Crystal Ball Gazing

Larry J. Sabato, while recognizing the tightening of the generic ballot still predicts the Democrats will take control of both the Senate and the House.

THE SENATE: +6 Dems = 51D, 49R
Despite hard-fought campaigning in every battleground state up until the very end, the overall Senate picture has not changed much since our Thursday assessment. The Crystal Ball still sees 4, 5 or 6 seats going to the Democrats, resting party control of the Senate squarely on the edge of the butter knife.

THE HOUSE: +29 Dems = 232D, 203R
The Crystal Ball believes that Democrats will likely win more than enough races to take control (+25 to 33), and could see even larger gains if a large wave crashes even deeply red territory. By the same token, Democrats may end up leaving several of their 2nd or 3rd tier candidates stranded on 2nd or 3rd base with 47 or 48 percent of the vote on Election Night. We are betting that the toss-ups split evenly between the parties, 18 apiece. When we add up all of our predictions, Democrats gain 29 seats in the House to command the same size majority the GOP currently holds, 232-203.

Perhaps he's not that far off, Josh Marshall reports:

Weird. That's not something I would have expected. Gallup's numbers usually aren't that friendly to Dems, on the spectrum of national polls (not a scientific study, just my experience of recent cycles). But Gallup's state by state numbers are out on several big senate races. And they show little or none of the tightening you see in the Mason-Dixon numbers.

Let's do a quick run-down.

MO McCaskill (D) 49%, Talent (R) 45%
MT Tester (D) 50%, Burns (R) 41%
NJ Menendez (D) 50%, Kean (R) 40%
RI Whitehouse (D) 48%, Chafee (R) 45%
TN Corker (R) 49%, Ford (D) 46%
VA Allen (R) 49%, Webb (D) 46%

I guess we will just have to see what Diebold has to say.

Update
Here is yet another indication that Sabato may be right.
Poll: Bush approval rating dips to 35 percent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's popularity has dipped to 35 percent, according to a new CNN poll, with 41 percent of likely voters saying their disapproval of his performance will affect their vote in Tuesday's elections for control of Congress.

Sixty-one percent of the 1,008 adult Americans who responded to the Opinion Research Corp. poll said they disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job as president, according to the survey. The poll was conducted by telephone Friday through Sunday.

This finding represents a two-point decline in Bush's approval rating compared with a CNN poll conducted a week earlier. The decline is within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The new approval rating is four points lower than a survey taken two weeks ago.

Is Bush's stumping for Republicans actually hurting the cause?