2010 Senate Swing State Partisan Enthusiasm Gap

By Fester:

Now and until roughly the 4th of July, the institutional electoral tables are set.  Incumbents decide whether or not they want to run for re-election, challengers assess their situation, primaries are cleared if possible, top notch paid and volunteer talent is contacted and some are contracted, and fundraising starts.  Individual candidates can afford a bad pre-season and bull their way through a primary and general election, but the pre-season is a good metric of partisan intensity and the early winds.

Historically, the off-year election is not a bad year for the opposition party.  The majority party will have a few wins, and a few losses by this point, and races are much easier to localize as there is not half a billion dollars of partisan advertising reminding nominal non-partisans which party they tend to vote for.  Furthermore, the 2010 cycle will see high unemployment, even if there is a large, targeted and effective stimulus package passed in the next couple of months and the Republican Party has been hammered so hard in the past couple of cycles, there are not too many more seats it could lose.  So I was expecting to see more of an early push for the 2010 cycle from the GOP.

There are three swing state Republican Senators who have announced their retirement in Martinez, Bond, and Voinovich.  Two of the three were from Obama states, and Voinovich is from a state where the local GOP is waning while the local Dems are on the rise.  There have been no Democratic Senators who have announced their retirement without promotion.  Only one of the Senators who are taking an Obama Administration job is from a swing state.  Salazar from Colorado faced a Tancredo-ified Colorado GOP, but the state is only a recent Blue-ish state.  New York and Delaware are generically very Democratic states while Illinois usually is one too, although the circus makes it a bit harder to predict.  

Furthermore, the strongest possible Republican recruit that could most likely protect the Florida open seat, is not interested in running.  Jeb Bush has declined and that moves the Florida race from probable Republican retention to a toss-up.  Democrats have not seen that high profile of a recruit turn them down (yet.)

I am just surprised that the Dems are still maintaining the pre-season advantage that they have possessed for the past two cycles.