NYT: Republicans Appear Poised to Take Control of Senate, New Poll Shows

[RidinWithHarris]

18. How so?

In what way did anything I wrote veer off from realism?

Optimistic, pessimistic, or realistic, there's still no parallel to failed "red wave" predictions (which were far more pundit-driven than data driven anyway). Roughly a third of the Senate's 100 seats are up for grabs every two years, roughly 33 seats, as opposed to all 435 House seats. Given that many of those seats are always fairly safe, it's kind of silly to talk about "waves" when fewer than 10 seats are ever likely to switch parties in any given election.

By (bad) luck, this just happens to be an election where, from the start, Democrats had more tough fights on their hands than Republicans. We'll actually be doing damned well purely from a numbers point of view by losing only two seats. We have to hope for (and work for) better than damned good this time, however.