What's in Store for Tuesday? GOP Insiders Can't Wait

With just two days to go before Election Day, where do things stand? An analysis by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in the New Yorker finds that Republican insiders are expecting a very good day. He talks to GOP consultants and pollsters anonymously, and the word "bloodbath" is being thrown around, especially in regard to Senate races. They think contests viewed as tight will end up as part of a clean sweep for Republicans, with winners including Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Blake Masters in Arizona, JD Vance in Ohio, and perhaps even election denier Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.

• "Some elections are not complicated at all," writes Wallace-Wells. "As these Republican strategists saw it, their candidates did not get past unpopular positions on abortion with a tactical masterstroke, they simply absorbed the electoral hit and moved on. The economy is not good, and the President is both a Democrat and unpopular."

• Polling errors: An analysis at FiveThirtyEight by Nathaniel Rakich has a headline noting that Republicans "are just a normal polling error away from a landslide—or wiping out." As things currently stand, the site sees not so much a "red wave" as a "red ripple," with the GOP taking the Senate (51-49) as well as the House (225-210). But if this year's polls are off, Democrats could actually gain seats in the Senate and keep the House. Of course, that also means that GOP gains might be more than a "ripple" if the polling error tilts toward Republicans. The analysis runs through the various scenarios.
• Need a primer? The Washington Post breaks down the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races that might flip in the midterms. It finds control of the Senate too tough to predict, and it has this assessment of the House fight: "Republicans need to pick up just five seats to win back the House, but the atmosphere is so murky that some Democratic strategists privately acknowledge that a loss of 20 seats would be a good night."
• The factors: A new ABC/Washington Post poll suggests why Republicans are in such a good mood. Eight in 10 voters say the economy is their top concern and nearly as many say it's inflation specifically. On both those issues, voters favor the GOP over Democrats to fix things by at least 12 points. The wild card is whether the issue of abortion, in which Democrats are strongly favored by voters, will cause more people than anticipated to vote this year.

(More 2022 midterms stories.)