Democrats may pay dearly for Obama's low job approval

In a September 30 post I cited three election models that point to a Republican takeover of the senate and promised to revisit those data. In the original post the Washington Post's Election Lab gave the Republicans a 77% probability of capturing the senate. Today that probably has been raised to 95%. On September 30, the New York Times' LEO gave the GOP a 67% probability of winning the senate. Today it has backed off a bit to 65%. Five Thirty Eight dropped the GOP's chance from 61 to 57.8%. What do these movements portend? Probably nothing. Polling more than a month out has proven to be unreliable. It is useful to determine trends but overall not an accurate predictor of election day behavior. Many voters have not made up their minds and they cannot tell pollsters what they do not know.
Sean Trend at Real Clear Politics has an insightful post that pegs the chances of Republican candidates to Obama's job approval rating. The  polling data, from 2010,  used in the graphic were obtained from exit polling. Generally there is plenty of polling on the president's job approval at the national level but not so much at the state level. Notice no Democrat was able to run more than 4 points above Obama's approval rating. Mid term elections are referenda on the president. He is not on the ballot but his programs are and Obama was perfectly truthful and correct when he said as much.

• To save you the trouble of looking up the final results they are:
• Kentucky, Rand Paul, 55.8, Jack Conway 44.2
• Nevada, Harry Reid 50.2, Sharron Angle 44.6
• Indiana, Dan Coats, 54.6, Brad Ellsworth, 40
• Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, 51, Joe Sestak, 49
• Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, 55.1, Linda McMahon, 43.3
• Washington, Patty Murray, 51.9, Dino Rossi, 48.1
• Missouri, Roy Blunt, 54.3, Robin Carnahan, 40.6
• Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, 51.9, Russ Feingold, 47
• Arkansas, John Boozman, 58, Blanche Lincoln, 36.9
• Colorado, Michael Bennet, 47.7, Ken Buck, 46.8
• California, Barbara Boxer, 52.1, Carly Fiorina 42.3
• Ohio, Rob Portman, 57.3, Lee Fisher 39
• Illinoise, Mark Kirk, 48.2, Alexi Giannoulias, 46.3
• Hew Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte, 60.2, Paul Hodes, 36.7

Trend also provides the same data for the 2012 Senate races but with Obama on the ballot the Democrats were able to pick up 2 seats.
Now lets look at some Senate races that are competitive or may become competitive. The number of undecided voters is still very high. The Obama job approval numbers are taken from YouGov poll, a joint venture between CBS and the New York Times.

State	Democrat	Republican	Obama Job Approval
IL	Dick Durbin	Jim Oberweis	45%
MN	Al Franken	Mike McFadden	40%
NJ	Cory Booker	Jeff Bell	46%
NM	Tom Udall	Allen Weh	44%
OR	Jeff Merkley	Monica Wehby	44%
VA	Mark Warner	Ed Gillespie	43%
MI	Gary Peters	Terri Lynn Land	43%
NH	Jeanne Shaheen	Scott Brown	36%
AK	Mark Begich	Dan Sullivan	31%
AR	Mark Pryor	Tom Cotton	27%
CO	Mark Udall	Cory Gardner	42%
GA	Michelle Nunn	David Perdue	39%
IA	Bruce Braley	Joni Ernst	40%
KS	No Democrat	Pat Roberts	31%
KY	Alison Lundergan Grimes	Mitch McConnell	30%
LA	Mary Landrieu	Bill Cassidy	34%
NC	Kay Hagan	Thom Tillis	41%
MS	Travis Childers	Thad Cochran	36%
SD	Rick Weiland	Mike Rounds	36%
WV	Natalie Tennant	Shelley Moore Capito	24%

Obviously the Democrats have some heavy lifting to do but there are some caveats. As stated Obama job approval numbers broken down by state are hard to come by and relying on a single poll as I have done here would not be statistically defensible but that is the only data I could find. The alternative would be to use different polls for each state which would be even less precise. Trend indicates that in 2010 and 2012 no Democrat has run more than 10 points ahead of Obama's approval rating and 75% of the time has run within 5 points. Again the data he uses are derived from exit polls where there is no changing of minds and are conducted face to face.

" What I’m really interested in here, though, is that in the 31 competitive Senate races held in 2010 and 2012, the Democratic candidate has run within five points of the president’s job approval in 23 of them (75 percent). Additionally, no Democratic candidate in a competitive race has run more than 10 points ahead of the president’s job approval (or behind it)."

There are many events that could drive Obama's approval lower such as an ISIS attack on the United States, a serious outbreak of Ebola in the country or a sudden large drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is not that remote but few events that can lift his numbers significantly. This election could be the one that makes us forget 2010.