From the diaries by Erick

There is a second poll out this morning showing Joe Sestak leading Pat Toomey 44-41 in the race for the Pennsylvania Senate seat.  Now, I take these college/university polls with a grain of salt so you can take it for what what it is worth.  However, looking at the internals of this poll, they don’t seem that much out of left field.  Rasmussen put Toomey up by 10 recently so I have to wonder what is going on to show these polls are varying so much.  The first poll showing Sestak in the lead, PPP, which is now the pollster for the liberal blog, The Daily Kos, showed a 1 point Sestak lead with a turnout model indicating that Democrats would show up in greater numbers in 2008 which I highly, highly doubt will happen this election cycle.

Looking over the entire Senate landscape, it is apparent that Dino Rossi and Carly Fiorina are flush with cash and are in great shape coming down the stretch to boot out Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer.  President Obama has been making quite a few visits to Washington state and Democrats are visibly concerned with this race. Sharron Angle is now putting some distance between herself and Harry Reid and is very much flush with cash as well.

The four races that could use a money push to get those candidates over the finish line appear to be Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and West Virginia.  Things in Colorado look to have tightened considerably over the last two weeks with recent polling showing a 2-3 point lead for Ken Buck.  Illinois has been neck and neck for some time now.  I have to like Kirk’s chances in Illinois with Bill Brady polling so strongly over Pat Quinn and will generate some powerful downstate coattails for Mark Kirk.  However, this race is very, very tight with a lot of undecided voters.  Finally, John Raese is holding a slight lead over Joe Manchin and looks in pretty good shape.  He had an outstanding debate performance a couple of nights back and is really going to be making a hard push in the final two weeks.

Turnout is key always in elections.  Don’t be complacent.  Vote on November 2nd.