Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
[Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.]A big irony of the final stages of these midterms is that after all of the special elections, domestic and foreign policy crises, and general craziness out of Washington over the past nine months, the fundamentals of this race look pretty much like they did at the beginning of the year.
That’s good news for Republicans, who spent much of the summer worried that they could face a blowout in the House and maybe even the Senate. For the G.O.P., boring is ideal.
Republicans today feel confident about the Senate, a fight that’s largely happening on red-state turf. Democrats are optimistic about the House, but their expectations have tempered a bit from a few months ago, when they thought their party could rack up dozens of victories. Smart strategists seem to be circling around Democrats winning about 30 seats — enough for them to take control, but not a sweeping margin.
Here’s some of what Republicans are excited about right now:
• The enthusiasm bump they got from Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings seems to have stuck. The intensity gap between the two parties has narrowed, and Republicans are outpacing Democrats in early voting in most key states, according to data analyzed by NBC News.
• The competitive incumbent Senate seats — Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas — seem tighter than a few weeks ago, according to our own polls. And Republicans feel confident about notching a win in North Dakota.
• President Trump’s approval rating is at an all-time high, up to 47 percent, with 49 percent disapproving, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
• Democrats are banking on turnout from independents, younger voters and minority voters — groups that typically don’t show up in big numbers for midterm elections.
Here’s some of what Republicans are worried about right now:
• Mitch McConnell. The Senate majority leader’s remarks last week on the need to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security have given red-state Democrats a new line of attack.
• The gender gap is more like a chasm, meaning that angry female college graduates could end up being a defining force in this election.
• Democrats continue to lead the generic ballot, particularly among likely voters. And new polls in Florida, the first conducted since Hurricane Michael, have them up in the Senate and governor races there.
• Generally speaking, midterms can break late, typically against the president’s party.
Of course, there’s one big caveat to all of this: As we all learned in 2016 (a.k.a. the Freddy Krueger of elections, which we can never escape), elections happen within bandwidths of probability. That means that the political conversation everyone — strategists, reporters and candidates — is having right now is about the likelihood a victory will happen. The honest ones among us will acknowledge, in our myriad hot takes, that there’s always a chance that we could all be surprised.
That measure of unpredictability feels particularly important this year because we’ve never seen another midterm race quite like this, at least not in recent history. Normally, midterms are kind of sleepy affairs compared to presidential races. This year, enthusiasm for both parties is simply off the charts. Many of…
