Senate Update

As Jack Webb used to say, "Just the facts, ma'm, just the facts":

***Michael Steele has fallen behind Ben Cardin three points in my Maryland projection again on the "strength" of a Washington Post poll showing Cardin up eleven that is a gift-wrapped PR Valentine on Halloween for the Democrats' frantic efforts to hold this seat.

The Post poll is a laughable outlier, and I concur with Dean Barnett's take that a Steele victory next Tuesday will not be an upset. But a projection (mine) showing him down three is not outside the guardrails of reason, either.

***Bob "Scarface" Menendez has surged over the weekend and edged half a point past Tom Kean in my New Jersey projection. I expect that race to teeter-totter back and forth right to the finish line.

***The updated number that has the Donks drawing even in the Senate is one that I will start off telling GOP backers not to get lathered up over: Jim Webb leads George Allen in my Virginia projection 50.2%-49.8%. I don't care if even Scott Rasmussen has this race moving seven points in Webb's direction over the space of five days (based on what, for frak's sake? The offended Asian expatriot pederast community?), I will believe that despicable asshole's unseating of Senator Allen only when I see it and not before.

So even though it may now say "Dems +5" on the sidebar, be sure to take note of the asterisk that is tacked onto it. Now you know what it means.

UPDATE: Michael Steele has picked up the endorsement of the county executive and five county councilors from the Democrat/African-American bastion of Prince George's County:

A coalition of black Democratic political leaders from Prince George's County led by former county executive Wayne K. Curry endorsed Republican Michael S. Steele's bid for the U.S. Senate yesterday.

The support from Curry, five County Council members and others barely a week before Election Day reflects their continued disappointment that the Democratic Party has no African American candidates at the top of the ticket and a sense that the county is being ignored, officials said.

"They show us a pie, but we never get a slice," said Major F. Riddick Jr., a former aide to then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening and a former county executive candidate. "We are here today to say we've waited and we've waited and we're waiting no longer."

Steele, who as lieutenant governor is the first African American elected statewide in Maryland, said he was humbled by the support. "I said I did not want this [campaign] to be so much about party but about the people," he said. "And these people understand that."

Ron Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, said the endorsements could be significant. "This is going to go through the black community like a rocket," he said. "It's going to be the talk of the county, the state, maybe even the nation."

Disregard the Post poll. Lieutenant-Governor Steele is going to win that senate seat (via CQ).

UPDATE III: Jim Geraghty's "Jedi Council" sez, "Win, the Pachyderms will..."