Michael Barone should be on his way to Raleigh at this moment for his appearance at a noon John Locke Foundation Headliner luncheon on the 2010 elections.
Before heading to the airport, he filed a report for the Washington Examiner that pinpoints the geographical distribution of Democratic and Republican support in the latest polls.
Get an outline map showing the 50 states and take a look at the latest poll averages in pollster.com in each race for senator and governor. Color in the percentage (rounded off; no need for tenths) by which either the Republican or Democratic candidate is leading (I use blue for Republicans, red for Democrats) in each state.
The results are revealing, even breathtaking.
The map of the Senate races shows Republicans leading over almost all the landmass of America. Democrats are ahead in the three West Coast states and Hawaii (though not by much in California and Washington) and by 1 point in Nevada. They’re also ahead in four states along the Atlantic Coast — Maryland, Delaware, New York, Connecticut — plus Vermont.
Republicans lead in all the other Senate races, from Philadelphia to Phoenix and Boca Raton to Boise. True, their candidate leads by only 1 point in Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois. And they’ve got narrow leads in some mountain states (West Virginia, Colorado, Kentucky).
The map of governors’ races is not much different. Democrats lead in New York, all the New England states except Maine, plus Maryland. They lead in Arkansas where they’ve got a popular one-term incumbent and in Colorado where the party’s nominee has severe resume flaws and former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo is running as an independent. Democrats lead in Hawaii and Minnesota, normally Democratic states where Republicans have held the governorships for the last two years.
Two other big states have close races: In California Republican Meg Whitman barely leads septuagenarian Democrat Jerry Brown, and in Florida the race is tied.
But overall Republicans are doing very well indeed, with statistically significant leads in every other state with a governor contest this year.
