Less than four months now until Election Day…

House - While he and others concede that Democrats are in better shape than they were in 1994, Professor Alan Abramowitz at Sabato’s Crystall Ball is now predicting a net gain of 39 seats for Republicans – the exact number needed for them to take control. Political analyst Charlie Cook also believes conditions are there for the GOP to reach a majority. Unfortunately, Texas Congressman Chet Edwards is one of the most endangered Dems and you can contribute to his campaign here.

Senate – Now for the good news. Nate Silver does a new analysis and concurs that the Senate races are looking a little better for Democrats, mostly due to recent primary results.

Whereas, as of our last update, or simulations were projecting an average of 54.0 Democratic and 46.0 Republican seats, we now show 55.2 Democrats, 44.2 Republicans, and 0.6 Charlie Crists.

Republicans will need a lot of luck to take over the Senate. There are eleven Democratic-held seats that we show Republicans with a nontrivial chance of winning. In four of them, they are heavy favorites: North Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, and Delaware. Four more are toss-ups: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Illinois, and Colorado. Finally, there are three where they are underdogs: Washington, California, and Wisconsin.

Republicans would need to win 10 of these 11 races to take over the Senate; even if they gained further momentum nationally (our model does not assume that the races behave independently), this is somewhat unlikely, given the idiosyncrasies involved in many of the contests. Meanwhile, they would need to hold Ohio, which is a toss-up with a slight Democratic tilt, and Missouri, which is a toss-up with a slight Republican tilt, as well as retain Kentucky, North Carolina and New Hampshire, either have Marco Rubio win in Florida or persuade Charlie Crist to caucus with them, and avoid a wildcard somewhere like Arizona or Louisiana.

Therefore, even though states like Washington and Wisconsin are now in play (more debatably so in the latter case), this is counteracted by the fact that they are now engaged in competitive contests in places like Nevada, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania — which looked like clear edges for them before.

Gubernatorial/State Legislature - Not much new to report here on races in other states, but the Texas governor’s race continues to be the most exciting in our state. A recent PPP poll showed Bill White tied with Rick Perry (though most polls still have him a few points down, but all within striking distance). Meanwhile, the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee has launched its campaign to win the three seats needed for Democrats to take control of the Texas House of Representatives. One of those pickups will hopefully be the seat of Rep. Linda Harper-Brown whom has been embroiled in controversy recently. Possibly complicating matters for Texas Democrats this fall though was the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Republican-backed Green Party candidates back on the ballot until they rule on their appeal.

UPDATE: Nate Silver takes a look at the gubernatorial picture.