Gillespie really will win this

[Virginiá]

Well if you take out Quinnipiac you should take out Monmouth too since both polls diverge about equally from the others (7 points in each direction). That would still be a roughly 5.5 RCP lead for Northam. I'm not a believer in doing that though, because as we saw in 2016, outliers can be right.

Interestingly enough, the final Virginia election results (looking at RCP's final result #) in 2013 and 2016 turned out to be almost exactly %0.42 of Quinnipiac's last poll in those races. A few points off in 2014, though Q's last poll in 2014 was in mid September as opposed to late October in '13/'16.

If that held true this time, it would put Northam's "adjusted" Q result at around 5.8%.

[Virginiá]

Three of the past four major election cycles have been Republican waves (2012 was a moderately Democratic-leaning neutral cycle), so it's not surprising, honestly. 

I assume you meant 2016 as part of the 3 Republican waves? I have to disagree. Republicans only barely won the House PV (an inverse of 2012), actually lost seats in the House and Senate, and gains across the country were not too spectacular. Even Trump's electoral college win was at best a comfortable win, and perhaps less so when you look at his razor thin pluralities in the states that carried him to the finish line.

In my opinion, it was just a modest Republican-leaning year, but by no means a wave.

[Virginiá]

There was almost nothing left for them to win by then in the House; it was inevitable some of the lowest hanging fruit would flip back.  In the Senate they had essentially the reverse of the Democrats' map situation this year and only lost one seat.  And Donald Trump won the Presidency.  It was a small wave, but a wave all the same.

Isn't that the idea of a wave, though? You win seats that might normally be a hard lift. Historically-speaking, 235 - 247-seat majorities are not that big, either, so in a wave environment they should have at least been able to maintain their existing majority, if not pad it a little. I just don't see how it can be classified as a wave when you're not only losing seats out of a majority of 245 - 247-ish, but barely eking out a plurality in the House PV. In 2010 and 2014, Republicans won clear, comfortable majorities of the House PV, and in 2016 it was like a 1% plurality.

I just don't see it, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Virginiá]

It was a microwave.

[Virginiá]

You're right on Braley and Grimes, but Ossoff, Bayh, and Nunn had no YUGE gaffe that doomed them like Akin/Mourdock did. Bayh and Nunn lost because the year they ran in was too republican for them to win, and Ossoff lost because the DNC and their allies spent too much money on his campaign.

Wasn't Bayh drowning under negative news coverage? His actions after he left the Senate looked like a roadmap of what not to do if you plan to return to politics later in life.