2014 shaping up as a Democrat debacle

Michael Barone:

Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says that Obamacare will be a vote-winner for Democrats in 2014. SenateMajority Leader Harry Reid says the same thing.

Perhaps they really believe that. But the numbers in polls conducted since Oct. 17, when the end of the government shutdown put the spotlight on the rollout of Obamacare, tell a different story.

Democrats currently hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to win a majority there.

This looks to be within reach. Seven Democratic-held seats are up in states carried by Mitt Romney. And four Democratic incumbents are seeking re-election in target states in the 2012 presidential election.

In three Romney states -- Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota -- Democratic incumbents are retiring. The likely Republican nominees, two current House members and a former governor, have been leading by wide margins. These are not gimmes yet, but they probably will be.

Of the four incumbent Democrats running in Romney states, only one, Alaska's Mark Begich, has a statistically significant lead in the most recent public poll. But it was conducted in August.

A Republican poll last weekend in Arkansas found challenger Tom Cotton leading Mark Pryor 48-41. That's a significant difference from pre-Oct. 17 polling showing an even race -- and that's bad news for an incumbent.

The latest Louisiana poll has incumbent Mary Landrieu at 41 percent in the state's all-candidate primary. That's well below the 48 percent she got in an August Democratic poll.
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There is much more.

Barone says that Republicans have a plausible chance of taking 11 Senate seats from the Democrats in 2014 and he quotes other analyst who argue that the GOP could pick up an additional 20 House seats in 2014.  That looks like another shellacking.