Silver gives Republicans a 76 percent chance of taking the Senate. But be prepared for a long night:
Even if Republicans win, the outcome may not be determined quickly. David Perdue, their candidate in Georgia, has gained in the polls — but the model still has the race going to a runoff about half the time. Louisiana will almost certainly require a runoff. Alaska’s vote may take days or weeks to count, as it has in the past. The FiveThirtyEight model — even with its optimistic forecast for Republicans overall — estimates there’s just a one in three chance that the election will be called for them on Tuesday night or early in the day on Wednesday. For Democrats, meanwhile, there’s almost no chance to win without going to “overtime;” the party will hope to extend the race for as long as possible.
There are two Republican wins, however, that could end the race quickly. Pay attention to races in North Carolina and New Hampshire. Both states have early poll-closing times (7:30 EST for North Carolina and 8:00 EST for New Hampshire) and a Republican win in either state would require Democrats to run the table in almost every other competitive race. But Republican wins would simultaneously indicate that the polls might be biased toward Democrats rather than against them, making a Democratic sweep the rest of the night very unlikely.
Cassidy’s guess is 53-47 for the GOP:
In a post on Friday, I pointed to evidence that late deciders appear to be breaking to the Republicans, particularly in the South. In states like Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana, that trend is clearly visible in the latest polls. Alarmingly for the Democrats, something similar may well be happening in Colorado and Iowa, two seats they currently hold. Of the ten battleground states, the Democrats’ best bets are now North Carolina and New Hampshire, where their candidates are holding on to narrow leads. Then there is Kansas, where the contest between Greg Orman, an independent businessman, and Pat Roberts, the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, remains a toss-up.
Sabato also forecasts 53-47. On the close races:
The Kansas race between embattled, weak Sen. Pat Roberts (R) and independent Greg Orman is perhaps the closest, most difficult-to-predict Senate race in the country. However, at the end of the day, a Republican has not lost a Senate race in this state since 1932. It may happen, but we just can’t pull the trigger and predict it. LEANS REPUBLICAN
We’ve been calling Georgia and Louisiana “Toss-up/Leans Runoff” in recent weeks because we expected both to eventually go to runoffs. Louisiana will, and Georgia might, but we now believe Republicans are favored to eventually win both. So we’re just going to call both LEANS REPUBLICAN going into Election Day: If both do in fact go to runoffs, then the Leans GOP ratings will apply, at least initially, to the overtime contests.
John Sides joins the chorus:
[W]hen we debuted Election Lab on May 5, we estimated at that point that the GOP had a 77 percent chance of winning and was predicted to win 53 seats. We predict 53 seats again today. The only change is that Michigan and Colorado are flipped relative to that earlier forecast.
Morrissey bets that a “Republican wave will run the table”:
And even if Republicans only manage to win six seats while not keeping Kansas, another dynamic will come into play, which is the desire to be part of a majority. Orman might end up caucusing with Republicans, although that seems temperamentally unlikely, but that’s not as true for Angus King of Maine. King endorsed Lamar Alexander in Tennessee last week, so he’s not hostile to the Republican caucus. If the GOP ends up with 51 or more seats, King may cut a deal to strengthen Republican numbers even further. Whether he’d do that in case the GOP wins only 50 seats is anyone’s guess, but the Maine Sun-Journal thinks that would be unlikely.
Waldman doesn’t expect a “wave,” much less a mandate, for the GOP:
If they manage to take the Senate, it will be because most of the incredibly close races this year tipped their way in the end. Which would undoubtedly be a victory, but it would be hard to argue that the GOP squeaking out wins in deep-red states in the South and adding a couple in swing states like Iowa or Colorado represents some huge shift in public sentiment. New polling data suggests that even if Republicans do take the Senate, we’re hardly looking at a “GOP wave.” The final pre-election poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal was released today, and it shows the two parties nearly deadlocked (46-45 in Republicans’ favor) in the generic ballot test among likely voters. Democratic voters’ interest in the campaign has risen to match Republicans’, and approval of the GOP as a party remains abysmal. There’s also evidence to suggest that turnout will be low.
Charlie Cook calculates that “a seven-seat gain would seem the most likely outcome for the GOP, with eight a bit more likely than six, but either highly possible.” What would qualify as a wave?:
The first test of the existence of a political wave is whether the benefiting party avoids losing many of its own endangered seats. The second is whether it wins an overwhelming number of the purple, competitive or, in this case, light blue Democratic-tilting but still endangered seats. So, if Republicans limit their own losses to just one of their own competitive seats (for example, Roberts in Kansas) and win at least three of the four key purple states (the open seat in Iowa and the three seats held by Democratic incumbents—Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, and Mark Udall in Colorado), that starts qualifying as a wave. Just winning one or two out of the four neutral-site contests might well help the GOP secure the majority, but it hardly qualifies as a wave. These are seats where it is the political environment and President Obama, not the map itself, that are the cause of Democratic pain. Obama carried all four states in both 2008 and 2012; losses in these would mean voters who voted for him have officially reversed course.
The third test of a real wave is the ability of a party to pull off real upsets, knocking off incumbents who were not on the lists of first- or second-tier vulnerable seats. If, for example, someone like Mark Warner in Virginia, Al Franken in Minnesota, or Jeff Merkley in Oregon were to lose, that would be a wave in the sense of 1980, 1994, 2006, or 2008. These years saw wins that were way more than just a result of the map. There now appears to be little chance that any of these three will lose their races.
Update from a reader:
Cook says that Obama carried Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Colorado in 2008 and 2012. This is not correct, as Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012.
The Dish 