Democrats have a mountain to climb in West Virginia.

The latest Fox News battleground state surveys of five key states shows Republicans in good position to gain two seats and hold two seats left open by GOP retirements. Democrats, meanwhile, are well-positioned to hold only one.

The polls in West Virginia, Connecticut, Nevada, Missouri and Ohio show varying degrees of success for Democrats in dealing with low approval ratings for President Obama and his policies...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new slate of polls conducted by Pulse Opinion Research for Fox News finds pro-life candidates for U.S. Senate seats in four states faring well. The states have some of the biggest matchups in the November 2010 elections as pro-life advocates hope to take control of Congress or reduce the pro-abortion advantage.

The polls show good news for pro-life advocates in West Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Missouri.

In West Virginia, even popular Gov. Joe Manchin can't escape the very high negative ratings pro-abortion President Barack Obama has accumulated there...

DENVER | After taking a beating at the hands of Missouri voters in August, "Obamacare" could be roughed up once again at the ballot box in November.

Following the lead of the successful Missouri initiative, which passed with 71 percent of the vote, Arizonans, Coloradans and Oklahomans will decide this fall whether to approve proposed constitutional amendments that would allow them to opt out of key provisions of President Obama's signature national health care law.

The three initiatives prohibit the government from forcing individuals to buy health care insurance - a "mandate" that critics say violates the U.S. Constitution - and would allow patients and employers to pay providers directly without penalty. The idea is to protect state residents from "the ongoing takeover of health care by government," backers of the Colorado campaign say...

President Barack Obama, facing at best narrower Democratic majorities in Congress next year, is likely to break up his remaining legislative priorities into smaller bites in hope of securing at least some piecemeal proposals on energy, climate change, immigration and terrorism policy, White House officials say.

In a series of recent campaign appearances, Obama has talked up the stakes in the November election as he seeks to energize supporters and retain Democratic control of Congress. At the same time, White House officials have begun revamping their legislative strategies.

They are talking about a new, more incremental approach, championed by former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, to fulfilling campaign promises on energy, immigration and on closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The new White House chief of staff, Pete Rouse, is far more steeped than Emanuel in the culture of the Senate, where comprehensive approaches to some of these issues have fared poorly.

The 2012 presidential race begins in earnest on Nov. 3 -- the day after the upcoming midterm elections -- and President Obama looks to be in trouble at the starting gate.

A Fox News poll released Friday shows that 54 percent of voters say they would vote for someone else rather than re-electing Obama if the presidential election were held today. That’s up from 47 percent in a January poll and 31 percent in April 2009.

Thirty-nine percent would vote to re-elect the president now, down from 43 percent in January. That's a dramatic drop from the 52 percent who felt that way in April, at his term's 100-day mark...

Florida is another state where the falling popularity of President Obama is proving a drag on Democratic candidates -- in this case, Alex Sink, who finds herself trailing Republican newcomer Rick Scott in the race for governor, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted Sept. 23-28.

Scott, the former health care executive who won an upset victory in the GOP primary, leads Sink by 49 percent to 43 percent with 7 percent undecided. The margin of error is 2.9 points. Sink is the state's chief financial officer.

Independents favor Scott by 46 percent to 40 percent with 12 percent undecided...

A conservative media watchdog says the Democrats' recent unleashing of attack ads is a sign of the party's desperation to discredit their GOP opponents as a way to try and stave off defeat.

The New York Times recently reported that Democratic candidates across the country have opened a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau, and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and hold on to their majority. The article also says Democratic operatives have dug deep into business and personal histories of Republican candidates in an effort to plant doubts about them and avoid having their races become a national referendum on Barack Obama and the Democratic Party...

Leaving taxpayers hanging and next year's spending bills undone, Congress is rushing to return to the campaign trail, pausing just long enough to agree on a stopgap bill to keep the government from shutting down after Thursday.

After an 18-month burst of legislating that included overhauling the nation's health care system, rewriting rules for Wall Street and repeated efforts to boost the economy, lawmakers punted on the final thorny questions of whether to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire and how to cut spending in the next fiscal year.

Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for deadlocking, and about the only thing they settled on was the need to flee Washington, where they've battled relentlessly for months...

The Democrats' agenda of jobs and tax cuts has begun to lose support within the party's own ranks, even as House and Senate members rush to finish their pre-election business and return home to seek votes for November's midterms.

A last-ditch jobs bill backed by Senate Democrats, designed to punish companies that shift jobs overseas, collapsed in the face of a bipartisan filibuster Tuesday, even as nearly four dozen House Democrats signed a letter breaking with party leaders and urging that at least some of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for higher-income taxpayers be extended past the end of this year.

The moves mark a rocky ending as Congress puts off much of its agenda and seeks to adjourn this week with plans to return after the elections in order to pass spending bills, address the tax cuts and possibly tackle immigration, as well as the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy of gays in the military, and climate-change legislation...

When President Obama arrives in Wisconsin for a campus rally on Tuesday, he'll be visiting a state where his party and his policies are in big trouble with voters.

Democrats are hoping to build a firewall with cash infusions and special attention from the president around a group of incumbent senators to preserve a majority in the upper chamber.

But the latest round of Fox News battleground state polls suggests Democrats have their work cut out for them, especially in Wisconsin where incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold is trailing his Republican challenger badly...