Lincoln Chafee may be the most popular Senator ever to not win re-election, exit polls suggest. The exits showed that despite the fact that voters elected Dem Sheldon Whitehouse to replace Chafee, some 63% of those same Rhode Island voters actually approved of Chafee's performance in office. So how did he manage to lose? The exits also show that 63% of voters wanted Democrats to control the Senate. Bottom line: Senator-elect Whitehouse's argument — that a vote for Chafee was a vote to keep the GOP in control of the Senate — worked.

CQ Politics has just changed its rating of the race between incumbent GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee and Dem challenger Sheldon Whitehouse from "No Clear Favorite" to "Leans Democratic":

The national Republican Party’s heavy intervention [in the GOP primary] left Chafee with two big problems coming out of the primary.

Those conservatives who strongly backed Laffey — and who believed the national party should have left the decision up to the state’s Republican voters — were left with hard feelings.

At the other end of the spectrum, Democrat Whitehouse used the primary as ammunition for his argument that Chafee is more of a party loyalist and less of a maverick than his image suggests, and that he is now more beholden that ever to Republican leaders. To implement change in Washington, say Whitehouse and fellow Democrats, Rhode Islanders must replace Chafee.

CQ also notes that Whitehouse was spared a tough primary and that he's got twice the cash on hand that Chafee does. CQ's full analysis here.

A new American Research Group poll has Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse beating Republican Lincoln Chafee 45% to 40%. Polls have been all over the map on this race, though Whitehouse always seems to have an edge.

Dem Sheldon Whitehouse has won the first big showdown of the general election fight against incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee: The Rhode Island AFL-CIO endorsed Whitehouse at its state convention last night. Chafee, easily the most pro-labor Republican in the Senate, made a strenuous pitch for their support, hoping that he could prevent them from reaching the two-thirds threshold for an endorsement, thus denying Whitehouse their support. But Whitehouse carried the day by saying: "I can tell you this: I will never cast that vote to empower the Bush administration and its agenda." This is going to be Whitehouse's message in this very blue state -- will it work with the wider electorate?

The first major battle of the general election showdown looms tonight, as the AFL-CIO gathers for its big state convention to decide whether to endorse GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee or Dem challenger Sheldon Whitehouse. On one side there's Chafee, who argues that Big Labor benefits by having a pro-labor Senator in the Republican Caucus. On the other is Whitehouse, who claims that the GOP's grip on of Congress has to be broken if the labor movement is to survive. Providence Journal columnist Charles Bakst games it out after the jump.

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The balloons are still deflating at Lincoln Chafee's victory party, but Dem Sheldon Whitehouse has already unleashed the first TV ad of the general election. Whitehouse's new ad leaves no doubt that he's moving aggressively to make the election a referendum on George W. Bush: It doesn't mention Chafee's name even once, and it says: "A Republican Senate continues the Bush policies and its failures. A Democratic Senate changes the direction of America. Think about it."

With more than one-third of votes counted, Lincoln Chafee has a small edge over Steve Laffey: 17,346 for Chafee to 15,034 for Laffey, according to the Providence Journal's blog.

GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee, take comfort: It looks as if there's extremely high turnout in Rhode Island today, which means independents may be coming out to prevent defeat at the hands of conservative primary challenger Steve Laffey. The sole polling center in Richmond is reporting unprecedented turnout, and a polling official tells the Providence Journal-Bulletin that the town has "never" seen turnout matching that of today's primary.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee's campaign has just released a statement charging voter intimidation by supporters of conservative challenger Steve Laffey:

Currently, poll watchers in North Kingstown on behalf of Steve Laffey are disrupting the election process in North Kingstown. During the election, these impartial observers have begun leaving their designated seats and interjecting themselves into the process, challenging the eligibility of voters. This has significantly delayed the voting process, and is intimidating voters. The Chafee campaign calls on Mayor Laffey to demand his poll watchers stop disrupting the election process.

This primary could all but decide which party gets a key Senate seat: If Laffey wins it, the seat is extremely likely to go to Dem Sheldon Whitehouse. (Updated after the jump.)

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From today's big Times piece on the GOP Senate primary between incumbent Lincoln Chafee and conservative challenger Steve Laffey:

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee’s hopes in a general election.

The piece also notes that TV ads are on the air attacking Laffey as soft on security because as mayor of Cranston, he "agreed to accept `Mexican ID cards' as proof of citizenship." So what you have here is the national GOP defending the anti-war Chafee by faulting his pro-war opponent as soft on national security. Via Kevin Drum.

Here's yet another eerie similarity between the Rhode Island and Connecticut Senate races: GOP incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee is claiming his campaign web site was hacked, just as Joe Lieberman's was. And the FBI is getting involved, too. One difference: Chafee's people aren't blaming the hack attack on supporters of his primary opponent -- Steve Laffey -- as Lieberman's people were so quick to do. We'll see how far the similarities between the two races go on primary day this coming Tuesday.

Today's Providence Journal has an excellent rundown on all the money and resources the National Republican Senatorial Committee is sinking into its efforts to rescue GOP incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee from conservative challenger Steve Laffey:

[W]ith polls indicating that Chafee has a much better chance than Laffey at beating the likely Democratic nominee, the final tally will no doubt far exceed the $1.1 million the NRSC spent on its failed 1996 effort to foil Democratic Sen. Jack Reed.

You can be certain that a GOP primary is the last place the NRSC would like to be spending over $1 million. The whole spending rundown is eye-opening indeed.

This is eye-opening. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has pumped an astonishing $536,420.41 into the Rhode Island Senate race to date this year in an effort to rescue GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee from conservative primary challenger Steve Laffey. You can find the figure in the NRSC's filing today with the Federal Election Commission. And yet, as we reported below, Laffey is crushing Chafee in the latest poll. Yep, the NRSC is sinking huge sums of cash into a primary which they'd of course rather spend in GOP-versus-Dem races. But even those huge sums aren't working.

A new poll out from Rhode Island College shows that conservative challenger Steve Laffey is crushing incumbent GOP Senator Lincoln Chaffee among likely GOP primary voters by 17 points -- 51%-34%. Fifteen percent are undecided -- that is, less are undecided than the point spread. Chafee really is on course to lose this thing.

Stephen Laffey, the conservative challenger to liberal Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, is now leading by a wide margin, 51%-34%,according to a poll by Rhode Island College. This primary has had an element of media uncertainly due to a dearth of publicly released polling, though last week Nachama Soloveichik, the Laffey campaign's communications director, told Election Central the campaign was "very optimistic" on their internal polling.

There's still no word, however, on whether or not the media will give this primary the same treatment — deriding the challenger as an extremist seeking to purge a moderate — that was given to the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has hit the panic button over the possibility that conservative challenger Steve Laffey may knock off moderate incumbent Lincoln Chafee. It's already known that the NRSC is running ads to protect Chafee, who has a much better chance of keeping the seat in GOP hands than Laffey does. Now Election Central has reiewed some new data just filed with the Federal Election Commission. Guess how much the NRSC has spent on direct mail this year targeting Laffey? A grand total of...$181,587.66.

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Today's Washington Post has a long piece on the GOP primary in Rhode Island between moderate Senator Lincoln Chafee and conservative Steve Laffey. The piece is very generous to Laffey, describing him as "feisty" while saying virtually nothing about his right-wing views. Laffey has gotten off easy with the national media -- not like Ned Lamont, who was derided relentlessly by national pundits as a draft-card-burning peacenik. So we'd love to hear from you: When is the national press corps going to descend on Rhode Island? When will Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert and other bigfoot national pundits bemoan the fact that "sensible" and "courageous" moderate Chafee may have no place in his party? When will we start hearing dire warnings that the GOP risks being captured by its extreme right wing? When?

The most fascinating thing about last night's debate between Lincoln Chafee and Stephen Laffey was that it turned into a debate between two Republicans about how best to oppose the Bush administration.

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Can an incumbent Senator withstand a primary challenge by running against the party base? That's the strategy that Lincoln Chafee, under pressure from Stephen Laffey's primary challenge, appears to have adopted. He hopes to win the Republican nomination by increasing the overall turnout and minimizing the percentage of Republicans voting in the primary. It's an interesting twist on what happened in Joe Lieberman's primary: While Lieberman tried to hang on to his Dem base while vying for independents, Chafee's reach for independents is all about running against GOP positions.

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Stephen Laffey, who's challenging moderate GOPer Lincoln Chafee in the Senate primary, is one of the most conservative candidates of this cycle. So you'd expect that he'd be defending George Bush while Chafee distanced himself from the President, right? But in an odd twist that shows yet again just how badly Bush is losing the support of his conservative base, Chafee (who's distancing himself from Bush to win over independents) is joined in his efforts by Laffey, who's also trying to find his own creative ways to put daylight between himself and Bush.

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So it finally looks as if the national media has realized that Joe Lieberman isn't the only "moderate" and "sensible" incumbent Senator who's under attack in a primary from "extremists" within his own party.

UPDATE: As Paul Krugman wrote on Friday, the fact that the national media has ignored the Lincoln Chafee race but has spent so much time shrieking in terror over the victory of Ned Lamont proves how empty and insincere the laments over the defeat of a "sensible" and "centrist" candidate in Connecticut really are. Krugman:

"Many of those lamenting Mr. Lieberman's defeat claim that they fear a takeover of our political parties by extremists. But if political polarization were really their main concern, they'd be as exercised about the primary challenge from the right facing Lincoln Chafee as they are about Mr. Lieberman's woes. In fact, however, the sound of national commentary on the Rhode Island race is that of crickets chirping."

The campaign of Senator Lincoln Chafee (R) has hired the wife of James Tobin, who was convicted last year as part of the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal, to do some of its political work.

Rush Limbaugh called for Lincoln Chafee’s (R) defeat and ouster from the Senate yesterday, saying: "He needs to be defeated. It's about time we get rid of these -- whatever you want to characterize Link Chafee as being -- out of the Senate."

Chafee's transgression? He whispered some very meek criticism of President Bush. Or, rather, he didn't criticize Bush at all -- he simply disagreed with him about the Israel-Lebanon conflict. But dissent will not be tolerated among the Dittoheads!

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