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I know it probably seems like this year’s primary season has been unbearably long. But as July comes to a close, there are 23 state primaries (plus runoffs in, so far, Georgia and Oklahoma, and a special election in West Virginia) still ahead. Next week’s schedule includes primaries on August 3 in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, and on August 5 in Tennessee. Most of the action is on the Republican side, except in Michigan. Kansas has a close Republican Senate primary and two competitive GOP House contests; Missouri has two big Republican House primaries; and Tennessee has a close three-way Republican gubernatorial contest.  In Michigan, both parties have very complex and competitive gubernatorial primaries (including that rarest of phenomena, a Republican candidate campaigning as a moderate), and there’s another strong challenge to Democratic Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick.

In the chattering classes, there’s been considerable discussion the last few days about Democratic efforts to improve morale, particularly a DCCC memo that denies Republicans have much of a chance of taking over the House. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver mocked the memo as making slopping assumptions about the number of seats “in play” and also taking for granted four takeovers of Republican-held seats that are far from certain. RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende takes a somewhat different tack, and concludes that Republicans’ prospects in November could be better than in 1994, because their goal is simply to take back two-thirds of the House seats they controlled prior to 2006. (On a different front, Stu Rothenberg of Roll Call accused Democrats of trying to rationalize likely House losses as attributable to factors beyond their control, which provoked me to respond).

There’s lots of fresh polling data. In California, PPP and PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) have new statewide surveys out, and both show Democrats Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer maintaining steady if relatively narrow leads. PPP has Brown leading Meg Whitman 46-40, while PPIC shows him up 37-34 with a big (23 percent) undecided vote.  In the Senate race, PPP shows Boxer increasing her lead over Carly Fiorina by 6 points since the June 8 primary. She’s now up 49-40, and just as importantly, has a significantly better approval disapproval rating than Fiorina (Boxer’s is 44/46; Fiorina’s is 28/40). PPIC places Boxer’s lead at 39-34, with, again, a high-undecided rate of 22 percent.

A new Mason-Dixon poll of NV shows Harry Reid and Sharron Angle in a dead heat; Reid leads 43-42, with the favorable-unfavorable ratios of both candidates also being very similar (Reid: 38-51; Angle: 38-47).

Two new surveys in the under-reported Senate race in New Hampshire show Republican front-runner Kelly Ayotte with a significant but shrinking lead over Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes.  PPP now has Ayotte up 45-42; a University of New Hampshire poll shows her leading Hodes 45-37.

Last week PPP created a buzz with a poll showing Democrat Alex Sink taking the lead in Florida governor’s race thanks to a toxic Republican primary between Attorney General Bill McCollum and former hospital chain magnate Rick Scott.  Now Quinnipiac has a new survey showing both McCollum and Scott basically tied with Sink, with independent Bud Chiles in double-digits and a very large undecided vote.

And Michigan-based EPIC-MRA has a survey out of both parties’ gubernatorial primaries in Michigan. On the Democratic side, the poll shows labor-backed Lansing mayor Virg Bernero holding a 40-32 lead over state legislative leader Andy Dillon. Among Republicans, EPIC-MRA shows a very close three-way race, with former Gateway exec Rick Snyder, who has been openly appealing for Democratic and independent crossover votes, at 26 percent, while Attorney General Mike Cox is at 24 percent and congressman Peter Hoekstra at 23 percent; the latter two candidates have been battling for the Tea Party/”true conservative” vote.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.