Still, a 46% approval rating only leaves you vunerable if you are from a fairly competitive state, or a state dominated by the other party. Given that Burn’s party is very strong in Montana (although Democratic incumbents do manage to get re-elected), I suspect a fair number of Republicans who don’t like him will pull the lever for him anyway and put him over the top.

I live in California, and I’ve watched this dynamic in reverse on numerous occasions. In 2002, Davis’s support from Democratic voters put him over the top, despite a 25% approval rating (he got thrown out in a recall, but that’s another story), and in 1998 Boxer was re-elected to the US Senate with an approval rating lower than Burns’s current total.

If your looking for another site with election predictions, check http://electionpredictions.blogspot.com . That is my site, and I have a race rating for all Senate, House, and Governorships for 2006.

It should be noted that in 2008 the Republicans will be defending far more seats (23, I think) than in this cycle (just 16). Unless the Republicans nominate a very popular candidate with significant coattails, a few senate seat losses in ’08 are probably very likely — even if they win the white house (remember 2000). If the Democrats manage to pick up 3-4 senate seats, they will be well positioned to take over in 2008, at least temporarily. In order to keep the Senate out of reach for the Democrats, the Republicans will need to break even in this election cycle, which will be very difficult with Santorum and Chafee looking as vunerable as they currently do.

The Abramoff stuff has the potential to throw a monkey wrench into everything, but I don’t think it’s because of the potential of indictments. Americans are used to discovering politicians have their hand in the cookie jar, and from what we’ve been hearing, it looks like this is a bipartisan mess, so I don’t think that will have a huge impact (except in those sirectly affected districts).

The sleeper effect may be retirements. A fair number of incumbents may escape indictment, but may also know it was a near thing, and decide it’s time to schlep off into the sunset, the way many incumbents did in 1992 and 1994. Incumbency is everything in these races, and if there’s a whole bunch of open seats, I think the Democrats will be smiling.

We’ll see if the electorate deems this business as usual, or something indeed significantly different.

Mark Coffey has a post up on Charlie Cook’s predictions for 2006. Before I read Cooke’s assessment I have to continue to support my prediction that the Reps will pick up 1-3 senate seats this year, further defying historic trends as they …