Races to Watch Tomorrow

There are a number of primaries and special elections to watch on Tuesday.  Three of the races feature Senate contests:

Democrats and Republicans are watching three Senate primaries on Tuesday that could be another referendum on the status quo in Washington, D.C.

Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Kentucky are all holding Senate primaries with the first two offering a sense of how hot the anti-incumbency fever is this midterm election year and the last providing a preview of the power of the establishment versus the insurgent movement.

"There have been a lot of discussion about incumbency; we'll find out maybe something maybe about incumbency Tuesday in Arkansas and Pennsylvania where we have two Democratic incumbents in serious races," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

This will probably be Arlen Specter's last election because all the polling indicates he'll lose the race to Joe Sestak. Specter changed parties after 45 years as a Republican because he thought he'd have a free shot at the Dem primary and could win in November. Specter's moderate to liberal voting record made it unlikely he'd survive a primary challenge from conservative Pat Toomey.

Specter chose poorly. It just may be that he was destined to lose this time no matter what. He's a symbol for all that's broken in Washington.

In Arkansas Blanche Lincoln has voted against the will of Arkansas voters so many times, the latest being Obamacare, that she'll either lose or be pushed into a runoff. There's very little chance she'll win on Tuesday. If the anti-incumbency attitude among voters is strong enough, she'll be gone.

In Kentucky the open seat of Republican Jim Bunning is up for grabs between Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul, and Trey Grayson, who has been endorsed by Dick Cheney. Grayson is the Republican political class candidate, getting support from the other Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, but Paul has the support of conservatives like James Dobson and Sarah Palin. It's looking like Paul might pull this one off.

There's also the special election in PA-12 between Republican Tim Burns and Dem Mark Critz. This is John Murtha's old seat and has been in Dem hands for decades.

Burns looks strong and this could be a major GOP pick-up, but GOP officials are reminding everyone that the high profile Dem Senate race could bring a lot of Democrats to the polls. PA-12 is a very Democrat district, and that makes Burns job that much tougher.

Experts say that a Mark Critz win won't tell us as much about what will happen in November as a Tim Burns win would do, but if Critz wins very narrowly it will be clear that Democrats will really have their hands full in districts that aren't so heavily Dem.  Polling has this race very close so turnout and voter intensity will be important.

Since all these races are in the east we should have results fairly early in the evening West Coast time on Tuesday.