CA-52 will be competitive for a while given that they put the La Jolla Jews in that district. My mom is actually volunteering for the DeMaio campaign.

CA-52 is sure to be competitive all the way until Election Day. There's no chance of a triage on either side and both want to win it because it's the type of district that'll determine the final national outcome. There are about 15 other districts like it that are going to determine what the swing will be and how large it is. They've been pretty set in stone all year barring a couple of late-arrivals: AZ-01, AZ-02, CA-52, CO-06, FL-02, FL-26, IA-03, NE-02, MI-01, NH-01, NJ-03, NY-11, VA-10, and WV-03. Those are going to be the races that decide things.

The Republicans are starting to signal that they're going to prioritize running up the score in this year's midterms over 2016 and 2018. Winning seats like CA-52 is required to do that.

This post was edited by Pollster on Sep 25 2014 10:46pm

Senate Update:

The name of the game is ad spending. Republicans in particular are starting to sound the alarm over the possibility of running out of money in the final 2 weeks. The blame is falling on big-money outside groups. The GOP is still flush with unprecedented Koch money and Rove's groups are picking up their activity but the party is concerned that other groups aren't helping out. The Kochs started with an unheard-of $40 million ad barrage and have continued to advertise but much of their focus has been on building infrastructure in critical states. Republicans have long trailed Democrats in this area but the Kochs are ponying up the money to try to close the gap moving forward. Early returns, in NC at least, are not very promising. [See: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/09/25/4181779_voters-mailed-incorrect-information.html?sp=/99/102/105/&rh=1]. Republicans were going to have to invest in this critical resource one of these years but there might be some growing pains.

The ad spending in September tells us a lot about the state of play. This graph breaks down the activity:



Many things on the graph gel nicely with what we already know, including how the GOP's spending advantage in AK/AR/CO/IA helped their candidates pull even or slightly ahead in those races. We can also see why the GOP is scrambling ferociously to save KS: Orman controlled 80% of the spending. An important note on GA and KY: the Democrats had a big advantage (GA) and reached parity (KY) on the strength of campaign spending alone; allied outside and committee groups aren't spending here. That could be really significant in the end because the Democrats drew significant GOP resources into races they were always underdogs in.

This is where things stand, at present, for ad time reserved for the final six weeks:



You can see why (and where) the GOP is concerned. The massive $9 million reservation made by the DSCC for NC gives Kay Hagan a massive advantage the rest of the way. Expect a lot of the late-buy GOP money to go here to try to push the numbers as far towards parity as they can be. The Democrats also flip the edge in IA/CO back to their favor. It's a good bet that the GOP will make expensive late-stage buys here, too. Parity in AK/AR means that the races will be decided by GOTV and the ground game unless one party decides to mortgage future (or other) races to try to buy a late edge here. The massive advantage in GA is still solely the work of Nunn's campaign, but it's apparent that the Democrats are not prioritizing KY as their will be no support for Grimes' campaign the rest of the way.

LA is a special case as I have outlined many times. The Democrats have a massive advantage from now until Election Day, but the GOP has stockpiled money for the eventual runoff. Each party is trying to accomplish something different in that race, hence the big disparity.

New Ranges, shift, and cause for movement.

House: D+3 - R+7
Senate: R+1 - R+8 - [Shift: ->] (Many races. See below.)
Governors: D/I +5 - R+1 - [Shift: ->] (Many races. See below.)

Senate: There was a lot of movement in a lot of races over the past two weeks, due to ad-spending advantages for one party or the other in different races. The GOP was able to gain ground in AK, CO, and IA thanks to a polling bump brought on by their edge in the ad wars. These next 2 weeks will tell us a lot, because at present (this WILL change) the Democrats have reserved more ad-time in many of the key races. We've got debates coming up too.

Governors: Races are falling off the board. The Democrats were never able to make NM or SC very competitive for various reasons. IL/HI have drifted slightly towards the Democrats, but the party is still slightly behind in GOP-held MI, WI, GA, and FL. Each of those seats are incredibly valuable and with a near-guaranteed pickup in PA to go with last year's pickup of VA, the Democrats want to snag as many powerful governorships back as they can. Expect to see a bit of small-state trading this year, where the Democrats could pickup states like ME/KS/AK* while the GOP could flip AR/CT. This is all about the big prizes though because governorships are not created equally. The Democrats would love to trade up, so to speak, if losing a governorship in AR/CT/HI meant taking back one in WI/FL/MI/GA.

Double post.

This post was edited by Pollster on Oct 9 2014 07:02pm

New Ranges, shift, and cause for movement.

House: D+1 - R+6 - [Shift: ->] (Triage time. See below.)
Senate: R+1 - R+8 - [Shift: <-] (No range change, but several races moving towards the Democrats)
Governors: D/I +6 - R+1 - [Shift: <-] (IL-GOV, CT-GOV.)

House: A lot is changing, and quickly, with the House playing field because we've reached the point of the cycle where both parties are starting to triage. A more specific update will come later because about 15-20 races have been triaged.

Senate: Terri Lynn Land became the first candidate to be triaged by a party committee in a contested Senate race. The NRSC finally cut her off and is all but conceding that Michigan will stay Democratic (which the rest of us have known for months). Several other races in New Hampshire, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Dakota shifted towards the Democrats in the past two weeks. More details later, but the general takeaway is that more races are becoming competitive rather than falling off the board.

Governors: Vulnerable Democratic governors in Illinois and Connecticut look to be in a stronger position to rise from the dead than they were earlier. Both Pat Quinn and Dan Malloy were slated for defeat earlier in the cycle, which would have offset expected Republican losses in Pennsylvania, Maine, Kansas, and Florida, but these two Democrats are showing some resiliency and may hold on yet. If the Democrats can retain their governors in Hawaii, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Illinois then it's likely that they're going to be on the positive side of the swing next month at least in regards to Governor elections.

Must be why the DSCC triaged KY?

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/220697-dems-pull-plug-on-kentucky-ads

Money moves around a great deal over the course of three weeks in a campaign, especially during the final stretch. The reality is that the ad reservations are a chess game, and the Democrats were able to force Republican outside groups to continue sinking tens of millions of dollars into Kentucky that they'd rather be spending in Georgia, Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, and Colorado by taking advantage of a little late-breaking momentum for Grimes in Kentucky. By increasing their own reservation from $400,000 to $1.4 million, the DSCC demanded about 4x as much in contributions from the GOP to a seat that is low on the Democrats' priority list anyway.

Though the DSCC has not triaged Kentucky in the traditional sense. Grimes is close to the saturation point (if not there already), and the DSCC as a de facto incumbent support committee has other priorities.

Grimes didn't have any momentum, and the article clearly noted the DSCC wasn't reserving anything.

Yes, she did. The most important development in the last month was the recent Bluegrass poll putting her back into a narrow lead, reversing the previous trend of two narrow McConnell leads in the most trustworthy polling report in the state. The timing was a crucial blow to McConnell because it corroborated and confirmed the release of a Mellman survey earlier in the week that also gave Grimes a narrow lead, breaking a long cycle of McConnell polling leads that persisted for weeks. The race had moved towards him over the summer and into the fall, but it shot back towards Grimes over the span of a favorable two weeks.

Again, the DSCC upped their early ad reservation from $400,000 to $1.4 million, however it further shifted money again and that's why at present there's none slated for the final three weeks in Kentucky. That's what happens. Money is moved around constantly over the final weeks and in a frenzy. There was very clearly a momentum shift in the state, but there's cause to believe there will be a reversion to the mean over the final few weeks as the DSCC, Senate Majority Pac, and other Democratic committees and Super PACs move on to other races after coaxing Republican groups into recommitting in Kentucky.

Edit: Most of this is covered here [See: http://www.whas11.com/community/blogs/political-blog/Grimes-now-leads-McConnell-in-barnburner-Kentucky-Senate-race-278242261.html], which I thought was posted earlier in the thread as it was a serious development.

This post was edited by Pollster on Oct 14 2014 08:59pm