Democrats did better in 21 of the 28 contests where both elections had a Republican and Democrat. Of course some elections had better Democratic candidates or better Republican candidates. Democratic recruitment was better in 2008 and Republican recruitment was worse, so we'd expect the chart to skew toward 2008. It's possible that the environment would've helped the Democrats, regardless of who ran for President. The overwhelming number of elections where the Democrats did better was so great that Obama's coat tails played some role, if not the entire role.
Let's look at Obama's percentage of the vote compared to the Democratic candidate to see if there's a correlation.
I'm no statistician, but the number of elections where Obama and the Senate candidate were close indicates some correlation. The races in red were open seats. In most of these the Democrat adhered closer to Obama's percentage. The races in yellow are those where the candidate lost the state but the party's candidate won. Here, the correlation isn't that high. It's likely that Obama helped the candidates, since the Democratic candidate won all of these states. There's something even curiouser, however. West Virginia and Louisiana were 2 of the 3 states where Obama did worse than Kerry. Obama wasn't a drag on either of these races. The Democratic incumbents won anyway. So Obama won't necessarily be a drag on Joe Manchin or Jon Tester in 2012.
Let's look at the last President's re-election campaign. Republican candidates heavily underperformed George W. Bush in 2004.
Bush may not have pulled his party's candidates to victory. Obama was a positive in most Senatorial races in 2008. That doesn't mean he will definitely be one in 2012.
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