If Republicans are ultimately denied their dream of stripping Sen. Harry Reid of his Majority Leader title this year, they may be confronted with the possibility that they fielded the wrong candidates — both in Senate races and in the presidential contest.
Mitt Romney’s decline nationally and in various swing states in September dovetailed with the dip seen by Republican candidates in key Senate races. Consider the recent developments in various states.
Always a lock to carry Massachusetts, President Barack Obama’s support has swelled in the Bay State over the last month, with some polls showing him eclipsing the 60 percent threshold. As Obama has expanded his advantage there over Romney, Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren has grabbed the lead from Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) during the same period.
In Wisconsin, Republican Senate nominee Tommy Thompson’s meteoric fall in the polls has coincided with the state shifting from toss-up territory to the growing list of erstwhile battlegrounds that now favor Obama (punctuated by a mid-September poll that showed Romney trailing by 14 in the Badger State). Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin has surged past the former Wisconsin governor to assert herself as the clear favorite in a race that represented a prime opportunity for the GOP to slice into the Democratic majority in the Senate.
The chart promised in the screengrab:
This goes a long way toward explaining those GOP swing state billboards.
