National

Above you will see all my predictions for the 21 Senate races to be decided this Tuesday. Nine races are basically decided. Six Senators are unopposed completely: Senators Margaret Rose Henry, Bob Marshall, Dave McBride, Karen Peterson, Bethany Hall Long, and Brian Bushweller. Senators Colin Bonini, Harris McDowell, and Patti Blevins only have third party opposition, and all three will win easily. So we are already at 8 Democrats, and 1 Republican. 11 seats are needed for a majority. For the Dems, that means three to go.

Team Romney is already offering excuses for their upcoming loss on Tuesday. And some campaign insiders are in full CYA mode in speaking on the record to Politico saying that Romney's first choice for Vice President was Chris Christie, rather than Paul Ryan. I suppose they could also be trying to latch onto Christie's recent bipartisan and excellent performance during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but instead it looks like a tell tale sign of campaign already in the post mortem mode. Speaking of Sandy:

Campaign sources concede superstorm Sandy stalled Romney's momentum. For eight straight days, polls showed him picking up support. The campaign's internal polling, which is using different turnout models than most public polls, had him on solid ground in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa. He had a slight lead or was tied in Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin and was in striking distance in Pennsylvania, a state Republicans hadn't won since Ronald Reagan in 1984. ... But then came something very big: a natural disaster that left a path of death and destruction on the East Coast. Suddenly, there was little talk about small things.

Yeah, I would like to see what the Romney campaign's turnout model is. I suppose they are like most of the right wing and assume that a 2010 electorate will show up, rather than a presidential year electorate. What morons.

We have two conflicting polls out of Florida. One has Obama leading 49-47. The other has Romney winning 51-45. That is a pretty wide disparity. One of the pollsters is wrong. Regardless, the average of the two gives Romney a slim 2 point lead, and so the state moves back to the pink zone. Meanwhile, Obama's lead in Ohio is growing ever larger.

I think we are looking at our final map here, folks. Obama has come on in Florida, but it is still possible that Romney can win that state. In fact, I think Nate Silver gives the odds to Romney there. Meanwhile, it is also possible that Obama can win in North Carolina, but that is much less likely that Romney winning Florida. Why am I so confident on Obama winning Florida, you ask? Yesterday, a Democratic operative sent the Tampa Bay Times some data on the early vote in Florida so far "to make the point that President Obama is crushing Mitt Romney when it comes to banking the votes of sporadic and infrequent voters before election day."

"So far more than 3 million Floridians have cast a ballot by absentee, mail-in ballot or in-person early vote ballot. Democrats lead by more than 60,000 votes, but it's the unlikely voter numbers that jump out: Of the nearly 414,000 Floridians who did not vote in the last three general elections, Democrats have an advantage of more than 53,000 votes. Of the more than 482,000 Floridians who have only voted in one of the last three general elections, Democrats lead by more than 77,000 -- a total of more than 132,000."

According to the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Yang, “[i]f enough people see it, this is the photo that singlehandedly re-elects Barack Obama.”

In recent years I have voluntarily applied as an intervener in several cases involving DP&L rate increase requests filed before the Public Service Commission. The process itself is cumbersome and complex and requires resources and time that is not always available to me. Unfortunately the reality is that the public, the ratepayers’, and my constituents’ interests have been inadequately represented in many of these proceedings and my obligation and responsibility as an elected public servant is to ensure some semblance of fairness in the discussions and decisions rendered. The most recent filing in which I have intervener status is identified as PSC Docket # 11-528 and involves a multi-pronged request for rate increases which includes but is not exclusive to recovery of depreciation values by Delmarva for obsolete meters that have been replaced with “smart-meters” for Delmarva residential customers. I have continuously and strongly objected to any ratepayer funding for new technology costs such as advanced metering purchase and installation since the provable economic benefit from these devices rests solely with the utility

And now for our Senate Forecast. I imagine we will do one more of these on Monday. As the polls stand now, the Democrats will pick up a net 1 seat, increasing their total to 54 seats (52 actual Democrats, and 2 Independents caucusing with the Democrats). The Democrats will pick up, or take away from the Republicans, the Senate seats in Massachusetts, Indiana and Maine. The Republicans will win seats in North Dakota and Nebraska, according to recent polling. Though it is not out of the realm of possibility that the Democrats can retain both of those seats. Heidi Heitkamp has led in recent polling in North Dakota, and Bob Kerrey just got the endorsement of Chuck Hagel, and recent polling before the Fischer internal had the race tightening significantly. If they do win both, the Democrats will hold 56 seats. Impressive feat in a year that Republicans were suppose to retake the majority.

Nate Cohn: "Absent a possible but unlikely last-minute shift in the polls between now and Election Day, Romney's chances will come down to the low but existent risk that the polls are and have been completely wrong. As Senators Harry Reid and Michael Bennet can attest, the polls have been wrong before and could be wrong again. But the Romney campaign's revival of August's welfare attack and their recent Jeep outsourcing antics suggest that Boston's numbers don't show something too different, while Chicago has unwaveringly maintained that they hold a modest and clear lead in Ohio. With Obama near 49 percent and just six days to go before the polls close, Romney's window for a comeback is getting vanishingly narrow." Meanwhile, 78% rate the President's response to Hurricane Sandy as excellent or good, while 8% view it negatively. It's good press for the President, and in fact it is good governance, but I doubt it moves the polls that much. The polls were already moving in the President's way before the Hurricane struck, both nationally and in the battleground states. We once again have a lot of polls today. The only major change is moving North Carolina back to a Tied status, from LEAN ROMNEY.