Dems, GOP Ride Roller Coaster of Polls in Senate Races as Election Day Nears

The expectations game -- the whacky whodunit favored by media and pundits -- has tilted back the anticipated midterm outcome toward Democrats, according to polls out less than a month before the Nov. 2 election.

With 29 days until the vote, Republicans are suggesting six winners and seven up-in-the-air contests, a drop in earlier predictions of grabbing 10 seats -- the number they would need to win the Senate majority. The current Senate configuration is 59 Democrats, including two Democratic-caucusing independents, and 41 Republicans.

Meanwhile, Democrats are looking at a tightening of polls in several races to suggest they are on an upsurge that has made a timely arrival after a summer-long bout of bad news.

According to a National Republican Senatorial Committee analysis out Monday, the Republican-held Senate seats of Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Idaho, South Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina are all safe while New Hampshire, Kansas, Utah and Ohio Republican candidates hold double-digit leads.

Republicans are also expressing confidence about keeping Alaska and Florida in GOP hands while noting that Kentucky and Missouri are the two Republican seats Democrats are focused on swapping.

As for current Democratically held seats in the Senate, Republicans say they are hopeful of taking North Dakota, Indiana and Arkansas, and feel upbeat about taking Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania.

That leaves in the competitive column Illinois, West Virginia, Nevada and Connecticut while Washington, Delaware and California are looking like longer shots for Republicans.

Democrats note that 15 races are within 5 points, and that 10 is an awfully large number for Republicans to achieve, even in a year marked by an anti-establishment mood.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday he has no doubt that both chambers of Congress will have Democratic majorities come Nov. 3.

"Over the course of several weeks, you see a tightening in the public polls if you look at the generic ballot; you see a tightening in the so-called enthusiasm gap, those, on Democratic and Republican sides that talk to pollsters and say that they are certain to vote in the next election," Gibbs told reporters.

"I think part of that is a -- is a broader swath of the electorate now focusing more broadly, quite honestly, on the upcoming elections," he added.

Though all politics is local, many of the big Senate races this year come down to national concerns. Analysts agree that the vote could likely turn on collective fear.

"What we see the Democrats doing now -- that is trying to scare their own voters to turn out in the fall -- is what we saw Republicans trying to do in 2006 and 2008, trying to scare their voters to get to the polls when Republicans were disillusioned," said Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Report. "The party that's trying to excite its voters, its base, invariably suggests that gloom and doom is going to occur if their folks don't get out to vote."

"Devil figures are always very useful in politics," added Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "Republicans want to nationalize the election, they want to make it about President Obama and the economy. ... The Democratic nominees are saying we understand you're unhappy about President Obama, we understand you're unhappy about the economy if only you had a good Republican to vote for, but you don't."