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| State of the states: key races to watch in America's midterm elections | State of the states: key races to watch in America's midterm elections |
| (about 7 hours later) | |
| As American voters head to the polls on Tuesday, Guardian reporters are in the key states that may tip balance of power in the US Senate in favour of the Republicans. Here are their guides to the races that will decide how the political wind will blow for the rest of Barack Obama’s term in office. | |
| North Carolina | North Carolina |
| Candidates: Kay Hagan (Democrat, incumbent) vs Thom Tillis (Republican) | Candidates: Kay Hagan (Democrat, incumbent) vs Thom Tillis (Republican) |
| Polling: Most polls have Hagan up, but only by a whisker. The Real Clear Politics poll of polls has Hagan on 45% and Tillis on 44%: that’s close enough for there to be plenty of room for surprises, depending on which candidate proves more successful at getting out the vote. There have already been more than 1 million early votes cast – up on 2010 – with 48% cast by Democrats and 32% by Republicans. That figure should be treated with caution, though, as Democrats are traditionally better represented among early voters. | Polling: Most polls have Hagan up, but only by a whisker. The Real Clear Politics poll of polls has Hagan on 45% and Tillis on 44%: that’s close enough for there to be plenty of room for surprises, depending on which candidate proves more successful at getting out the vote. There have already been more than 1 million early votes cast – up on 2010 – with 48% cast by Democrats and 32% by Republicans. That figure should be treated with caution, though, as Democrats are traditionally better represented among early voters. |
| State of the state: The most striking fact about this election has been its cost – at well over $100m, it is the most expensive race for a US senate seat in history, with money being thrown at it both directly by the candidates and by outside interest groups on both sides. The second most striking fact is that the campaign has had virtually nothing to do with Kay Hagan or with Thom Tillis – it has been fought almost exclusively as a referendum on the records of bigger fish. | State of the state: The most striking fact about this election has been its cost – at well over $100m, it is the most expensive race for a US senate seat in history, with money being thrown at it both directly by the candidates and by outside interest groups on both sides. The second most striking fact is that the campaign has had virtually nothing to do with Kay Hagan or with Thom Tillis – it has been fought almost exclusively as a referendum on the records of bigger fish. |
| Tillis has tried to ride on the back of the unpopularity of President Obama in this southern state by portraying Hagan as a lapdog of the White House who has no political willpower of her own. Hagan has tried to ride on the back of the unpopularity of the Republican-controlled North Carolina general assembly by portraying Tillis as the architect of its recent radical conservative policies that have included impeding access to abortion, restricting voting rights, cutting education budgets and rejecting the Medicaid expansion that would have extended healthcare coverage to 500,000 North Carolinians. Ed Pilkington | |
| Kentucky | Kentucky |
| Candidates: Mitch McConnell (R, incumbent) vs Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) | Candidates: Mitch McConnell (R, incumbent) vs Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) |
| Polling: The Real Clear Politics average has McConnell up by 7.2 and, though earlier polling showed Grimes well within the margin of error, polls released over the weekend didn’t trend Grimes’s way. | Polling: The Real Clear Politics average has McConnell up by 7.2 and, though earlier polling showed Grimes well within the margin of error, polls released over the weekend didn’t trend Grimes’s way. |
| State of the state: If (or, as increasingly seems likely, when) Republicans take the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell is poised to ascend to majority leader and wield significant, though not filibuster- or veto-proof, power over the legislative agenda – that is, unless Grimes knocks him out of the Senate entirely. The outcome is heavily weighted in McConnell’s favour, but the Grimes campaign is at least publicly holding out hope that heavier-than-expected voter turnout on Tuesday (which tends to favour Democrats) could tilt the race her way. (County clerks in the state are less optimistic.) | |
| McConnell continues to paint the race as a referendum on Obama’s presidency – Obama lost the state by almost 23 points in 2012 and his most recent approval rating in Kentucky is only 30%. Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, says the race is about McConnell’s opposition to policies that would help Kentucky’s working poor, including a minimum wage increase, equal pay for women, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act – which would shut down Kentucky’s newly popular healthcare exchange Kynect – and his inability or unwillingness to bring home pork barrel spending (the nearly $3bn the state just somehow ended up with after McConnell ended the government shutdown in 2013 notwithstanding). | McConnell continues to paint the race as a referendum on Obama’s presidency – Obama lost the state by almost 23 points in 2012 and his most recent approval rating in Kentucky is only 30%. Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, says the race is about McConnell’s opposition to policies that would help Kentucky’s working poor, including a minimum wage increase, equal pay for women, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act – which would shut down Kentucky’s newly popular healthcare exchange Kynect – and his inability or unwillingness to bring home pork barrel spending (the nearly $3bn the state just somehow ended up with after McConnell ended the government shutdown in 2013 notwithstanding). |
| The airwaves have been flooded with political ads, courtesy of the $80m the two candidates and the various Super Pacs have spent in the state, a number that doesn’t include all the third-party spending on so-called “issue ads” that don’t explicitly encourage voting for a candidate. The outside spending has even become its own campaign issue, as Grimes sought to link McConnell with the notorious Koch brothers (a cause McConnell only helped with his June speech to a Koch brothers funded group in which he promised to not take up legislation on the minimum wage, equal pay or student loan reform) and accuse him of “selling out to the highest bidder”. | |
| Then there’s Grimes’s father, Jerry Lundergan: a self-made millionaire and two-time state Democratic party chair whose early support of then governor Bill Clinton’s presidential aspirations cemented the two families’ friendships – Lundergan’s catering company even catered Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. That friendship resulted in two visits to the state by Hillary Clinton and four by Bill Clinton (separately), all with the intention of boosting voter turnout to push Grimes over the finish line. | |
| But policy and Obama aside, the real issue is whether the majority of people who turn out on Monday think it’s time to “Ditch Mitch” after 30 years: McConnell’s approval rating in the state was only barely higher than Obama’s in February and it’s still under 40%. (He did manage to torpedo Grimes’s approval rating in the course of the campaign, though.) As much as McConnell wants it to be a referendum on Obama, it’s probably a referendum on McConnell – and it’s one it’s likely he’ll win. Megan Carpentier | |
| Iowa | Iowa |
| Candidates: Joni Ernst (Republican) and Bruce Braley (Democrat) | Candidates: Joni Ernst (Republican) and Bruce Braley (Democrat) |
| Polling: Real Clear Politics average gives Ernst a 1.4-point edge, making it a toss-up. Almost all polls within margin of error, save Des Moines Register’s, which gave Ernst a seven-point lead. | |
| Both sides say the road to a Senate majority passes through Iowa, a bellwether. For Democrats, especially, it’s a must-win. | Both sides say the road to a Senate majority passes through Iowa, a bellwether. For Democrats, especially, it’s a must-win. |
| State of the state: A GOP victory would mint a new political star. Ernst, just 44, a self-described hog-castrating farm girl and national guard lieutenant colonel, is popular with the Tea Party as well as mainstream Republican grandees. Democrats call her a corn-belt Sarah Palin. | |
| Braley, 56, a trial lawyer, was expecting a smoother path to succeed Senator Tom Harkins, a Democrat, who is retiring. Shot himself in the foot by appearing to insult Iowa farmers. Hopes the Democrats’ dwindling but still significant ground-game advantage will save him. | Braley, 56, a trial lawyer, was expecting a smoother path to succeed Senator Tom Harkins, a Democrat, who is retiring. Shot himself in the foot by appearing to insult Iowa farmers. Hopes the Democrats’ dwindling but still significant ground-game advantage will save him. |
| Braley can be stiff in person and on stage – someone should tell him to stop rifling James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend lyrics – but he exudes a better grasp of policy issues than Ernst, who is often sketchy on details. | |
| One quirk: Iowa’s economy is humming – it’s got the country’s fourth-fastest personal income growth rate – but Democrats still treat President Obama as Voldemort. They don’t name him. | One quirk: Iowa’s economy is humming – it’s got the country’s fourth-fastest personal income growth rate – but Democrats still treat President Obama as Voldemort. They don’t name him. |
| Despite her famous “let’s make ’em squeal” ad, the pork-cutter is not quite the Palinesque radical Democrats depict. She has softened and blurred previous statements assailing federal authority and labelling President Obama a “dictator”. Her style is less combative and she uses folksy charm to disarm critics. But Ernst would probably prove a tenacious opponent of abortion rights, Obamacare, gun restrictions, the minimum wage and climate change policies. | |
| If that scares you, ponder this: she’s just 44 and once elected could become an entrenched incumbent for decades. Rory Carroll | If that scares you, ponder this: she’s just 44 and once elected could become an entrenched incumbent for decades. Rory Carroll |
| Colorado | Colorado |
| Candidates: Mark Udall (D, incumbent) v Cory Gardner (R) | Candidates: Mark Udall (D, incumbent) v Cory Gardner (R) |
| Polling: Udall has been trailing Gardner by a few points for weeks, but the gap has narrowed in recent days. | Polling: Udall has been trailing Gardner by a few points for weeks, but the gap has narrowed in recent days. |
| State of the state: If election forecasters are right, Colorado may lay claim to being the bullseye in the election map. Its position on the list of states most likely to switch from Democratic to Republican senators means it could end up as the race that tips the balance, giving the GOP the majority power in the Senate. Colorado is as much a battleground state in Senate races as it is in presidential nominations, with roughly a third registered Democrats, Republicans and independents. Rallying supporters at a phone bank on the eve of voting on Monday, Gardner, a congressman, called Colorado the “tip of the spear, the fulcrum of power”. But the truth is that neither side is confident about the outcome of a bitter, expensive race that has been dominated by negative TV ads. | |
| In Gardner, Republicans have a smooth-talking political operator whose decision to challenge Udall transformed the Colorado into a competitive contest. Abandoning previous rightwing positions, Gardner has aggressively pursued swing voters and turned Colorado, a state Democrats did not expect to defend earlier this year, into one they fear they may now lose. Udall is less slick, damaged by association with Barack Obama, and has been criticised for running a single-issue campaign that focused on his opponent’s position on women’s reproductive rights. But he enjoys the advantage of incumbency and a patrician-like reputation in Colorado. | In Gardner, Republicans have a smooth-talking political operator whose decision to challenge Udall transformed the Colorado into a competitive contest. Abandoning previous rightwing positions, Gardner has aggressively pursued swing voters and turned Colorado, a state Democrats did not expect to defend earlier this year, into one they fear they may now lose. Udall is less slick, damaged by association with Barack Obama, and has been criticised for running a single-issue campaign that focused on his opponent’s position on women’s reproductive rights. But he enjoys the advantage of incumbency and a patrician-like reputation in Colorado. |
| Also, Democrats have a secret weapon. Colorado is the birthplace of the “Bannock Street Project”, a now nationwide get-the-vote-out strategy envied by Republicans. It gave the state’s junior Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, the edge in the last midterm election, in 2010, when he was also trailing in the polls. Democrats are seeking to repeat history and have optimistically noted a surge in ballots from young and first-time voters that could upend a Republican advantage and tip the election in Udall’s favour. That effort will be stymied if there is a low turnout among Colorado’s large block of Hispanic voters. If they vote, Latinos will mostly support the Democratic senator; but local party strategists are worried that Barack Obama’s decision to postpone executive on immigration reform will deflate Hispanic turnout. Paul Lewis | |
| New Hampshire | New Hampshire |
| Candidates: Jeanne Shaheen (D, incumbent) and Scott Brown (R) | Candidates: Jeanne Shaheen (D, incumbent) and Scott Brown (R) |
| Polling: A dead heat. Brown’s support has risen steadily in recent months, reducing a 10-point lead that Shaheen held as recently as 20 August to less than a percentage point. | |
| State of the state: Democrats are scrambling to hold on to their one US Senate seat for this New England bellwether state and to protect Shaheen, a former New Hampshire governor, one of 20 women in the upper chamber and a member of America’s only all-female congressional delegation. | State of the state: Democrats are scrambling to hold on to their one US Senate seat for this New England bellwether state and to protect Shaheen, a former New Hampshire governor, one of 20 women in the upper chamber and a member of America’s only all-female congressional delegation. |
| Brown, meanwhile, is seeking to become the first person in 135 years to have represented two different states in the Senate. He held one of Massachusetts’s seats after winning a special election in 2010, before being defeated by Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2012. | Brown, meanwhile, is seeking to become the first person in 135 years to have represented two different states in the Senate. He held one of Massachusetts’s seats after winning a special election in 2010, before being defeated by Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2012. |
| Shaheen is not particularly unpopular but has been dragged down by President Obama, whose approval rating stands at only 37% in a state that elected him twice, and the White House’s handling of several national issues. Brown is accused of being an opportunistic carpetbagger. | Shaheen is not particularly unpopular but has been dragged down by President Obama, whose approval rating stands at only 37% in a state that elected him twice, and the White House’s handling of several national issues. Brown is accused of being an opportunistic carpetbagger. |
| Brown has relentlessly attacked Shaheen as having “voted with Obama more than 99% of the time”. He has also hyped up the threats of the Ebola virus, the Islamic State (Isis) and the security of America’s southern border – occasionally all at once. | Brown has relentlessly attacked Shaheen as having “voted with Obama more than 99% of the time”. He has also hyped up the threats of the Ebola virus, the Islamic State (Isis) and the security of America’s southern border – occasionally all at once. |
| Shaheen has responded with pages from Obama’s 2012 playbook against Mitt Romney, accusing Brown of being connected to the outsourcing of American jobs and in hock to oil tycoons. | Shaheen has responded with pages from Obama’s 2012 playbook against Mitt Romney, accusing Brown of being connected to the outsourcing of American jobs and in hock to oil tycoons. |
| Such attacks have not, however, done so much damage to Brown, who styles himself as a truck-driving, guitar-playing everyman and seems to thrive in retail politics – all in stark contrast to the multimillionaire Romney in 2012. Yet Democrats believe they still hold a narrow advantage. Jon Swaine |