The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

With eight days to go, new CBS polling finds that three Senate toss-up races are still very much toss-ups.

Tight contests dominate the Senate landscape: In Florida, incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott are tied among likely voters, 46 percent to 46 percent including those who have cast ballots already. Scott, the sitting governor, gets positive marks from voters on his handling of the recent hurricane and benefits from Republicans reporting that they're more likely to vote than the Democrats who haven't already.

Nelson's support, meanwhile, is underpinned by voters who place health care atop their issues list. The Republicans have a favorable map in their effort to hold their Senate majority, and winning two or three of these states would probably put them in strong position to hold it. Democrats would probably need wins in all three to have a good shot at taking the Senate. 

Health care concerns have helped Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to a slight three-point advantage over Republican Martha McSally, 47 percent to 44 percent. Sinema does well with voters who say health care is a very important concern and is also helped by nine percent of Republicans who say they're backing her — it's hardly an overwhelming number, but it could be essential for a Democrat in a Republican-leaning state like Arizona. 

But Republican chances of holding on to their Senate majority – or even adding to it – are helped by the prospect of picking up a seat in Indiana, where Republican Mike Braun leads incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly, 46 percent to 43 percent. In Indiana, where many voters say that agriculture plays a role in their economy, three-quarters of Republicans feel that new tariffs will ultimately lead to better trade deals for the U.S. 

President Trump appears to be a large factor in these states. In all of them, large majorities say their vote for Senate will be either to support or oppose the president.

All three of these races are within the margin of error, so effectively they are all tied, at least using CBS's likely polling model.  Of course, it depends on how accurate that likely polling model is compared to who actually turns out in both early voting and next Tuesday.

CBS is right however that Democrats need to win all three of these races, plus Nevada, to have any chance of taking the Senate.  I continue to have a bad feeling about Heitkamp in North Dakota, but Dems can still get to 51 if they run the rest of the table and Phil Breseden and/or Beto O'Rourke come through.

I will admit however that the odds of that are not exactly favoring the Dems. A 50-50 split may be the best we can hope for, but if we reach that point there could be some horse trading in the lame duck session.  That would give any one single senator a tremendous amount of power. It's happened before, and it ended up a minor disaster for the Dems when it did.

We'll see.