Democrats’ Odds of Retaining Senate Improve

By NATE SILVER, NYT

When we last took an overview of Senate races in December, Republicans appeared to be slight favorites to take control from Democrats, with a net gain of four to five seats representing the most likely outcome.

Since then, however, Republican fortunes have diminished somewhat because of problems with the quality of some candidates and key retirements. Although Republicans are most likely to gain seats on balance because Democrats have considerably more incumbents up for re-election, the question of whether the Republicans will win enough to gain control now appears to be closer to a tossup. In fact, the outcome may depend on who wins the presidential election, as well as whether an independent Senate candidate who is favored in Maine will caucus with the Democrats.

The table below contains the FiveThirtyEight estimates of the probability of victory for each party in the 33 Senate seats to be contested this November. These forecasts, although they are informed by polling and other objective measures, are ultimately reflections of my best judgments and also account for “intangible” factors like candidate quality and the partisan orientation of the state. (We traditionally switch over to purely tangible factors in the summer, once polling becomes more robust and we post the official forecast model for the Senate.)

(More here.)