[Nate tha\\\' Great]

My answers, FWIW, are yes (>=25 seats), no, yes and no.

It's the House, not the Senate, where I think the national mood is going to come into play. Basically, if you look at the races as they were forecasted a couple of months ago, almost all of the "toss up" House races are polling for the Democrats, and most of the "leans Republican" House races are polling as toss-ups. And the Republicans have to be worried about races exactly like Jim Leach's IA-2 district, which wasn't even expected to be competitive but which is polling as a dead heat. The Democrats may even pick off a House race or two that hasn't been polled.

I expect something along the lines of a 35-seat swing to the Democrats; it might even be closer to 40 or 45 seats. I don't expect the "silent majority" of white evangelical protestants to turn out for the GOP in the same way it did in 2004. In fact, if you look at polls of those voters, their support for the Republicans has dropped 20% since the last election cycle (from something like 75% to 55%).

In spite of this, I think the math works against the Democrats in the Senate. The candidates in Senate races are much more identifiable, and the races are much more likely to come down to local politics. From a Democratic point of view, I worry about having to bat 1.000 in red state after red state, and I suspect they'll stumble somewhere along the way. I do expect Jim Webb to pick off Virginia, but Tennessee is a probably a lost cause, and I think the Democrats will ultimately lose heartbreakers in Arizona (by 2-3%) and Missouri (in a race so close that it may trigger recounts and the like).