海角大神

Premature celebration of victory courts disappointment. Anything can happen on Election Day, and has. A week can be forever in politics, and so on and so forth.

But let鈥檚 cut the caveats. It may be time for Mitch McConnell to start thinking about measuring drapes for the big office of majority leader of the US Senate.

First, it looks like Senator McConnell (R) of Kentucky is increasingly likely to win reelection himself. For much of the fall, that has not been a foregone conclusion. Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has run a spirited campaign, and until recently, poll numbers showed this race running closer than many pundits expected.

But now McConnell has opened a small but apparently steady lead. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is no longer spending money on ads in Kentucky.

That鈥檚 鈥渁 perhaps telling sign about the current state of the race,鈥� Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik in Sabato鈥檚 Crystal Ball political newsletter.

Sabato rates Kentucky a 鈥渓ikely Republican鈥� Senate seat.

So if McConnell wins, what will be his position? Right now he鈥檚 the leader of the chamber minority. If the GOP takes 51 seats, he鈥檒l supplant Democrat Harry Reid as majority leader.

As we said, it might be time to think about redecoration. Forecasting models increasingly point to a Republican Senate takeover in November.

The is predicting a 62 percent chance of a GOP majority. The comparable prediction from is 69 percent. is even more favorable to Republican chances, predicting a 93 percent chance of a Senate takeover.

Over at Vox, they鈥檝e helpfully averaged out all the major election models to produce a single number. The average chance of a GOP Senate victory is .

That鈥檚 still not certain, of course. It means there鈥檚 also a 28 percent chance of continued Democratic control. In baseball terms, that corresponds with the chance of a .280 hitter getting a hit in any one at-bat. That鈥檚 far from a freak occurrence.

But which hitter would you rather have? Somebody whose average is .280, or someone whose average corresponds with the GOP鈥檚 chances, .720?

Yeah, we thought so.

鈥淒emocrats鈥� main hope now is that the polls are wrong. That鈥檚 never a good place to be,鈥� tweeted Vox editor in chief on Monday.

It鈥檚 possible the polls are wrong, though. That鈥檚 happened before. As RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst in an interesting piece on Monday, it鈥檚 getting harder to poll accurately as more and more voters depend on cellphones and as the electorate gets younger and more diverse.

It鈥檚 possible that polls everywhere are off, Mr. Trende writes. But their inaccuracies are probably going to be small and could be in either direction.

鈥淭he possibilities basically cancel out, and I鈥檓 left with the simple poll averages as the best guidance for this election,鈥� Trende writes.