How many Senate seats will the GOP gain this fall ? Can the GOP retake the Senate ? And which seats are likely to flip ? Unlike our discussion of House gains, there has been a decent volume of polling in nearly all of the Senate races, with some races having several polls done each week by different polling organizations. The Senate also differs from the House in a very major way in that not all seats are up for re-election this year. Typically, a third of the seats are up in any given election cycle, but this year, we have an unusually large number (37) of seats up for re-elections, because (1) not only did President Obama and Vice President Biden come from the Senate, but they also chose sitting senators for two Cabinet positions: Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State and Ken Salazar for Secretary of the Interior, and (2) the untimely death of Robert Byrd of West Virginia created the need for a special election.

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Since there has been a decent amount of polling done (as of today, polls have been released for all but the Hawaii Senate race) , we therefore have a better feel for how the race for the Senate is progressing.

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John is a political consultant and blogger with JMC Enterprises with expertise in poll sample development and analysis, development of targeted voter files for phone canvassing or mail outs, campaign strategy and demographic consulting, among other things. See his site at WinWithJMC.com for more information.