WASHINGTON – New polls taken eight days before Election Day show Democrats increasing their leads in the New Jersey and Maryland Senate races and pulling even in Missouri – a key red-state battleground that could determine control of the Senate.
In the Maryland Senate race, Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin outpaces GOP rival Michael Steele by 11 points, 54 percent to 43 percent, according to a Washington Post poll.
Both so-called blue states are must-wins for Democrats hoping to take control of the Senate – a prospect New York Sen. Charles Schumer said is increasingly within reach as the Nov. 7 elections shape up as “more and more a referendum on George Bush.”
Democrats must gain six seats to win control.
Democratic candidates, who have campaigned largely on an anti-Bush platform, are comfortably ahead of GOP incumbents in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Montana, and slugging toe-to-toe for Republican-held seats in Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri.
“We’re right on the edge. Every week, things get better and better,” Schumer, head of the Senate Democrats’ election committee, told “Fox News Sunday.”
The Democrats’ hopeful in Missouri, state auditor Claire McCaskill, has climbed to a dead-even 47 percent tie with rookie GOP Sen. Jim Talent, a Research 2000 poll found.
If McCaskill can pull in 40 percent of the GOP-leaning rural vote, she’ll win, Schumer has predicted.
As both parties analyzed the polls, actor Michael J. Fox, a victim of Parkinson’s disease whose jarring TV ads promoting embryonic stem-cell research ignited a political firestorm, brushed off conservative criticism yesterday and insisted he’s not a propaganda pawn.
“I’m not a shill for the Democratic Party. I approached them. I sat down to find out what candidates are pro-stem-cell in races where they’re opposed by anti-stem-cell candidates,” Fox said. “And I had no predisposition toward Democrats or Republicans. It’d be fine with me either way.”
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh has accused Fox of “acting” in campaign ads airing for Democratic Senate candidates in Missouri and Maryland. The commercials show Fox quivering uncontrollably and nearly rocking off the screen.
Fox said rocking is a side effect of his medication.
“And it’s preferable, in a way, to the other,” he added. “If I didn’t medicate at all, I would be – I would have a mask face. I’d have very limited movement, I’d have a very difficult time speaking.”
Limbaugh and Republican leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), Schumer’s GOP election-committee counterpart, have claimed Democrats were taking advantage of Fox. He said the charge is not worth arguing over.
“It’s like getting in a fight with a bully,” he said. “What’s the point? You’re not going to change his mind. You’re just probably going to get a nosebleed.” Also yesterday, Republicans dismissed idea that Senate races are a national referendum on the president and the war on Iraq.
“President Bush’s name is not on the ballot. Our candidates are talking about issues important in their states, such as corruption in New Jersey. All politics is local,” Dole said.
In the House, where all 435 seats are up for grabs and about three dozen are hotly contested, GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio also predicted the election would turn on local issues and candidates. “The issues are different in each of these races. What we’re going to do is continue to work hard right up until Election Day and mobilize every vote that we can,” Boehner told ABC’s “This Week.”
Meanwhile, a Newsweek poll found Bush’s approval rating has inched up in recent weeks as he’s aggressively hit the campaign trail, though it still hovers at 37 percent.
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The latest polls
OVERALL NATIONAL TREND – If the election were held today, would you vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress?
Democrats: 53%
Republicans: 39%
Key Senate Races:
NEW JERSEY
Sen. Bob Menendez (D -Incumbent): 48%; Tom Kean Jr. (R): 42%
MARYLAND
Ben Cardin (D): 54%; Michael Steele (R): 43%
TENNESSEE
Bob Corker (R): 49%; Harold Ford Jr. (D): 47%
MONTANA
John Tester (D): 51%; Conrad Burns (R – Incumbent): 48%
VIRGINIA
Sen. George Allen (R – Incumbent): 50%; Jim Webb (D): 48%
MISSOURI – Claire McCaskill, whom Fox endorsed in a campaign ad, is in a dead heat with Sen. Jim Talent in Missouri.
Claire McCaskill (D): 47%; Sen. Jim Talent (R – incumbent): 47%
Source: Research 2000 & Newsweek