Senate control is up in the air as races shift

Republicans fear shot at regaining majority may be slipping away.

WASHINGTON — The fight for the Senate has shifted significantly over the past weeks, with fierce races breaking out in states where they were not expected and other contests dimming that were once ablaze with competition.

With less than two months until Election Day, the Senate landscape is both broader and more fluid than it has been in years, with control of the upper chamber now anyone’s guess. Both parties have seen new opportunities and new challenges, but the net result is that Democrats appear to be in less danger of losing the Senate, while Republicans have a more difficult path to gaining the majority.

Connecticut may be the biggest surprise. Two years after a decisive loss in her first Senate campaign, the Republican candidate, Linda E. McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, is surging in polls. Wisconsin is also now tilting Republican. Democrats face blistering advertisements financed by super PACs in states they once thought were secured, and the tight presidential contest in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Nevada is keeping Senate races there closer than anticipated for both parties.

Democrats are now strongly competitive in races for the Republican-held seats in Indiana and North Dakota, where the Republican candidates — who were expected to walk away with those races — have exhibited weakness.

“The map is bigger now than I’ve ever seen it at this point in an election,” said J.B. Poersch, a longtime Democratic Senate campaign strategist who is now with Majority PAC.

Republicans need a net gain of four seats to win control of the Senate, but what was once a good bet that they would do so is now a coin toss.

“A year ago, I thought the Republicans were certainly more likely than not to net four seats and win control,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “It increasingly looks like they have to run the table here.”

Some of the campaign missteps and unexpected turns are well documented. In Maine, Sen. Olympia Snowe’s surprise retirement this year almost certainly removed a seat from the Republicans’ column. And Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” may have robbed Republicans of a Missouri Senate seat they had counted as theirs.

Broader political forces have conspired to seemingly move some seats out of the Republicans’ reach.

With former Rep. Heather Wilson, the Republicans in New Mexico got the moderate veteran candidate they wanted. But Wilson appears to be getting no help from Mitt Romney in the state, where the Hispanic vote can be decisive. This month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quietly canceled advertising there to shift those resources elsewhere.

In other races, the candidates themselves have become a problem. In Indiana, the state Treasurer and tea party favorite Richard Mourdock defeated Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary for a seat Lugar had held since the mid-1970s. But Mourdock has struggled, and Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Democratic candidate, is drawing support from some Lugar backers.

Democrats have their own issues. In Wisconsin, they were hoping a tough Republican primary would beget a tea partyaligned conservative who would have trouble winning statewide.

Instead, Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and health and human ser-