51 Seats? 55? 65? 79?

How many seats will Republicans pick up?

The 79 seat prediction is a little silly - it involves enhancing Rasmussen's 9-point spread with a 3.4% kicker to represent under-polling conservatives; but Rasmussen is probably polling conservatives just fine -- but the rest of the numbers are pretty possible. Somewhere between 51 and 65 seats, unless something changes.

Dick Morris continues predicting the Senate will flip, too.

Presaging the looming Republican sweep is the shift in the party ratings on various issues. Rasmussen has the Republicans ahead by 49-37 on the economy and 53-37 on healthcare. His likely-voter poll shows GOP leads on every major issue area: national security (49-37), Iraq (47-39), education (43-30), immigration (47-34), Social Security (48-36) and taxes (52-34).

When Republicans are winning issues like education, healthcare and Social Security — normally solidly Democratic issues — a sweep of unimaginable proportions is in the offing.

Question: Why are big-name Republicans giving Charles Schumer a free pass? If Scott Brown can win in Massachusetts, surely the caustic, arrogant, uber-liberal and hyperpartisan Schumer can be beaten.

In another interesting poll, Scott Rassmussen McGoebblesGoering finds that the public thinks that big money contributions pervert our politics. But even more of the public blames a biased media.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of U.S. voters continue to think that media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions, identical to the finding in August 2008.

Thirty-two percent (32%) say big contributions are the bigger problem, but that’s down four points from the previous survey. Thirteen percent (13%) more are not sure.

posted by Ace at 01:49 PM

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