For months, pollsters and politicos have debated whether the GOP will take the Senate, and what that will mean for the last two years of the Obama presidency. Yet as November closes in, the answers to both questions remain unclear, in part because of a media and political-class narrative that refuses to die.

Whether the GOP takes the Senate will, of course, not be known until Election Night, perhaps even later if some race results are challenged. But what the elections mean is, in the minds of many, already decided: Unless Republicans take the Senate, they lost in 2014.

Consider, for example, Noah Rothman’s conclusion that if Senate races continue to be tight, recounts are possible. Rothman says this could lead to “paralysis” in Congress, which is “is just one of the many suboptimal conditions that may come to pass if neither party receives a clear mandate from voters in November.”

But what is a mandate? According to RCP’s Sean Trende, nobody really knows. “The terms ‘wave’ and ‘tsunami’ are bandied about so often that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that there is no real definition for them. Everyone seems to agree that a ‘wave’ election involves big gains for one party or the other. But what counts as ‘big’?” asked Trende.

Trende says that he sees “the GOP knocking off three incumbents and picking up three open seats would typically be construed as a wave election,” though he notes that two respected pollsters “suggest that even GOP gains of seven Senate seats would not constitute a wave,” with Larry Sabato saying the GOP wouldn’t hit tsunami levels of victory unless it got 14 seats — something Trende says would mean a greater single-year gain for a political party than any out-party midterm wave election in the last 80 years.

In other words, not only are the definitions of “mandate” and “wave” unknown, but their semi-arbitrary use is being used to set up the Republican party to fail. For example, Rothman seems to consider clearly taking the Senate a “mandate” for Republicans — but if the party misses the gap by taking only five seats, is that considered a mandate? Likewise, if the GOP wins seven seats — Senate control plus one extra seat — will Sabato tell mainstream media outlets that the GOP actually failed as a party?

While the history of “wave” elections provided by Trende is helpful for context, another bit of more recent history should be considered. In 2012, it was Democrats who won big, despite a bad economy and a tough initial assessment of Senate seats. They gained only two seats, but given the way the year had started for Democrats, defending 23 seats, it was an enormous victory. But it was what happened in the House that’s more relevant to what might happen after Election Day in 2014.

In 2012, the House saw small Democratic gains, but the GOP kept control. However, Democrats received more of the popular vote than Republicans, which left influential liberal blogger Ezra Klein saying the GOP hadn’t really won in traditional terms, and House minority whip Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) saying that the House’s mandate was to support President Obama’s agenda.

Republicans, of course, said that with the House under their control, their mandate to oppose President Obama’s agenda was clear.

So, moving focus back to 2014, what if the GOP makes gains in the Senate, but wins only five seats and thus does not gain control? Similar to 2012’s House Democrats, Senate Republicans will be able to say the American people gave them a mandate — but that gaining the majority was just a bit too tough.

Of course, Democrats will say control of the Senate means they had a mandate, even if they lose 9 percent of their members (and the GOP gains 11 percent more members). Given the way Sabato, Rothman, and others seem to be narrating, that mandate would appear to be valid in the eyes of many pundits — and, thus, the GOP is already set up for failure after Election Day.

— Dustin Siggins is the D.C. correspondent for LifeSiteNews, a former blogger with Tea Party Patriots, and co-author of the forthcoming book Bankrupt Legacy: The Future of the Debt-Paying Generation.