The "experts" are going to blow 2018 because they are making predictions based off of the assumption that the status quo which has existed under our current party system will continue to exist and be reflected in upcoming elections. They seem to think that this muh polarization and culture war will keep going on forever but it won't. The Reagan era is over and and anyone who makes predictions thinking the same Red state / Blue state dichtonomy that has existed since the 2000s is a dope.
But wouldn't there be varying levels of truth to the old way of thinking about things until a new order is established? The only time since the country has been powered by electricity where the political landscape blew up practically overnight was during the Great Depression, and even then, despite Democrats taking over almost every single state for at least a brief while, a lot of them starting reverting back to form by the end of the 30s. It doesn't seem like there is any GD-level event yet to disrupt the system that much.
And even if a realignment is right around the corner, it doesn't seem like it is here yet. 2020 would sound like a better bet for that. And still, even if that is the case, realignments are still partially built on existing voting habits. Reagan's was built on the existing GOP coalition + working class whites, which had started shifting years beforehand. A Democratic realignment now would be built on Millennials and college educated voters, with some sizable chunk of working class voters probably breaking away from the GOP.
This isn't really true. The 1994 midterms are a good example....not a single model or poll predicted it because there were underlying generational changes happening that the pollsters didn't see coming or fail to account for. The 2018 midterms appear to be going the same way....the massive women/millennial vote appear to be ignored by the clown pundits. Think of Trump as a great depression that will affect the end result in ways that can't be measured.
Trump is an unknown/unknown. No predictive model can account for such a disgusting jackass. All of these predictive models account for the idea that you'll have 2 respectable textbook candidates (something like Jeb vs Hillary). Nowhere in American history do you have such a disgusting turd like Trump thrust upon the American electorate WITH the voting rights that the average American has today.
I can't predict for sure what's going to happen but the idea that business like usual will continue under a Trump presidency is insane. The results of AZ-08 should of been proof of that.
