Barack Obama seems very likely to be elected president tomorrow, but he won't have coat-tails in all fifty states or all 435 Congressional districts. Some of our candidates will need a significant number of John McCain's voters to split their tickets in order to have any chance of winning.

In many parts of the country, however, down-ticket candidates will have the wind at their backs tomorrow. Obama not only leads the polls in their states, but also has a better ground game. I'm convinced that in these conditions, Democrats will win some shocking upsets.

Obama has had a double-digit lead in the Iowa polling average for a while now, but his lead seems to be growing as the election approaches. On Thursday Survey USA released an Iowa poll showing Obama ahead 55-40, with an even more commanding lead among respondents who said they'd already voted. On Sunday the Des Moines Register released Selzer and Associates' final Iowa poll of the season, which is even more gruesome for the GOP. Obama leads McCain 54-37 overall. Obama leads 3-1 among the 10 percent of respondents who said they'll be voting for the first time this year, and by 9 points among those who say they haven't voted since before 2000.

Also, the Des Moines Register found Obama supporters more optimistic going into the election:

Over three-quarters of [Obama's] supporters in Iowa say they are inspired and upbeat, with 15 percent describing themselves as angry and pessimistic.

McCain's supporters appear to be more troubled about the future, with 36 percent describing themselves as angry and pessimistic and 46 percent declaring themselves upbeat about the election.

Senator Tom Harkin leads his little-known and under-funded Republican challenger by 26 points in the same poll, giving those McCain supporters more reason to feel pessimistic.

The Des Moines Register's political columnist David Yepsen sees a landslide in the making:

For the first time in modern Iowa history, Democrats are poised to win control of both legislative chambers in two successive General Assemblies while at the same time holding the governorship.

Winning back-to-back Legislatures reflects a realignment of Iowa politics that could have far-reaching implications. For example, the state senators elected on Tuesday will be in office in 2011, when legislative and congressional district lines are redrawn for the next decade.

Yepsen gives Democrats the edge in many of the competitive Iowa House races, including several where the American Future Fund has been running tv ads. He didn't mention Iowa's two Congressional seats held by Republicans in his latest newspaper column, but in a separate blog post he noted that

Obama's lead in the poll is almost three times what his average lead is nationally.

So much for Iowa being a "battleground" or "tossup" state this time. [...]

Such poor numbers threaten to have a demoralizing effect among Republicans and an energizing one among Democrats. If Democrats smell victory and head to the polls while Republicans are in a funk and stay at home (as happened in the 1974 Watergate election), then Obama's landslide could bury other GOP candidates down the ballot.

What happened in 1974? Tom Harkin and Berkley Bedell, who had run unsuccessfully for Congress two years earlier, defeated Republican incumbents in western Iowa's conservative fifth and sixth Congressional districts.

Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny shares my view that Becky Greenwald (Democratic candidate in IA-04) and Rob Hubler (Democratic candidate in IA-05) could pull off upsets tomorrow. Both candidates are being outspent by Republican incumbents Tom Latham and Steve King, but they have been holding lots of campaign events around their districts and are running their own tv commercials. You can view Greenwald's final ad here and read the script here. Hubler's three tv ads are here (scroll down past the text of the Des Moines Register's endorsement editorial).

The GOTV machine in Iowa is engaged on behalf of Democrats at all levels. On Sunday I received a robocall from the Iowa Democratic Party, authorized by the Obama campaign for change, that mentioned voting for the "Democratic ticket" (not just Obama) twice. At the end it asked me to hold before giving me the name and address of my polling place. The same day, a volunteer left a door-hanger at our house, reminding us of the date of the election, the hours polls will be open, the phone number for Obama's toll-free early-voting hotline, our precinct number, the name and address of our polling location, and all the names on "your Democratic ticket" (in our case Obama, Harkin, Congressman Leonard Boswell, Democratic candidate Jerry Sullivan in Iowa House district 59, plus three Democrats seeking county offices).

MyDD readers, what are you seeing on the ground in your state? Where do you expect Obama to bring the most Democrats into office along with him?

There's more...

The latest Iowa poll (from SUSA) shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 55 percent to 40 percent. Obama leads 48-46 among men and 61-34 among women. Most significantly, Obama is beating McCain by 40 points among the 32 percent of respondents who told Survey USA they've already voted.

Yet Sarah Palin is coming back to Iowa on Monday to headline a rally in Dubuque.

What's really weird is that Dubuque, along the Mississippi River across from Wisconsin and Illinois, is in the uncompetitive first Congressional district (Bruce Braley, D). It's far from the central and north-central population centers in the fourth district, where Becky Greenwald is challenging Tom Latham, and farther from the fifth district, where Rob Hubler is taking on Steve "10 worst" King.

Your guess is as good as mine.

While I have your attention, please kick in a few bucks to Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler so they can run more tv ads during the final stretch. You can view Greenwald's final ad here and read the script here. Hubler's tv ad is here (scroll down past the text of the Des Moines Register's endorsement editorial). The Ames Progressive blog recently featured these races too.

There's more...

This evening, Research 2000/Daily Kos released a poll that put Democrat Becky Greenwald within 5 points of Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Latham.

This shouldn't be a shocker in a district where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 8694 voters (a nearly 15,000 voter swing from 2006, when Republicans outnumber Democrats).  This shouldn't be a shocker in a district with a PVI of D+0.4.  But this is not a typical race.

There's more...

I suspected that Republican Congressman Tom Latham's internal polling must be showing a close race when he put up a negative tv ad on the bailout. Now the first public poll of Iowa's fourth district is out. Research 2000 for Daily Kos found this:

Tom Latham 47
Becky Greenwald 42
undecided 11

Click the link for the internals.

Interestingly, the same poll found John McCain leading Barack Obama in the fourth district by 46 to 42 percent. Given the many polls showing Obama above the 50 percent mark in Iowa, I would have thought Obama would be leading McCain in this D+0 district.

If Greenwald is doing as well in IA-04 as Obama, then I feel really good about our chances for an upset in this district. Obama's superior ground game could easily be worth several percentage points on election day.

Paging EMILY's list and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: please start spending some money on tv ads in this district! Greenwald has launched a good web ad recently, but she hasn't been on tv for the past ten days or so.

EMILY's List endorsed Greenwald last month, and the DCCC added her to Red to Blue in early October, but I am not aware of any independent expenditures on her behalf yet.   (UPDATE: Supposedly the United Auto Workers just went up on the air with an anti-Latham radio ad, but I haven't heard it and don't have a transcript.)

Please donate to Greenwald if you can.

There's more...

Cross-posted at Motley Moose.

On Tuesday, the DCCC announced that it was adding Becky Greenwald (IA-4) to its Red to Blue program. The Red to Blue program was created to provide financial and logistical support for Democrats in competitive races for Republican-held seats.

There's more...