Primary In WI Tomorrow: Few Dem. Candidates Possess Early Safe Leads

With 78 days to go, the roster of players in the November 2 Senate elections continue to coalesce, albeit slowly.  The only state with a primary this week is Washington, where Democratic incumbent Patty Murray is expected to handily win the candidacy for her own party.  On the GOP side, Murray will face either former State Senator Dino Rossi or former NFL player Clint Didier.  Polls show her with 5-10 point leads over both candidates.

In addition to looking at the unweighted averages for each race, I've gone ahead and started making projections based on the trajectories of each candidate's polling percentages.  According to these data, only 10 Senate races have numbers where one side or the other has at least 50 percent of the votes. Nine of these races belong to Republicans, and none of these is particularly surprising (AL, AR, GA, ID, IN, IA, LA, ND, OK).  The only state where a Democrat has a similarly comfortable projected lead is Oregon (52.1 percent to 35.1 percent). 

A handful of races have projections approaching the 50 percent mark, including KY (47-38), MO (49-43), and NC (48-38).  Only one state--Connecticut--has similar numbers for the Democrats (49-40). 

Two races are in statistical dead heats (margins of 2 points or less between the candidates):

• Illinois and Wisconsin.  In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias are tied at 40 percent apiece in a fight for the open seat vacated by Pres. Obama's interim successor, Roland Burris.  Burris has opted not to run, in part perhaps because he was appointed to the position by Illinois' former governor, Rod Blagojevich, who is under scrutiny for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat.

• In Wisconsin, where Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold is projected to have a tenuous 1.5 percent lead over his likely Republican challenger, businessman Ron Johnson (39.6 to 38.1 percent).