A glance at the 2010 horse race

First a nod to those of you who hate horse-racey blog posts.  This one ain’t for you.  Check back later.

For anyone still tuned in, I’ve been trolling through polls, individual battleground district reports, and newspaper accounts from across the country.

Here’s my late-spring take on the 2010 race:  It’s tightening significantly.

For weeks, a lot of observers have been predicting a major blow-out that favors Republicans.  And the anti-incumbency mood is certainly fierce right now.

That naturally hits the party in power hardest.

But a couple of trend-lines look pretty good for the Democrats.  Barack Obama’s approval ratings have been creeping upward lately.  Fox News’s latest survey puts the President at 48% positive and 43% negative.

Those aren’t ticker-tape parade numbers, but neither are they blow-out bad.  If the White House can trend above 50% through the summer, a lot of Democrats will breathe easier as they muddle toward November.

A new CBS poll also found that more Americans are comfortable with where the economy is going.

Forty-one percent of Americans now say the economy is improving, up eight points from April and more than at any time during this recession. Just 15 percent think the economy is getting worse, according to the poll, conducted April 28 – May 2.

If those numbers continue to improve (and days like today’s Wall Street plunge won’t help…) that’s another boost for the Dems.

Another significant development is the narrowing of the “enthusiasm” gap that Republicans enjoyed through the spring.

Just a few weeks ago, 54% of GOP voters said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in November, compared with  just 35% for Democrats.

For Dems, that was a devastating state of affairs in a mid-term vote, when turnout is expected to be low.

But now, according to Gallup, only 43% of Republicans say they’re still fired up, compared with 33% for Dems.  Still an advantage, to be sure, but not at the same blowout level.

Meanwhile, most polls show voters evenly divided on whether they plan to support Democrats or Republicans in the fall.

None of these trend-lines suggest a banner year for Democrats.  On the contrary, it’s likely to be ugly out there.

But Republicans need a tectonic shift to overwhelm the enormous Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate.

A good year won’t do it — they need a great year.

So far, I’m still not seeing the factors that produce that kind of 1994-style shift.  But there are a lot of weeks left to go in this contest and the campaigns are just now getting underway in earnest.