to have to make some tough choices – maybe abandoning some of their most vulnerable incumbents.

“With this many races in play, Democrats may have to perform triage and focus their resources on those that remain winnable,” Cook writes. “That means giving up on the rest.”

Dire straits for Democrats, in other words. For as David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes, “This is an environment in which any Democratic laxity or misstep can prove fatal and even underfunded or flawed Republicans can be highly competitive.”

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