LAT: Democrats Take Aim at Red State Senate Seats

[DeepModem Mom]

Democrats Aim at the Red
Rural areas of Missouri and other states in Bush country could hold the key to a Senate turnover.
By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
October 11, 2006

....To gain the (Senate) majority, Democrats must win at least four, and maybe more, GOP-held seats in red states....Recent polls have buoyed their hopes. Democrats are running about even with or slightly ahead of Republicans in each of the hotly contested red-state Senate races except Arizona's....

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Democrats need a net gain of six seats to win the Senate. Only two of their top targets this year are Republicans in states that the Democratic presidential candidates carried in 2000 and 2004: Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Red states are home to all of the other targets: Sens. Mike DeWine in Ohio, Conrad Burns in Montana, George Allen in Virginia and Jon Kyl in Arizona, as well as Talent in Missouri and a seat being vacated in Tennessee....

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In most of these contests, Democrats express confidence that antipathy toward Bush will spark a large turnout by their core voters. They also believe that concern about the Iraq war — as well as anger over other matters, capped by the Foley scandal — will improve their showing among relatively well-off, socially moderate suburban voters.

But in all but one of the key red-state Senate races, rural voters constitute a larger share of the population than they do nationally (Arizona is the exception). And that means that to gain Senate seats, Democrats need to minimize the GOP edge among culturally conservative exurban and rural voters....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-redstates11oct11,0,6903566,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[yellowcanine]

1. Doable - hold New Jersey, turnovers in RI, PA, OH, MT, MO, and grab

the open seat in TN. VA is icing on the cake if it happens. Right now I would say the odds are 50/50 and moving in the Dem direction. If the scandals depress Pubbie turnout even a little it will happen.