Projected New Senate:     49 Democrats     51 Republicans    

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Sep. 11	New polls:	AZ CT FL MI MN MO NJ NM NV NY OH PA TN TX VA WA WI
	Pickups:	Montana New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island Virginia

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News from the Votemaster

Let's have 1 minute of silence in memory of the people who died on Sept. 11, 2001.

If you are new to the site today, click on 'Previous report' go to back at least a few days in time, at least until Sept. 8. I have had some interesting stories recently.

Zogby released a whole slew of new interactive polls today. These are done online, with a random sample of the pollees called as a check. Despite many people's misgivings about online polls, Zogby has an excellent track record, in part because telephone polls also have their share of problems, as discussed in the Polling-FAQ listed above. The list of new polls is given just below the map every day. Put your mouse on the state to see the poll. Click on the state or the entry in the "New polls" list for the polling history of the state.

In many of the states, the results confirm previous results. These include solid Democratic leads in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as solid Republican leads in Arizona, Nevada,and Texas. So let us look at the remaining states.

Connecticut is so Democratic that the Republican party has totally abandoned its own candidates, Schlesinger/Gold, and is putting effort into electing the lesser of two evils (from their point of view), Joe Lieberman. While Lieberman has provided aid and comfort to the President on the war, on domestic issues, he is clearly a Democrat, as evidenced by the ratings of the senators discussed Friday . Zogby didn't even ask Connecticut voters about Schlesinger/Gold, so I put a 0 in there for him for lack of any data.

Missouri is crucial to controlling the Senate, and incumbent Jim Talent (R-MO) is holding a narrow lead there, 49% to 45%, over state auditor, Claire McCaskill. Keep an eye on this race.

New Jersey is normally reliably Democratic, but state senator Tom Kean, Jr., son of popular governor, Tom Kean, Sr., is doing very well against appointed senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ). They are now exactly tied at 40% each. One of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the country is the Latino population, and their presence is being felt in politics. Menendez is the third Latino senator, the others being Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Mel Martinez (R-FL).

Virginia never ceases to amaze me. A month ago, Sen. George Allen (R-VA) was ahead of former Reagan Navy Secretary turned Democrat Jim Webb by 15%. Allen could basically ignore the campaign and concentrate on his 2008 presidential race. One dirty word and he now trails Webb by 7 percentage points, 50% to 43%. In case you were on vacation for the past month and missed all the news, at a rally on Aug. 11, Allen called a Indian-American Webb volunteer cameraman a "macaca," which is a kind of monkey and welcomed him to America. The latter was hardly necessary because the volunteer was born in Virginia and is a U.S. citizen. This remark, coupled with Allen's well-known love of the confederate flag, has cause him to drop more than 20 points in a month, so we have recategorized it from leans Republican to tossup.

Due to popular request, the pop-up boxes on the map now indicate the incumbent with a small asterisk.

While some people may have been working on the house during the weekend, I have been working on the House. I have several House related pages now, all of which are linked to the More election data page on the menu below the map. They are:

A couple of notes. The hot 40 are the ones I think are worth watching. They might flip, especially if there is a strong Democratic tide. In some cases the incumbent barely won last time or it is an open seat or the incumbent has been embroiled in a scandal. The fullhouse.html page lists the names of the candidates in all 435 races (except where there is no candidate, of course). It also has links to maps of every Congressional district. Thus if you are dying to know where the much discussed CT-05 or TX-22 is, you can find out here. The percentage of the vote the incumbent got in 2004 is also given as a measure of volatility. Ultimately, I would like to link all the names to the candidates entries in the Wikipedia . In fact, I already have a version with links, but I am going to wait until after all of Tuesday's primaries to post it.

Unfortunately, not every House candidate has a Wikipedia page. Could you please check if both candidates in your Congressional district have them, and if not, make them yourself? Anybody can make a Wikipedia page. It should contain verifiable, factual information, such as the candidate's early life, education, jobs before entering politics, and political career. Even a very short entry is better than no entry. Don't put in opinions; the editors will remove the entry. Thus don't say: "John Smith is a tool of the rich," but you can say "John Smith voted for all 18 tax cut bills that came to a vote in the 109th Congress." You can find the biographical information on the candidate's campaign page. Just type the name to Google. Here are a couple of examples.

All Senate candidates have Wikipedia entries, in part because I asked someone to fill in the missing ones. Entries should be of the form John_Smith, but if the entry is already taken, you can use John_F._Smith or John_Smith_%28politician%29. Thanks for the help.

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