Senate Rankings: How high can the Democrats rise?

It’s the first of the month! That means it’s time for our (first) Senate Rankings.

It has been obvious for months that the 2008 Senate cycle would favor Democrats. Even before taking into account the anti-GOP national mood that allowed Democrats to prevail in every close Senate race in 2006 but Tennessee, the raw numbers tell the story: the GOP is defending 22 seats, and the Dems only 12. Add to this the continually deteriorating atmosphere for Republicans, and you get poor fundraising for the NRSC, recruitment failures, and pessimist Republican operatives. The DSCC has been moving aggressively to press its advantage and to expand the playing field to new states. For now, NRSC Chairman Ensign is doing an even worst job than Sen. Dole did in 2005-2006. His fundraising is even worse, and he has failed to recruit top-tier Republican challengers – something Dole had at least done a good job at (Kean in NJ and Steele in MD, who could both have won in an other election cycle).

The rankings reflect this state of affair. The races are ranked from most vulnerable to take-over to safest to the incumbent party – and the top 6 seats are Republican. In fact, there are only 2 Democratic seats (Louisiana and South Dakota) in this list of 15 races! The WaPo quotes a GOP pollster as saying, "It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker.”

It is now too late for Republicans to reverse the situation – their endangered seats can no longer be made safe – but they can still hope to save face if they expand the playing field a bit: Democratic seats in Iowa and Montana have the potential of being competitive, but Republicans have barely made a move to challenge them yet. But this is one of the most important challenges facing the GOP in 2008: It is playing defense in so many states it can afford neither the time nor the money to go on the offensive against Democratic incumbents to at least test their vulnerability, and the NRSC is likely to settle on only challenging Landrieu in Louisiana.

Outlook: Democratic pick-up of 3-6 seats

Prediction: Democrats pick-up a net 5 seats, for a 56-44 majority.

Read the full rankings and detailed explanations for every seat after the jump.