BOOM goes the Cook Political Report Senate rankings.

Short version: Alaska, Louisiana, and North Carolina to Toss-Up: New Hampshire to Lean Democrat. To be fair, Cook is also degrading GA to Toss-Up and put Mississippi into Likely Republican territory, but the map is still bad for Democrats, and frankly just got worse for them. But this may be the most important bit:

Democrats have put together what they say is effectively a presidential campaign effort focused solely on these competitive races that will bring the same kind of field organization and utilize data analytics and other resources in much the same way that the Obama campaign did in 2012. The goal is to boost Democratic turnout above both the 2010 and typical midterm election levels into something closer to a presidential level turnout among key groups, though they acknowledge the impossibility of truly replicating turnout levels that high.

At the same time, Republicans are putting together national party-driven field operations unlike any they have ever done before. They already have 15 staff on the ground in Alaska. Even though they won’t know who their incumbent will be until after the August 19 primary, they can hit the ground running with a turnkey organization in place.

The problem here for Democrats is that they did not actually win Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, or West Virginia in 2012. In fact, the Democratic percentage of the vote in most if not all of those states was lower in 2012 than it was in 2008. At this stage, the Democratic party pretty much has to do everything right to keep the Senate. This represents a small but noticeable change from the height of the last government shutdown, and it’s not a change in the Democrats’ favor.

And it’s only March.

Moe Lane

8 thoughts on “BOOM goes the Cook Political Report Senate rankings.”

  2. Sadly, the IL-GOP opted to go with Oberweis again .. on the upside, the money he spends will mostly be his own.
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    Mew

    1. IL GOP don’t want a good candidate to run against Durbin, they want one who will implode fairly quickly so Durbin won’t use his turnout machine to save Quinn.
      Shame GOPiers went with moneybags over the candidate who wanted to win ( however unlikely winning in IL would be)

      1. I want Quinn saved. Its too late to pull IL back from the brink without severe cuts to the unions, may as well happen on Quinn’s watch. Lets the Dems fall on the sword they cast

        1. Depending on whether Rauner really is an outsider, you might get your wish .. I don’t see the Illinois Combine or the DuPage Mafia liking Rauner cutting in on their action.
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          Mew

          1. Like Chris Christie was an outsider? Right. Rauner is simply a Dem donor running as an R who promises change and will simply do what the Chicago Machine tells him, until the Machine can find a suitable Donk replacement.

          2. The trouble with that theory, midwest, is that the unions instructed their faithful to vote for Dillard, who is a DuPage Mafia machine man if there ever was one.
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            Mew

          3. midwestconservative, this is Illinois we’re talking about. There are lots of “shakedowns” where corrupt politicians intimidate people into giving them money or they’ll make a person’s life miserable (go after their businesses for instance). It’s the Chicago way.
            –
            We can’t call Rauner a Democrat based on the fact he used to donate money to Democrats for that reason. If he was a democrat campaign donor that was in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, or Kentucky you’d have a point, however we’re dealing with Chicago-style politics when it comes to Illinois.

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