2010

Now that 2010 is here, the political scene for the midterm elections is starting to take shape.  At this point, I don't see how the Democrats can do much better than holding onto a majority in the Senate and the House, and I don't mean that to be pessimistic.  If a Senate with 60 members caucusing with the Democrats couldn't get Health Care Reform passed by now, then it doesn't really matter that much whether they have 51 or 60. 

With that in mind, I look to FiveThirtyEight.com to get reliable information about where the races stand. 
Nate Silver is the brains behind FiveThirtyEight and he comes from an unusual background compared to most other political analysts.  He's a baseball statistician and he was the brains behind a remarkable statistical analysis model that worked quite well at predicting the performace of individual players.  He has applied that statistical accumen to predicting political races by analyzing polling, and he was incredibly accurate in predicting the 2008 Presidential election.  Here's what he has to say about the Senate races in 2010:

Right now, the program is showing that Democrats will retain an average of 54.7 seats in the 112th Congress. The distribution, however, is slightly asymmetrical, so the median number is 54, and the modal number is 53.
And things could, potentially, get a whole lot worse than that; the program recognizes that the outcome of the different races are correlated based on changes in the national environment. Between the surprise in Massachusetts, and races like California and Indiana which are potentially coming into play, there's about a 6-7 percent chance that Republicans could actually take control of the Senate, and another 6 percent chance or so that they could wind up with a 50-50 split. On the other hand, there's still a 7-8 percent chance that the Democrats could regain their 60th seat if the national environment shifts back in their direction.