Talk Elections

Peters (D-inc.): 44%
James (R): 40%

https://www.scribd.com/document/442183414/January-2020-Statewide-Survey (https://www.scribd.com/document/442183414/January-2020-Statewide-Survey)

Everything is going back to 278 EC map, James will fail, again

This board would be treating this race very differently if the R was the incumbent and we were getting numbers like this

Too many undecideds in this poll

Lean D.

Peters is favored, but should take the challenge seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if James outruns Mr. Trump by a few points.

Tossup/Tilt D, Peters is slightly favored to win reelection, but James is strong challenger. With NC and maybe KS, it will be two the most competitive races

This also has Biden winning by 7%, so yet another poll showing Peters underperforming the Democratic nominee for president by 3 points.

This is a great poll for James. Biden +7 and Peters +4 shows that he is vulnerable. Toss-up.

Peters' chances are way underrated. If Republicans couldn't pick up Stabenow's seat then it's not likely they will defeat Peters. What we saw in 2018 was that the rural areas trended Republican but not enough to counteract the suburbs.

Here's how this race is actually Likely/Safe D...

We saw this a lot in 2016.  Ross, Murphy, Duckworth, Feingold, Cortez-Masto, Barksdale, Hassan, Judge, Strickland, and McGinty all underperformed Hillary.  Bayh, Gray, and Kander were the only ones to outperform her.

Gary Peters is an incumbent you see, and Michigan hasn't voted Republican for Senate since 1994. Although I'm sure the folks at Inside Elections could give a more thorough justification for their rating...

But was it more that the Democrats underperformed Hillary, or that the Republican candidates overperformed Trump? The latter is definitely true with Rubio, Portman, Grassley, Toomey and Isakson at the very least.

Plus if we go back to 2012, Nelson, McCaskill, Manchin, Tester, Heitkamp, Brown, Kaine, Menendez (!), Stabenow, Carmona, Casey, and Kerrey all did better than Obama to varying degrees, so it's not always that Democratic Senate candidates do worse than the presidential nominee.

Alarm bells should be going off!

I bolded all the ones who were facing incumbents who weren't as scandal ridden as Roy Blunt and thereby had crossover appeal to "put a check on Hillary" voters, name recognition, time to build more goodwill in their respective states, tailor their stances to their respective states, et cetera.

It seems to be a common occurence for Senate (and House) incumbents who aren't scandal ridden and who don't face particularly strong opponents, to outperform the Presidential candidates from their parties in their respective states.

Take a look at what happened in 2008 and 2012 - quite a few incumbents outperformed Obama.

John James is done, Peters will win

Tilt James

It depends on the state. If Texas or Tennessee, we’d be saying that it’s lean incumbent but they’re going to win because of the tendency of the state.

Gary Peters is Bill Nelson 2.0.