WASHINGTON — The fight for the Senate has shifted significantly over the past weeks, with fierce races breaking out in states where they were not expected and other contests dimming that were once ablaze with competition.
With less than two months until Election Day, the Senate landscape is both broader and more fluid than it has been in years, with control of the upper chamber now anyone’s guess.
Both parties have seen new opportunities and new challenges, but the net result is that Democrats appear to be in less danger of losing the Senate, while Republicans have a more difficult path to gaining the majority.
Connecticut may be the biggest surprise. Two years after a decisive loss in her first Senate campaign, Republican candidate Linda E. McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, is surging in polls. Wisconsin is also now tilting Republican.
Democrats face blistering advertisements financed by super PACs in states they once thought were secured, and the tight presidential contest in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Nevada are keeping Senate races there closer than anticipated for both parties.
Democrats are now strongly competitive in races for Republican-held seats in Indiana and North Dakota, where the Republican candidates — who were expected to walk away with those races — have exhibited weakness.
“The map is bigger now than I’ve ever seen it at this point in an election,” said J.B. Poersch, a longtime Democratic Senate campaign strategist for Majority PAC.
Republicans need a net gain of four seats to win control of the Senate, but what was once a good bet that they would do so is now a coin toss.
“A year ago, I thought the Republicans were certainly more likely than not to net four seats and win control,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “It increasingly looks like they have to run the table here.”
The New York Times has updated its assessment of the Senate races. Indiana, where the Republican nominee, State Treasurer Richard E. Mourdock, is competing against Rep. Joe Donnelly, has turned from a safe Republican seat to one that leans Republican. Connecticut has moved from a safe Democratic seat to one that leans Democratic, and Wisconsin, which was a tossup, now leans Republican.
Democrats were hoping a tough Republican primary in Wisconsin would beget a Tea Party-aligned conservative who would have trouble winning statewide, as it did in Indiana.
Instead, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush, prevailed while Democratic Rep.
Tammy Baldwin of Madison, the state’s liberal bastion,
is proving to be a tough sell in more conservative parts of the state.
Polls have given Thompson an early lead, and Mitt Romney’s choice of Rep. Paul D. Ryan as his running mate has complicated the Democrats’ campaign,
though Obama’s popularity in the state may help Baldwin.
