Patriot Update

Conn Carroll of the DC Examiner analyzes just which Senate seats will be possible pick-ups for the GOP:

…a total of seven Democratic Senators from states that Mitt Romney carried in 2012 are up for election in 2014. And six of those Senators (Sens. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Max Baucus, D-Mont., Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Jay Rockefeler, D-W.V.) hail from states that Romney carried by double-digits.

But it is not just the particular seats that will be up that makes 2014 a potential disaster for the Dems, it is the varying nature of midterm and general election voters:

As Thomas Schaller notes, this spells doom for Democrats in 2014:

It’s no mystery why Democrats generally perform better in presidential years while Republicans tend to excel in midterm cycles: Lower midterm turnouts tend to skew the electorate toward older, white and/or more affluent voters. Given the growing cleavage in recent decades between partisan preferences of white and non-white voters, cyclic differences in racial composition are particularly important.