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WARRENSBURG, Mo. -- Sen. Jim Talent is not responsible for $3-a-gallon gas or the Iraq war, but many voters here are linking him to an unpopular commander in chief and say they will punish him at the polls because he is a Republican. Mr. Talent faces a significant re-election challenge in November, with Democratic state Auditor Claire McCaskill essentially running even with him in the polls. Voters in the increasingly frustrated electorate here, especially in economically challenged rural Missouri, say they likely will seek a change, even though they may disagree with the Democrats. Most voters interviewed said life "could...

The Missouri Senate race remains one of the closest in the nation. The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll shows Senator Jim Talent (R) with 46% of the vote and Missouri State Auditor Claire McCaskill (D) at 44% (see crosstabs). A month ago, it was McCaskill’s turn to hold a statistically insignificant edge, 45% to 42%.

Missouri State Auditor Claire McCaskill (D) has moved ahead of Senator Jim Talent (R) in the latest Rasmussen Reports election survey to lead the incumbent 45% to 42% (see crosstabs). The candidates were tied at 42% in our survey last month. While a 3-point lead for the challenger is well within the survey’s margin of sampling error, it is a concern for any incumbent to be so far below the 50% level of support at this point in the campaign. Four other Republican incumbents are in similar or even more difficult circumstances (Santorum in Pennsylvania, Burns in Montana, Chafee in...

U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., has opened up a fundraising lead of more than 2-to-1 over his likely Democratic rival, state Auditor Claire McCaskill. The latest campaign reports, filed Monday, showed Talent with $7.12 million in the bank as of June 30, compared with $2.78 million for McCaskill. Such an edge gives Talent far more cash for television ads, which both need to define themselves and each other in the final 16 weeks before the Nov. 7 election. < snip > But the Senate contest also could be affected by the hefty spending already under way by the coalition seeking...

After months of toggling leads, the race for Missouri’s seat in the U.S. Senate between incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent and State Auditor Claire McCaskill has now leveled. Results of the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 likely voters show the candidates now tied at 42% with Republicans and Democrats divided evenly along party lines.

Incumbent Jim Talent holds a slight advantage in the Show Me State, according to the latest poll by Zogby Interactive. 49 per cent of respondents in Missouri would vote for the Republican in the election to the U.S. Senate, while 44 per cent would support Democrat Claire McCaskill.

Such public sentiment - reflected in a new statewide poll conducted by Research 2000 for the Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV (Channel 4) - provides the landscape for Missouri's close contest for the U.S. Senate. Advertisement Among 800 likely voters polled last week, 49 percent supported state Auditor Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, in her quest to replace U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo. That compared to 43 percent who favored retaining Talent, who has been in office since 2003. The remaining 8 percent were undecided.

A tighter race is looming in the battle for the United States Senate. GOP incumbent Jim Talent trailed democrat Claire McCaskill by a slim 3 points in January. Now, McCaskill's lead is six points and McCaskill's edge mirrors Nixon’s in the governor’s race. She leads among women by 13%, and independent voters by 14%. McCaskill leads big in St. Louis City, and has a 12% edge in St. Louis County.

Mr. TALENT. Mr. President, I rise to speak against the bill. I want to begin by saying that America has a proud history of immigration. When we say that America is a nation of immigrants, we mean that deep in our national consciousness is the image of America as a haven and a place of opportunity for people from all over the world.Our policies have reflected that image. America has always had more open immigration policies than any other country. But those policies have been the result of choices the American people have made. We are a nation of immigrants,...

Our latest survey of the race for Missouri Senate shows State Auditor Claire McCaskill (D) leading Senator Jim Talent (R) 43% to 40%.

Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) has racked up a solidly pro-life voting record in his first term. And he was an early co-sponsor of Sen. Sam Brownback's bill to ban all cloning. Now, however, columnist Bob Novak reports in The Washington Post that Talent may be "moving to the middle" on cloning. Talent on Friday removed his name from the Brownback-Landrieu bill. Further, Novak says, Sen. Talent may be trying to appeal to the pro-cloning business community in Missouri. The powerful Stowers Institute of Kansas City, Mo., is a billion-dollar outfit that is supposedly threatening to move to California if a...

After months of tying or trailing his Democratic challenger in the race for his Missouri Senate seat, Republican Senator Jim Talent now leads 46% to 41%.

Defection from the anti-cloning ranks by Sen. Jim Talent, until now a rising star in the conservative movement, reflects deep divisions in the Republican Party created by the stem cell research issue. When Talent went on the Senate floor Friday to take his name off a bill to ban human cloning, he showed how those divisions imperil his re-election to a second term in Missouri this year. Talent had been a longtime co-sponsor of Sen. Sam Brownback's anti-cloning bill. But Missouri business interests who finance the Republican Party are backing a state constitutional amendment that explicitly allows human cloning to...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri on Friday withdrew his support of legislation that would criminalize key types of stem cell research. He instead suggested a more flexible regulatory approach that would take into account new scientific advances. Talent said the bill he had co-sponsored, which had been criticized by scientific and business leaders in Kansas City and St. Louis, was overly broad given that new discoveries showed it possible to get the benefits of embryonic stem cell research without the risk of cloning human embryos. “It now appears possible to get stem cells without cloning an embryo,” he...

Research 2000's poll of 800 likely voters in Missouri showed that 47 percent preferred McCaskill, a Democrat, while 44 percent favored Talent, a Republican. Nine percent were undecided. McCaskill's three-percentage-point edge over Talent isn't considered statistically significant because it is within the poll's margin of error rate of 3.5 percentage points for each figure.

10. Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee, easily one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate, faces a determined primary challenge from Cranston Mayor Steven Laffey, who is more conservative. The Democratic nominee is likely to be former State Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse. 9. Michigan Arch-liberal Debbie Stabenow was the closest winner among new Democratic senators elected in 2000. At a time when Michigan GOPers are on a political roll under State Chairman Saul Anuzis, she will face a strong challenge from either of the potential Republican candidates—Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard or former Detroit City Councilman Keith Butler, an articulate...

In the Missouri Senate race, Democrat Claire McCaskill leads Republican Jim Talent by three percentage points.

The latest Rasmussen Reports Election Poll shows Democrat Claire McCaskill with 47% of the vote and Republican Jim Talent with 45%.

Burr addresses 'boutique fuel' By Alex Keown Daily Times Staff Writer U.S. Sen. Richard Burr introduced the Affordable and Reliable Gas Act of 2005 Friday. The bill aims to decrease U.S. vulnerability to gasoline price spikes by reducing the number of available special fuel blends on the market, also called boutique fuels. Burr said the large number of boutique fuels has reduced gasoline availability because the variety of gasoline blends makes it more difficult to substitute blends in response to a gasoline shortage. He said a locality using one boutique fuel facing a gasoline shortage may not be able...

Check out the site that will be the place to go for infomration on next year's matchup for the U.S. Senate in Missouri between Sen. Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill. RightMissouri.com