Les sondages confirment de semaine en semaine que les américains sont mécontents du travail des représentants et des sénateurs au Congrès. Lors de l'élection de 2012, le 1/3 du Sénat peut être renouveler et le sort fait en sorte que les sièges les plus fragiles actuellement sont ceux des démocrates. Il existe donc une possibilité de voir un second mandat pour Obama qui serait confronté à un Congrès (Chambre et Sénat ensemble) majoritairement républicain. Encore quatre très longues années en perspective si ce scénario se concrétise! Pour l'observateur que je suis, le "jeu" électoral sera cependant fascinant à analyser!
"A national Republican source told TPM: “While the map does favor Republicans, nobody on the Republican side is beating their chest or taking anything for granted.”
A Democratic source also sounded a note of cautious optimism: “I think the cycle has changed dramatically. At the beginning of the cycle everything was 23 [Democratic] seats, vs. 10 seats that have to be defended for them. Now as you’re seeing things develop, things are looking a lot better.”
The bottom line: The Dems who are currently the most at risk are Sens. Ben Nelson (NE), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Jon Tester (MT), plus the open seat of retiring Dem Sen. Kent Conrad (ND). (In North Dakota, Dems were lifted recently by the recruitment of former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, and the Dems have released polling with Heitkamp ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee, Rick Berg. However, the state is also likely to vote Republican for president by a wide margin, so the Dems would need plenty of ticket-splitting.)
On the flip side, the most endangered Republicans are Scott Brown in deep-blue Massachusetts, and Nevada’s Dean Heller, who was appointed to the Senate after resignation of scandal-plagued Sen. John Ensign.
There are also three retiring Democratic senators in some swing states, whose seats will be hotly contested all the way through: Jim Webb’s seat in Virginia — where there has already been a heated, general election-style debate — plus Jeff Bingaman’s seat in New Mexico, and Herb Kohl’s seat in Wisconsin.
On paper, the layout of the seats themselves would make it look like the Dems have to play some serious offense. The last election cycle for this particular third of the Senate was in the Democratic wave year of 2006. The Dems won 24 out of the 33 seats that were up, compared to only nine won by the Republicans. Since then, the numbers on this Senate class shifted from 24-9 to 23-10, after Scott Brown’s victory in the January 2010 special election in Massachusetts.
(For the purposes of this discussion, independent Sens. Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders are being counted as if they were full-fledged Democrats, due to their caucus votes.)
As such, as we head into the cycle with a 53-47 Dem Senate, the Republicans have 37 seats that will not be on the ballot, compared to only 30 seats for the Dems. As such, the Dems will have to win a big majority out of these contests — just to stay in the same place."
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/right-down-the-middle-the-big-upcoming-battle-for-senate-control.php?ref=fpa
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