Early Predictions

After spending most of the night reviewing the latest polls, articles, anecdotes, and miscellania associated with Tuesday, I am ready to reveal my first predictions for the races. I'll be continually reviewing the close races until Monday night, and will be posting my final predictions then.

The executive summary is this:

• The Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, but barely - 50-50.
• The Democrats will hold more Governorships, 27-23.
• The Democrats will control the House, 226-209.

Here are some of the individual races, including a few surprises.

Senate
I have the Dems taking control in VA, OH, PA, MO, RI, MT. Those of you who are good at counting will realize that this is 6 seats, which should be enough to win control of the Senate. However, I am predicting that the biggest surprise of the night will be in Maryland, where Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele (R) is going to beat Ben Cardin (D). Cardin has been a terrible candidate, and has been especially unpopular amongst African-Americans. My belief is that many of them will either stay home, or vote for Steele. It's going to be a squeaker, but I think Steele will win. If he doesn't, the Dems will take control of the Senate.

The other race that struggled with in making these predictions was Montana. Tester (D) has been running ahead of Burns (R-inc) there for most of the fall, but the race has closed considerably. I think that if you held this same race 10 times, each would win 5 - in otherwords, it's essentially unpredictable. I went with Tester because there may be some late movement as indicated by the Nov. 1 Rasmussen poll showing Tester up by 6, but one poll is not particularly significant. It was enough for me to give the edge to Tester at this late stage, however, because again I think this is essentially a toss-up race.

Governors
I'm predicting a Democratic takeover in Minnesota and a succsful hold for the Republican in Maryland. Both could go either way. I may very well change my mind on both of these races before Monday night.

House
I have the Democrats taking 25 seats from Republicans, and looking through the races I think that's a conservative estimate. It is very possible the the Democrats could take 35-40 races this cycle, if things break their way. On the short end, I'd be stunned if they took fewer than 20 seats. Going race-by-race, there just isn't a lot of margin for error for the Republicans.

Gil Gutknecht's Comments

MSNBC has a fairly long article about the MN-1 race, featuring Gil Gutknecht (R-inc) and Tim Walz (D). The article is interesting, but the reason I'm posting on this is that I take exception to some of the comments made by Gutknecht. First, some background. Gutknecht was elected 12 years ago, and the Minnesota 1st is a pretty conservative place. Despite this, Gutknecht is in a very tough race with Walz, and while I expect Gil to pull out the win, it should be very close.

Gutknecht was asked whether he was surprised that the race was so close. His response: "Yeah . . . Gee whiz, I've done a good job, I've done what people asked me to do. People like me, and why am I in a tough race this year?"

Now, this is not egregious. Politicians stay unbelievably stupid things all the time, and this isn't in that category. But, it does strike me as a bit conceited - and I would remind Gil that he is not entitled to the seat. Obviously, people aren't happy about something, and his comments just strike me as appearing to display a little bit of entitlement.

Then, Gutknecht had this to say: "A lot of people are a little disappointed. They expected better results from a Republican Congress and a Republican administration. But in the end, they have to ask themselves, 'would we be better off to turn the keys over to people like Nancy Pelosi?' " I hate that kind of statement. It's pretty much a "we're bad, they're worse" argument, and I think there's no place for it. Tell people why they should want to vote for you, not why they should be afraid to vote for your opponent.

Again, these aren't huge things - pretty innocuous, really, compared to a lot of what's out there (just look at the chaos in Virginia for an example). But Gutknecht's comments rub me the wrong way. Maybe I'm just getting cranky as we approach election day.