Will "Blue Wave" Be A Tsunami Or Normal Midterm Wave?

The charts above show CNN's view on how the seats up for grabs look right now for the 2018 congressional election.

The top chart shows the House seats (all of which are being voted on). CNN shows 203 of those seats leaning toward the Democrats, and 202 leaning toward the Republicans. They show 30 seats as being toss-ups. It takes 218 seats to give a party the majority in the House. That means if the Democrats just win half of the toss-ups (15 seats),  they will become the majority party in the House.

That is doable. In fact, they will probably do a little better than that. And it won't take a tsunami to accomplish it. Just a fairly normal midterm election should accomplish it.

The second chart shows the seats up for grabs in the Senate. They show 44 seats leaning toward the Democrats and 49 seats leaning toward the Republicans. That means the Democrats have a much tougher road to hoe to win a Senate majority of 51.  There are 7 seats rated as toss-ups -- five are Democratic seats (North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, Florida, and West Virginia) and two are Republicans seats (Arizona and Nevada). The Democrats need all seven of those seats.

I'm starting to feel fairly comfortable about Democratic chances in Missouri, West Virginia, and Indiana, and I think there a reasonable chance of Democrats taking Nevada and Arizona. That leaves Florida and North Dakota, both of which look too close to call.

If the Democrats lose one or two of those seven seats, they will need to make it up by taking one or two seats that currently lean toward the Republicans -- and there are a couple of seats where that could happen. A few months ago, the senate seats in Tennessee and Texas looked like locks for the Republicans. That is no longer true. Both of those seats are very competitive right now.

Just a normal midterm wave could easily give control of the House to Democrats. To take control of the Senate, they need that wave to approach tsunami status. Which will it be? No ones knows right now, but Democrats need to work their tails off to make the "blue wave" as large as possible.