Cook: Election still waiting for a trend, no one sure yet

[Thorgrim]

Simply put, if this election has reached an inflection point or a shift in momentum, there's not much evidence of it yet. There's been a 2-point increase in the president's approval rating, from 1 point below where President Clinton was in mid-August and early September 1994 according to Gallup polling (39 percent), to 1 point above it.

Cook: Waiting for a trend - National Journal - MSNBC.com

I agree with Cook

Right now I see 10 house seats, even with all the good GOP news the past week, going Dem, but 5 more, they are there, it's just a matter of will they be there in 7 weeks

In the Senate, new polls show Menendez ahead of Kean in RV, behind in LV, but it's really close and personally I think its AMAZING after all the negative press that has come out because of his federal investigation that hit him

It seems to prove the old saying "New Jersey voters hate only one more thing than their corrupt Democrats, and thats Republicans"

If you go by strict polling, Democrats are up in 13 house races in every poll published, here is the one significant poll though:
http://www.constituentdynamics.com/m...acesummary.pdf

If you expand to polls that are conflicted, but show a democrat leading in half of them in the past month, Democrats are up in 20 house seats

So right now, its 13-20

When I try to put things in perspective, I recall that in 98, when the GOP was expecting to gain a slim number of seats, they lost 8...the dems picked up 8 seats...and a few more in 2000 (they were 5 seats from the majority in 2001)

I think the national mood has hardened, and people in these battleground districts view Bush negatively and thats not going to change, that question is...how will the campaigns unfold, how GOOD are these democrats at campaigning? That is going to decide these races, there are no real external events that are going to say, turn IN-09 voters around, except for a terrorist attack or we capture bin Laden (I don't think a military strike on Iran is a possibility until Nov 8th)