This is no April Fool’s day joke. Zogby has their latest tracker poll up for the Senate and Gubernatorial races on the Wall Street Journal’s site and things are looking really good for the Democrats.
First off let’s cover the Senate races. Below is a picture of how things are starting to look in the race.
Ohio (my state) and Pennsylvania have both turned blue. That is a pick up of two seats for Democrats right there. The Republicans have not picked up any seats. New Jersey is considered a tie (which is currently a Democrats seat), but not including the margin of error, the Democrat has actually pulled ahead of the Republican challenger and that tracking for the Democrat shows a steady increase.
Another interesting part of this poll is how many races are getting closer. Most of the races that are heating up are in states where a Republican currently holds the seat. Missouri and Arizona are two that are showing real potential. In Arizona, John Kyl is down to only a five point lead and that lead has been diminishing over the past couple of months. Missouri is even closer where Jim Talent is feeling the heat with only a 2.9% lead, well with in the MOE.
Virginia is another state in which the Democratic challenger is gaining ground. While George Allen still enjoys a 7 point lead, challenger James Webb has narrowed that margin by five points in the past two months. This could turn into a close battle in the next few months.
So for those of you keeping tally, currently the Republicans have 55 seats and the democrats have 44. If these races I have highlighted ends up going blue then the Democrats will take back control of Senate by one seat. We still have seven months to go and that is a life time in politics so much could change. Republicans are taking harder hits in the polls lately so hopefully things will change for the bluer.
Now on to the Gubernatorial race (represented by this graphic).
The following seven states are looking to turn from red to blue this year; Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio (Yeah baby). There are currently two states which look like they could go from blue to red, those are Wisconsin and Iowa.
It appears that more people on the state level are fed up with Republicans mismanagement of things. This should really worry Bush as losing one or both house of Congress would strike a serious blow to his second term, losing numerous key states would be a devastating blow.
This will be the last one of these polls before the final stage is set. The next one will appear at the end of May and by that time all primaries will be over and things can really change then. This is certain to be a very interesting year in politics and now that the Democrats are working to get a more unified message out, it could easily become a great year in politics and for our nation.