1. LEADING OFF

Happy Monday, folks. Tomorrow is it.

By our final rankings, Democrats will head into Election Day with 221 House seats leaning their way — three more than they need for a majority. In the Senate, they need four of the seven races we rate Toss Up to reach the 51 votes necessary to control the chamber.

That's a wave election, to be blunt, and it's something few in the party expected a year ago, when, as our Surina Venkat has noted, few thought winning control of the Senate was a realistic possibility.

But here we are, with Republicans — and President Trump, in particular — spending the last weekend of the campaign defending states the party won easily in 2024. Trump spent his final rallies in Iowa and Kansas, campaigning for the Republican candidates in two races that we rate as Toss Ups.

Democrats, meanwhile, are on offense in Ohio, a state Trump carried by more than 10 points in 2024, where we rate both the Senate and governor's races Toss Ups. Our Kim Lyons has the closing case Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton made at their rally in Cleveland last night.

Below, you'll find Russell Payne's interview with Miles Coleman of Sabato's Crystal Ball on the Kentucky House seat that could give the first sign of a wave, the Scranton mayor who made the biggest jump on our final House rankings, JD Vance's last-day stops in upstate New York and Toledo, and the judge who threw out the Justice Department's bid to hold up Alaska's Senate results.

— Elias Isquith

2. THE WEEK AHEAD

All times are Eastern.

Today

• Vice President JD Vance rallies at 9:15 am in Rome, New York, for Republican Anthony Constantino in the race to replace retiring Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21), where a Siena poll released last month had Democrat Blake Gendebien up 46 to 42. Then Vance heads to Toledo, home turf of Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09).

• Democrats Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton wrap up their statewide tour in Columbus, and Republican Ken Paxton closes his Texas Senate campaign with events in Conroe at noon and Allen at 6:30 pm, after dropping a planned final rally at the Alamo.

Notably, this is an unusually low-energy election eve by President Trump's standards. 

The day before the 2018 midterms, he rallied in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri; and before the 2022 midterms, he held a rally near Dayton. This year, he's relying on tele-rallies and remarks from the reflecting pool instead.

Tuesday

• Election Day. Of our seven Senate Toss Ups, Ohio's polls close first, at 7:30 pm, and Alaska's close last, at midnight.

FYI: Alaska's results could take a while. Voters there rank the candidates, and if no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the state won't count anyone's second choices until the week before Thanksgiving. 

3. THE RESULTS WORTH STAYING UP FOR

A Q&A With One of the Nation’s Top Elections Handicappers

By Russell Payne

Miles Coleman is the associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, one of the foremost election handicappers in the country. In an interview with The Caucus he walked through what he's watching for on election night as results come in, as well as what we won't know until after the dust settles days, or potentially weeks, later.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you walk us through the beginning of election night? I'm thinking here about early bellwethers, key races that we might know early.

Looking for early signs, I would look at Kentucky. They close the polls there at 6 o'clock, which is obscenely early but convenient for us.

District Six in Kentucky, which is like the Lexington area plus a bunch of rural counties, that is like Trump plus 15 or 16 districts. It is Congressman Andy Barr's seat, who's running for Senate. This is a district that, even though it is Republican at the presidential level, down the ballot it's more Democratic. Governor Andy Beshear has always carried it. He's campaigning for the Democratic nominee, a guy named Zach Dembo. If you look at polling, the Democrats appear to be in good shape. If they could get that district, I think that would kind of set the tone off well for Democrats.

In 2018, Amy McGrath, who was more of a fresh face then, held Barr to three or four points. So the Democrats came close there but they didn't win it, which was kind of consistent with 2018 overall. A solid night but not an exceptional night for Democrats.

Even though Florida isn't really a tossup state anymore it does count its votes quickly. I would look at if the statewide races there are at least within single digits. That might be good for Democrats. One of the districts I'm watching is in the Tampa area, where longtime Congresswoman Kathy Castor, a Democrat, got a much tougher seat in redistricting. If she can hold on, that's a good sign for Democrats.

One of the races that Democrats are targeting in the Miami area is Maria Elvira Salazar in District 27. If she hangs on comfortably, that might show that some of the trends with the Cuban vote being really Republican are still holding up.

Then in North Carolina, I'm expecting Roy Cooper to win comfortably, but it could be one of those things where, if it takes a couple hours to declare Cooper the winner, it would not be a good sign for Democrats.

Sticking to my state of Virginia, the Democrats are probably going to pick up at least one seat in the Virginia Beach area. If they get two or three flips out of Virginia instead of just one, that would be a sign of a Democratic wave.

In terms of the Senate, Texas and Ohio would be the ones that I would look at early in the night. Something to keep in mind for Ohio is that it's a state where they tally the early and mail-in vote first. The results usually look more Democratic and they get more Republican as the night goes on.

We've just covered a good number of bellwethers, but is there anything in particular you're watching that we should get some results for on Tuesday night, but they won't necessarily be early in the night? Races that could paint us a picture of where things are going. For a lot of this campaign, people talked about California's 22nd as the median district in the House. It's changed some with redistricting, and we won't have results out of California on Tuesday, but are there any similar races?

One that I would flag is Wisconsin's First in the southeastern part of Wisconsin, near the Milwaukee area, which is the median district this year by '24 presidential partisanship. It's also Paul Ryan's old seat.

The Republican is a guy named Bryan Steil and he has this Democratic opponent, Mitchell Berman. This is one of those races that it seems to have come on the radar within the past month or so. The Democrats have been spending more there. This is one where Steil has done well for himself as an incumbent even though the district has been marginal on paper. If he loses, that would speak to Democrats beating some of these established incumbents who have overperformed.

In the Senate, I'm most interested in Kansas. In terms of vibes and how everything has panned out, Roger Marshall seems like he's flailing. That's one that's come onto the board relatively late too. So if Democrats have some momentum these are the areas I would look at.

I think people already know it's not worth trying to stay up for results from California or Alaska, because a lot of this is going to take days or even a week to count, but I'm wondering what you think the last races worth staying up for on election night are?

The governor's race in Nevada is one. The early vote looks really bad for Joe Lombardo and Republicans in Nevada. But at the same time it's just hard to beat an incumbent governor, and especially an incumbent governor who doesn't really have any obvious scandals. If he loses it's probably because one of the groups that Democrats are going to have some upside with this year compared to '24 is Hispanics. They would probably be a big part of his loss, and if James Talarico wins or comes close in Texas that would be a key ingredient in that race as well.

Colorado's governor race is one as well. The Republican gubernatorial candidate there, Victor Marx, is one of the most weird, off-the-wall candidates Republicans are running this cycle. He's probably going to lose to state Attorney General Phil Weiser by 25 points plus, and this is where we sometimes talk about coattails.

I would look at Lauren Boebert's seat, who's a big underperformer to begin with. If she loses, that would be maybe a silent mega-wave. With that there are really three seats in Colorado that the Democrats would like to pick up. They're probably already going to pick up District Eight, which is already kind of purple as is, but also District Four, which is Boebert, and District Five, which is Colorado Springs. If they pick up any of those seats I wonder if coattails have an effect there.

4. OUR FINAL PRE-ELECTION HOUSE LIST

Instead of our usual Top 25, our final House rankings cover every Republican-held seat that we rate competitive — 34 altogether.

Overall, the list reaches deep into Trump country. But the week's biggest jump came in a familiar battleground, northeastern Pennsylvania, where we now see Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti's race against Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-08) leaning her way. She climbed eight spots, to 15th.

To find out which seat lost more ground than any other in the final week, read the full rankings at The Caucus.

5. WHAT COUNTS AS A BLUE WAVE?

Becky in Indiana asks:

"What will you consider a Blue Wave? How many seats in the House and Senate? And how will that compare to other waves?"

Thanks, Becky. There's no official number, but here's how I think about what is and is not a "wave."

Start with history. In the last three big midterm waves, the party out of power gained 31 House seats in 2006, then 63 in 2010, and about 40 in 2018. In the Senate, the winning party picked up six seats in both 2006 and 2010, while Democrats actually lost two in 2018.

But here's the thing: States normally redraw their House districts once a decade, after the census. This cycle, though, Texas redrew its map early to add Republican seats at President Trump's urging, the Supreme Court let it stand, and then nine other states followed.

The new lines made many districts safer for one party or the other. In February, the Cook Political Report counted 36 competitive House seats, down from 48 at the same point in Trump's first term. So this year's House can't be neatly measured against the recent past.

And that is why a 15-seat gain, which would have been a modest night for Democrats in 2018, would, this cycle, be evidence of a historic wave election.

As always, however, the Senate is a different story. Democrats hold 47 seats and need a net gain of four to reach 51, and as our Senate rankings note, the path runs through places like Texas, where Democrats haven't won a Senate race since 1988, and Kansas, where they haven't since 1932. 

On a map that challenging for Democrats, ending up with 51 or 52 seats would count as a wave in my book, even though it'd be fewer pickups than the party won in 2006.

Have a question of your own? Send it to [email protected].

6. IN THE NEWS

• A federal judge yesterday dismissed the Justice Department's bid to hold up certification of Alaska's Senate race if Republican Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan loses to former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, and the Trump administration is expected to appeal. (Alaska Public Media)

• With both of Ohio's top races rated Toss Ups, Kim Lyons has more on how Democrats Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton are making their final case to voters. (The Caucus)

• Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11), who lost a Senate primary campaign against Abdul El-Sayed and initially endorsed him after conceding defeat, appeared at a Detroit church on Sunday with El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, before switching her endorsement to him. As Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall explains, the whole strange situation is unprecedented. (Talking Points Memo)