A tight spot...

The most wide-open Senate election in a decade

By TARINI PARTI

It’s the largest and most wide-open Senate battlefield in more than a decade: ten races, all neck-and-neck affairs headed into the final days of the campaign.

And it’s not only that there are more competitive races this time around; it’s how close they are that has made the 2014 midterms different from previous cycles. The 10 close contests this year are all separated by 5 points or less, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages as of Tuesday. Fewer races were that close right before recent midterms: eight in 2010 and five in 2006.

And in recent presidential cycles, there were eight in 2012, three in 2008 and five in 2004 that were equally tight.

Republicans have an edge in more than half of the competitive races, based on RCP averages, and are favored to gain control of the Senate. But many races across the country remain too close — with more contests coming down to the wire than in recent election cycles.

Based on interviews with a dozen operatives on both sides of the state of play, some of these tight races do lean toward one party or the other. Republicans — who need a net gain of six seats to win control of the chamber — are perhaps most confident about their chances in Arkansas, largely dismiss any trouble in Kentucky and remain somewhat nervous about Kansas. After a brief moment of panic in South Dakota, the state, along with West Virginia and Montana, is back to being considered safe for the GOP, as Virginia, Oregon and Michigan are thought to be solid for the Democrats.

Louisiana and Georgia — the latter has shifted slightly toward Democrats in recent weeks — are widely expected to go to runoffs. Republicans are confident they can win both in that scenario, especially since those states haven’t benefited from the Obama turnout infrastructure, but they admit that Democrat Michelle Nunn’s attacks on David Perdue’s remarks about outsourcing have changed the race.

At the outset of the cycle, Democrats saw Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina as their firewall against a GOP takeover. Today, those races are neck and neck — and Republicans are even bullish about their chances in New Hampshire. There remains some uncertainty among Republicans about Alaska, despite Republican Dan Sullivan’s edge in polls, because of a superior Democratic ground game and the difficulty of polling the state.

It all adds up to an unusually jumbled puzzle less than a week before Election Day. In 2010, Republicans won just three of the eight tight races — despite their national wave. But in 2006, Democrats won all five of the closest races.

“There are still a larger number of races in play,” acknowledged Tim Phillips, president of the conservative outside group Americans for Prosperity, which started airing issue ads against vulnerable Democrats in 2013 and is now reportedly spending $125 million on a field program.
“Here’s my sense,” said Phillips, explaining why so many races remain tight. “I don’t think it’s because this is an anti-Democratic year. It’s an anti-Washington year. The clear examples of that are in Kansas and to a certain extent in Kentucky.”

Both sides have also acknowledged that the efforts of Senate Majority PAC, and Democratic money in general, have played a key role in changing the dynamics. Democrats have for the first time in a midterm election since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 used outside money in a big way to protect their incumbents and respond to attacks against them in a way that they did not do in 2010, when they lost six seats in the Senate and control of the House.

Early spending from Democrats and their allies kept their candidates afloat and are getting more bang for their buck than the GOP’s investments at the end of the campaign.

“The fact that Democratic money was so strong and the Republican money was so late played a role,” said Brad Todd, partner at OnMessage Inc., which counts GOP Senate candidates Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Tom Cotton in Arkansas and Cory Gardner in Colorado among its clients. “A lot of outside groups got their donations late. Had Republican donors engaged earlier, we might have seen some of these races tighten earlier.”