The Swing State Project is moving its rating of the North Carolina Senate contest from “Lean Republican” to “Tossup“.
Recent polling confirms a dramatic tightening of this race in the past month after the DSCC began unloading a series of advertisements calling into question Dole’s effectiveness in Washington and her ties to Bush and “big oil”. We’ve been waiting to see if Dole could mount an effective counter-attack against Hagan, but we still have yet to see a coherent GOP defense here. Whereas Hagan and the DSCC have chosen their narrative (Dole being an ineffective creature of Washington for the past 40 years) and are driving the message effectively and relentlessly. Dole’s sliding re-elect numbers confirm the shakiness of her position.
On the national scale, most polls are indicating a tight contest — certainly much closer than John Kerry’s performance against Bush in 2004. Democrats have already added over 130,000 voters to their registration advantage over the GOP here since 2006, and Obama’s ground game will be working hard to turn out the base vote. While his campaign is not favored to win the state, Hagan, with more crossover appeal as a down-home Democrat, could be poised to reap the benefits of his operation.
Dole will still be tough to beat, but we can no longer give her the edge in the face of a very effective campaign by Hagan and the DSCC.
This is the political fight of Liddy Dole’s political life. She’s got a very powerful and long political life and it won’t be easy. But Hagan is a very good candidate and the DSCC is running a very effective campaign here.
I think we can do this.
In addition I’d be tempted to move Oregon and Minnesota over.
That would be fantastic.
I agree with the commenter above who said Oregon should be a tossup. I don’t know about Minnesota, though. That seems to be a bit uphill for Franken still.
Those DSCC ads are really doing wonders. That message is sinking in, IF the voter is paying attention. Most people (these were all unaffiliated voters) weren’t paying attention to the senate race at all. So keep those ads coming. This neighborhood was in a very fast growing new suburb and I can say that Liddy Dole is definitely in big trouble. I experienced almost zero loyalty towards her. And with so many independents just tuning in now, Kay’s ads will be doing a lot to introduce her to voters.
more than it was in 2006.
Today:
2,700,134 DEM
1,945,807 REP
1,309,633 UNA
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/it…
The best part is that only 5% of new voters registered in 2008 have been Republican. All the rest have been Democrats or Unaffiliated.
when no one wanted to run against Dole and we all pretty much wrote this race off for the most part with maybe a slight bit of hope that something would happen. Congrats all, 🙂 I say Dole is the most endangered incumbent after Sununu with Smith being a very close third.
What the hell ever happened to MS-B by the way?