A new Pew Research survey finds the Republican Party holds a clear advantage in voter engagement.

Key finding: “Republicans lead on a number of key engagement indicators, though in most cases by smaller margins than four years ago. Currently, 45% of registered voters who plan to support the Republican in their district say they are more enthusiastic about voting than in prior congressional elections; that compares with 37% of Democrats who express greater enthusiasm about voting. However, that gap is narrower than the both the GOP’s 13-point enthusiasm advantage at this point in the midterm campaign in 2010 (55% to 42%) and the Democrats’ 17-point advantage in 2006 (47% to 30%).”

A new Public Policy Institute of California poll finds Gov. Jerry Brown (D) leading Neel Kashkari (R) in the race for governor by a wide margin, 52% to 33%.

ABC News: “Expect it to be rocky in Aspen. Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino is planning on confronting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over comments he made earlier in the week about his campaign’s viability against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.”

Astorino told reporters he had not seen Christie yet at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Aspen, but he plans on seeing him this evening at a group dinner, saying it’s “the first time we will all be together.”

Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) said “his failure to attribute conclusions and verbatim passages lifted from other scholars’ work in his thesis to earn a master’s degree from the U.S. Army War College was an unintentional mistake caused in part by post-traumatic stress disorder,” the AP reports.

Said Walsh: “I don’t want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor. My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment.”

Meanwhile, a new Gravis Marketing poll conducted before news of the plagiarism scandal found Walsh trailing Steve Daines (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 45% to 41%.

Michigan gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer (D) “voted in the 2012 Republican primary, likely for Rick Santorum in order to embarrass Mitt Romney in his home state,” Politico reports.

“Schauer acknowledges casting an absentee Republican ballot, but a spokesman refused to say who he voted for in 2012, calling the way a person votes private.”

An examination of the final paper required for Sen. John Walsh’s (D-MT) master’s degree from the United States Army War College “indicates the senator appropriated at least a quarter of his thesis on American Middle East policy from other authors’ works, with no attribution,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Walsh completed the paper, what the War College calls a ‘strategy research project,’ to earn his degree in 2007, when he was 46. The sources of the material he presents as his own include academic papers, policy journal essays and books that are almost all available online.”

A new Marquette Law School Poll in Wisconsin finds that the governor’s race is still a dead heat, with Gov. Scott Walker (R) barely edging challenger Mary Burke (D), 46% to 45%.

Roll Call: “If Senate Democrats lose the majority, it won’t be for lack of cash-flush campaigns. Facing a daunting map, Democrats turned in solid — sometimes eye-popping — second-quarter fundraising totals for the midterms.”

“Even with incumbents such as Sens. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska already spending significantly on the airwaves, Democrats running for the party’s most endangered seats also continued to sit on significant war chests primed for a post-Labor Day advertising assault.”

A new Palmetto Politics poll in South Carolina finds Gov. Nikki Haley (R) leading Vincent Sheheen (D) by just four points, 46% to 42% in a race that includes independent and libertarian candidates.

In a head-to-head matchup, Haley leads Sheheen, 53% to 40%.

Morning Line: “Overall, midterms are not kind to presidents and their parties. And when a president’s approval rating is below 50 percent, like President Obama’s is now, the president’s party loses an average of about three more seats in the Senate than if his approval were above 50 percent. Overall, since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 3.7 Senate seats in midterm elections. When the president’s approval is above 50 percent, the average loss is 2.6 seats. But when the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent, his party has seen an average loss of 5.5 seats in midterms — ironic, considering Republicans need to gain a net of six seats this year to win control of the Senate.”

“The wildcard here, though, is the continued unpopularity of the Republican brand. The party’s favorability hovers in the 30s, slightly worse than Democrats and the president.”

A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida finds Charlie Crist (D) leading Gov. Rick Scott (R) in the race for governor, 45% to 40%.

However, when Libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie is added to the mix, the race is too close to call, with 39% for Crist, 37% for Scott and 9% for Wyllie

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) hinted at another run for president in 2016 in an interview with Real Clear Politics, saying “there’s a chance I could run” for president again.