Democrats looking for some good news in congressional races

The tide has turned in recent weeks in congressional races, with a series of good news for Republicans: The Republicans have done good recruiting in New Mexico, while Democrats are not doing well there or in North Carolina. Bob Kerrey is not running in Nebraska, Allen is far behind Collins in Maine, Davis is not running in Virginia Senate and seemed to fall back to the House race, etc...

News this afternoon could potentially open the door to congressional Democrats smiling again. First off, speculation increased that Tom Davis of Virginia was preparing to announce a retirement from the House, as both Roll Call and Robert Novak hinted that such an announcement could be imminent. For the man who two months ago was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat he had been waiting for for years, it is certainly not easy to suddenly find yourself in the House again... Davis retiring would automatically make his race one of the very very top pick-up opportunities for Democrats.

Also noteworthy tonight is the first poll from North Carolina testing Jim Neal. The result is as good as it could possibly have been given that Neal is a total unknown statewide: Elizabeth Dole leads her Democratic challenger 47% to 32%. A 15% gap only is as good news as Democrats can get given the match-up, and the fact that Dole is under 50% does mean that she is very vulnerable. Neal could possibly move those numbers his direction a bit, but he is obviously starting far far behind... and we shall see how much national Democrats are willing to help him. That Chuck Shumer did not manage to get any elected official in this state is really unfathomable.

Finally, Democrats leaked a poll taken over the summer in Tom Feeney's Florida district. Only 23% of voters say Feeney deserves re-election. His approval rating is at 36%. And while he led a match-up with Democrat Kosmas by 20 points, the Democrat was known by only 19% of voters -- with the DCCC putting this list on its targeted seats list, you can expect Kosmas's lack of name-ID to drop and this race to be very competitive.