It’s time once again for my weekly election projection.? With just two short weeks to go until Decision 2006, Republicans appear to have stopped the bleeding, but there’s still much work to be done to hold the House.? The numbers, as always, are taken from my own reading of all the recent scientific polls on each race.? Here’s how I see the election playing out if it were held today.

Senate: 50R, 48D, 2I

House: 215R, 220D

Governorships: 22R, 28D

I’ve finally given in and flipped Jim Talent’s Senate seat over to the Dems.? Talent is polling horribly for an incumbent; even though I think he’s avoided the political errors of Santorum, Burns, etc, it’s clear that most Missouri voters disagree.? And that’s a real shame.? Talent’s a good man, but probably gone as of November.

I’ve also seen movement towards Corker in TN, proving Kavon’s theory from last week that the GOP lean of the state would carry Corker over the finish line, despite the presence of the young, interesting Harold Ford.? It now looks as if the Dems hold all of their current Senate seats, take PA, MT, RI, OH, and MO, and end up with a net five seat gain — one seat away from a majority.? This will allow Republicans to remain in control of the chamber thanks to Vice President Cheney’s tie-breaking vote, but it means that a Democratic president in 2008 would flip the chamber without having to win a single additional seat.? Moreover, since we’re defending far more seats than the Democrats in the 2008 Senate elections (we won a net?4 seats in the last two elections in which that particular cycle was up), it’s more than likely that the Dems will gain a seat or two anyway in 2008, regardless of whatever else happens that year.? Unfortunately, the next Republican president will almost certainly have to deal with a Democratic Senate.

The GOP picks up one governorship this week due to the horrid numbers of Oregon’s incumbent Democratic governor.? Even though his GOP challenger doesn’t actually lead him in many recent polls, undecideds do break for the challenger in races involving incumbents at this point in the game.? So the GOP picks up OR but loses CO, AR, NY, MA, MD, OH, and MN.

The House polls are interesting.? I count about 13 GOP seats that are gone, about 9 that could go either way, and a single Democratic seat in Indiana that’s a virtual tossup.? I think it’s curious that so many pundits are calling this a 20 or 30 seat game.? The Dems are going to have a good year, but they’re not going to win all of the tossups.? And even if they did, they would end up well short of where many in the MSM are predicting they’ll end up.? I split the tossups down the middle and gave the Dems a net 17 seat gain, which would provide Speaker Pelosi with a five seat majority.? I think this is much more likely than the MSM fantasies we’ve been seeing on other projection sites.? That said, Scott Elliott is one of the best in the business and he has the Dems at 222, which also wouldn’t surprise me.? The one thing no one seems to show is a GOP victory in the House, but if they can start taking some of these tossups off the table, they won’t be far away from a narrow win.