SABATO PREDICTS – AT 8:27 A.M. ET:   University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato believes the Dems are in bad shape for November.  I'll believe it when I see the election results, but from his mouth to you know whose ears.  From The Politico: 

Last week, Republican primary voters passed their first Senate test, producing a North Carolina nominee, Thom Tillis, who is merely imperfect, not catastrophic. After the disasters of recent years, national Republicans will happily take it.

The North Carolina result did nothing to change the expectation among most observers that the Republicans have a 50-50 or better shot at taking the Senate majority. It might even have enhanced those odds. The conventional wisdom is reasonable: We know that the president is unpopular, the president’s party typically performs poorly in midterms and the Democrats are overextended on this year’s Senate map. One of the ways the Republicans could hurt their chances is by running bad candidates in some of these races. Tillis might turn out to be that kind of candidate, but he was clearly the most credible nominee in the primary field.

So where is the Senate right now? Hypothetically, there’s still a wide range of potential outcomes – and all the likeliest ones involve at least some kind of Republican wave, perhaps delivering the magic six-seat gain that would dethrone Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Let’s adopt a mariner’s, or a meteorologist’s, terminology to make sense of the situation. Democrats hope for no wave at all: Something akin to “beach week,” the post-finals getaway that some of my University of Virginia students are celebrating this very instant on the Atlantic seaboard. Beach week for the Democrats, though, is about as likely as the undergrads’ dream of putting off adulthood. More realistically, Democrats can hope for fearsome-sounding waves that crash loudly but do little structural damage. Republicans, on the other hand, are rooting for an impressive tidal wave, if not a full-fledged historic tsunami.

COMMENT:  My own sense is that Republicans will make gains, but that almost all the races will be difficult.  The Dems run a superb ground game – getting their people to the polls.  Even though this is difficult in an off-year election six years into a presidency, the Dems are also superior at scaring their base into believing a Republican victory will mean their children will be taken away from them and sold to Exxon Mobil. 

Overconfidence is the problem this year.

May 16, 2014