Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) Down 23 Points to a Guy Who Isn't Even in the Race Yet

How tough will it be for Democrats to retain the Arkansas Senate seat held by Blanche Lincoln? Pretty tough:

John Boozman will enter the Arkansas Senate race this weekend as the frontrunner. He leads incumbent Blanche Lincoln by an amazing 56-33 margin in our first poll of the race.

Lincoln's approval rating has sunk to just 27%, with 62% of voters in the state disapproving of her. She's at a middling 51% even within her own party and just 17% of independents and 9% of Republicans are happy with how she's doing.

The same liberal polling operation has been looking at other Democrats, especially freshman who are coming up for re-election in 2012 and 2014. A bunch of them are in real trouble and that means that should Republicans gain a number of seats in 2010 there's a strong likelihood that they could take control of the Senate by 2012 or 2014 depending, of course, on a lot of other factors.