perfidy

...why the hell not. Baseball Crank gets jiggy with the statistics, and starts talking about the 2006 Senate races. Based on his analysis, it looks like the Democrats might have a tough row to hoe in trying to undo some of the Republican majority. By adding the percentage of the vote that Senator got in the last election to the vote that his state gave to the Presidential candidate of his party, the Crank comes up with a rough measure of both the political climate in a state and its feelings toward its Senator.

Of the ten lowest ranked races, seven are Democratic seats and three Republican. Of the 33 total races, less than half (fifteen) are Republican seats. Of the races that the Crank ranks as relatively solid, I think two deserve some further consideration: Vermont and New York.

Jeffords was elected as a moderate Republican by a broad margin. I wonder how pissed those voters are with his defection, and whether another Republican candidate could take advantage of that. Also, Hilary will likely be running for President, and would any other Democrat stand against Guliani if he wanted that seat? Or even Lazio, who did pretty well considering he had nothing like the name recognition of Hilary and entered the race late?

Let’s say that aside from those two special cases, each party wins all of the races ranked over 105%, and loses all those below. That would create a net change of +4 for the Republicans. They could pick up the two special cases as well. That’s the upper bound – a safely filibuster proof majority. I would imagine that as long as the economy keeps up, and there is no major balls-up in Iraq, the Republicans will likely pick up another seat or two. That’s my prediction.