Bachmann was the most conservative except for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, but she did have the strongest outsider-conservative rating due in part to her ability to promote herself and the Tea Party without toeing the official GOP line.

Silver said Pawlenty was difficult to chart.

“I had trouble placing him in any of the four quadrants,” Silver wrote. “As Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard points out, — Mr. Pawlenty enjoys something of a reputation as a moderate even though his positions are fairly conservative: he has pledged to reinstate the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, for instance. Likewise, Mr. Pawlenty seems to keep Washington at arm’s length while having supporters within the Republican establishment.”

It’s Pawlenty’s middle ground that appears to have kept his campaign from taking off.

“I have been skeptical about Mr. Pawlenty’s candidacy,” Silver noted, “in large part because his personality is not terribly dynamic and he has had some trouble creating a strong brand for himself; sales of his book ‘Courage to Stand’, for instance, have been quite weak. Still, he can be credited with a viable strategy: stay a safe distance off the lead lap, and hope for a multicar pileup ahead of him.”

Silver points to evidence that that may be exactly what Pawlenty is doing.

“That Mr. Pawlenty has been among the first Republicans to build out his campaign infrastructure fits with that strategy — it would be valuable in the car-crash scenario, which implies a long, drawn-out nomination process,” Silver added. “So does the fact that Mr. Pawlenty could plausibly position himself as conservative or moderate, insider or outsider, as the situation dictates.”

Here is Silver’s graph:

But sure enough, a new Public Policy Polling survey released today has the two candidates virtually tied.

The main reason, says PPP, is that Pennsylvania’s sizable Democratic base, which enjoys nearly a one million vote registration advantage over Republicans, appears to finally be waking up:

Democratic voters are getting more engaged as election day moves closer. Barack Obama won Pennsylvania by 10 points in 2008 but our August survey in the state found those planning to vote in November had actually supported John McCain by a point in 2008, suggesting a massive drop off in Democratic turnout. Now those saying they will vote next month supported Obama by 4 points in 2008. The enthusiasm gap is still there but it’s not as severe a problem for Democrats as it was 2 months ago.

Of course, many of those Obama voters are now not so sure about their choice: 51% of Pennsylvania voters disapprove of the job the president is doing, while only 43% approve. That makes Sestak’s climb that much tougher, but he’s been making real strides among independent voters since August as well. Whether this is because independent voters are taking to Sestak or simply becoming more familiar with some of Toomey’s more extreme views, he’s polling better than most Democrats among this group as well, according to PPP.

Naysayers will call the poll as an outlier, but it will likely generate much-needed enthusiasm among Democrats in the state. And having followed Sestak around on the campaign trail during his primary run, I can testify to the fact that the man is tireless and seems to possess the magical ability to finish strong in a long and grueling race.

1. Voters have extremely low opinions of both major parties — much lower than in the period from 1992-1994, when electoral constituencies were being re-shuffled and when Mr. Perot lost his bid.
2. By some measures, an increasing number of voters prefer to identify as belonging to neither major party.
3. The Republicans might field a particularly polarizing presidential nominee. Sarah Palin, in particular, were she to be nominated, might have trouble achieving 50 percent of the vote, even if Barack Obama were still fairly unpopular.
4. The employment picture is likely to improve only modestly by 2012, according to most economists, which could contribute toward continued dissatisfaction with Washington.
5. Whichever party wins control of the Senate and the House in November, its majorities are liable to be narrow, which is likely to lead to gridlock and the inability to make good on its campaign promises.

Silver actually goes on to provide fifteen reasons in all, and while it’s hard to gauge their “statistical significance,” they’re a fairly compelling compilation. Odds are, even in such a relatively favorable environment, a third-party candidate would stand little chance of making significant inroads, but the broader point is that Friedman’s critics might not want to deny the possibility outright.

That’s because Republicans, if they manage to seize control of a number of state legislatures and a majority of governor seats in the fall (as they are predicted to do), will have the unique opportunity of presiding over the once-a-decade redistricting process that is slated to occur next year after the results of the 2010 census are finalized. While redistricting is nominally a nonpartisan process, evidence from the past suggests that, in practice, it is anything but:

Consider Pennsylvania. After population changes in the 2000 census cost the state two of its Congressional seats, the state’s Republican governor and legislature set new, irregularly shaped districts favoring Republicans, setting off a legal battle that went to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld the new districts. Since then, Democrats have taken control of the state’s House and its governorship.

Now, on the eve of redistricting, when the state is likely to lose another Congressional seat, the Democratic hold is looking tenuous. The governor, Edward G. Rendell, must leave office because of term limits, and the Republican nominee has been leading in polls in the race to succeed him.

Over at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver predicts that Republicans could be on track to control approximately 30 governor seats, reversing a situation in which 26 seats are currently held by Democrats, 23 by Republicans, and 1 by an Independent. Redistricting, he notes, is always a contentious process, but especially in states expected to lose seats. With fewer seats, during the next election, the surplus of incumbents must compete against each other to stay in office. Further compounding Democrats’ problems is the fact that among the states that are expected to lose seats (like Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), a Republican nominee for governor is considered a clear favorite in all of them.

The GOP, for its part, is excited to turn the president’s words into a campaign issue across the country. Mike Allen quotes an anonymous GOP official as arguing, “The president is out of touch. Just because someone has the right to do something, doesn’t mean people don’t have the right to be outraged or upset by the insensitivity of the decision.”

The president, however, did take pains to point out and pay tribute to the sensitivities and emotions the decision engenders. He simply argued that our constitution gives the mosque the same right as any religious institution to set up shop in the area. In that respect, Nate Silver argues, the president is hardly out of touch with public opinion. While nearly two-thirds of the populace think it is “wrong” to build a mosque near ground zero, 61 of respondents still think the group has a “right” to do so.

Republicans’ decision to rally against the proposed mosque also reflects a larger shift within the party against Islam, note Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman. Under the leadership of George W. Bush — who, despite having led the march to war in Iraq, continued to court Muslims and called Islam a religion of peace — the right wing suppressed the bulk of its skepticism and mistrust regarding the religion. With Bush now largely out of the picture, however, many Republicans have openly sought to cultivate fear and hostility towards Islam and translate it into electoral advantage in November.

Here is a version of the graph we produced in 2009, but updated to include the dozen or so polls that have been conducted on it since that time, as listed by pollingreport.com. I have also included opinions on gay marriage from the General Social Survey, which asked about gay marriage as long ago as 1988.

The LOESS regression line now shows 50 percent opposed to gay marriage and 49 percent in support — basically too close to call.

The OLC is the office that housed such Bush-era luminaries as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, and issued the infamous “torture memos” that defined torture so narrowly that even waterboarding — which had always been considered a form of torture before, even by the United States — now passed legal muster. Johnsen was one of many critics of that office’s legal opinions during the Bush presidency, earning her the lingering ire of many Republicans.

Among them was Specter, who, during her confirmation hearing in February, took the lead in painting her as a radical left-wing ideologue. In April, even after switching parties, he reaffirmed that he was still opposed to her nomination. As a result of the staunch opposition of Specter, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and most Republicans, the Office of Legal Counsel has gone without a confirmed leader to advise the president on critical legal issues, such as the use of warrantless wiretapping and the treatment and trials of suspected terrorists and “war on terror” detainees.

But now, it looks like Specter may be changing his mind. Specter’s press secretary, Kate Kelly, emailed me Thursday with this:

Senator Specter has several concerns about Ms. Johnsen’s nomination, including her views on executive power and abortion. Senator Specter is solidly pro-choice, but he disagrees with her position equating limitations with involuntary servitude. Senator Specter had a second meeting with her to get clarification on her positions and he is still considering her nomination.

As I pointed out during Johnsen’s confirmation hearing, Specter grilled her on a footnote buried in a friend-of-the-court brief she’d co-authored with 10 other lawyers representing 77 different public interest organizations, 20 years ago in an abortion rights case when she was a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League. The footnote said that laws curtailing the right to an abortion “are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires [a woman] to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.”

“When I read in your writings that abortion bans are a violation of the 13th Amendment ban on slavery,” Specter chastised Johnsen at her confirmation hearing, “that seems to me candidly beyond the pale.”

Johnsen, flustered, responded that, as far as she could remember, she hadn’t actually equated outlawing abortion with slavery, but was just making an analogy. Anyway, the point, while creative, was pretty tangential to the core of the brief’s argument. It was, after all, relegated to footnote 23. But that clearly did not satisfy Specter, who remained firmly opposed to her nomination.

Until Thursday.

The change is consistent with Specter’s overall transformation, captured well by Nate Silver’s Specterometer at FiveThirtyEight.com. According to Silver’s analysis, after switching parties on April 28th, Specter started out voting with the Democrats on “contentious votes” about two-thirds of the time. But since Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) announced on May 27 that he plans to challenge Specter in the 2010 Democratic primary, Specter has become a far more loyal party member, voting with the party on “contentious votes” 97 percent of the time.

That was Silver’s count in July, and I don’t have the count to date, but it does give some indication as to why Specter decided to meet with Johnsen a second time, and is now “reconsidering” which way he’ll vote on her nomination.

Today we’re already seeing some evidence of that. The office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has issued a press release that moves her from the “doubtful” column to something approaching “likely” territory:

Murkowski also noted that she hoped the framework for climate policy laid out by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., would mark a turning point in the climate debate.

“They wrote a column, not a bill, and I do believe it could be improved. But in my opinion, the framework they laid out in those 1,000 words is already better than the policies it took the House 1,400 pages to impose,” Murkowski said.

To be clear, neither Graham nor Murkowski has committed to supporting climate legislation. Far from it. But let’s remember that these aren’t mushy moderates; they represent two of the reddest states in the country. In July, political handicapping guru Nate Silver put Murkowski’s chances of backing a climate bill at 2.37 percent and Graham’s at 0.39 percent — far behind fellow Republicans Olympia Snowe (Maine — 55 percent), Susan Collins (Maine — 49 percent), Charles Grassley (Iowa — 7 percent) and several others.

These developments have climate policy expert Joe Romm feeling pretty optimistic. He writes:

The Kerry-Graham deal certainly puts [Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio)] in the “gettable” column.  And as the bill becomes more genuinely bipartisan, then Senators like Lugar (R-IN) become gettable too.  I think the final bill will [have] 5 or more Rs and 62 or more total votes.

Of course, it only takes a few bad town hall experiences for lawmakers to change their minds.

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo reported that the Franken campaign’s numbers show the Democratic candidate trailing by just 50 votes, a significantly lower figure than the 303 reported by the Star Tribune and other news outlets. The difference comes from the campaign’s methodology, which assumes that the more the 6,000 ballot challenges will be rejected and the election judges’ initial opinions upheld. The official figure removes the challenged ballots from the overall count until the challenges are resolved.

Nate Silver of the electoral handicapping site FiveThirtyEight.com, whose magical regressions yesterday afternoon gave Norm Coleman the edge, now concludes that Franken is the slight favorite to win the race.

Of course, this is heavily based on speculation, and Coleman’s slim lead — whether 50 or 303 — is dwarfed by the 6,000 challenged ballots yet to be resolved.