[Update, Thursday 9:45am: see my new piece at The New Yorker.com. -SW]

Chad Taylor (D) just dropped out of the Kansas Senate race. I declare this the political news of the week. To understand why, read my essays here (The New Yorker) and here (PEC). Basically the probability of Democratic control of the Senate is about to pop up by 20-30 percent.



We only have one survey for the Orman v. Roberts matchup, from PPP. It shows an Orman lead of 10 percent. Based on a few simple assumptions*, I estimate Orman’s November win probability at 80 percent.

Since August 26th, the daily snapshot for Democratic /Independent control moved from 55% to 70%, even without today’s news. Ponder that, while we revise our code to reflect this development… [11:43pm: the snapshot is updated. Thank you, Mark Tengi!]