Anyone else feeling so confused by this cycle?

[Spectator]

That’s funny — I actually remember 2014 feeling like a "very uncertain" midterm election to many as well. At this point in 2014, the consensus was that (a) Democrats still had a very good chance of holding the Senate (with much discussion about how Republicans like Tom Cotton of AR were "blowing" their races*), (b) there was no way Republicans were going to gain governorships (with a "banner year" for Democrats considered a more likely outcome than a GOP wave in the gubernatorial races), and (c) the GCB average was actually very close/basically a tie.

*e.g. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/08/the-gop-is-worried-cotton-falls-flat-on-campaign-trail

I think most people acknowledged Arkansas as a likely flip that year before end of summer. It was pretty obvious at the time he and Landrieu were DOA.

What makes this year tricky is that if the Dem incumbents do as well as Mark Pryor did relative to Obama 2012, they win.

[Spectator]

Honestly, 2020 felt harder to predict for me. While this year could end up better than expected for Democrats, I don’t think the range of outcomes is nearly as large as it seemed for 2020. I’m guessing the GCB will be between R+4 and EVEN, though I could be wrong.

2020 was a mindf**k, a comfortable Democratic win even if it was a bit less than 8 points made complete sense and then the polls were somehow way more wrong than they were in 2016.

I wouldn’t call 2020 a comfortable Dem win by any stretch. Biden only narrowly flipped five states by less than 3% each (3 of those states by less than 1%). And Democrats were widely expected to expand the majority in the House, not lose seats. The Senate was also a clear underperformance up until the Georgia runoffs, with Maine and North Carolina being relatively unexpected GOP wins. MT and IA were arguably seen as tossups by many too, even if in hindsight it was obvious they were too red.

[Spectator]

I agree with AZ and NV being the deciding Senate races. But I don’t see Laxalt as a particularly strong challenger. More just generic. He looks superior compared to the others clowns running in swing states.

I disagree that it was obvious to anyone with any decent level of analysis that Arkansas was legitimately competitive at this point in 2014. I followed the Senate pretty close in 2014 and always considered Landrieu and Pryor DOA the minute Obama won re-election.