1. This time in 2012, Republicans were hoping that the pollsters had their models of the electorate wrong. It turned out that the models were wrong, but not in the way that Republicans hoped. The voters turned out to contain an even larger proportion of Democrats than the pollsters had expected.

This time it is the Democrats who are hoping that the polling models are wrong. There are still a lot of close races, but the undecided electorate is made up largely of voters who think Obama is doing a bad job. The Republican Senate candidates, whatever their individual flaws, are about as unobjectionable as one can reasonably hope. That leaves the Democrats hoping for a hidden vote of strong Democratic identifiers that is not being caught by either the state Senate polls or the national polls of Obama’s job approval.

2. My gut feeling is that there is zero enthusiasm among Democratic identifiers who are marginally attached to the voting process. They are no longer enthusiastic about Obama. They won’t vote Republican, but they also aren’t worried that the Republican Senate candidates are going to turn the poor into green crackers or steal everyone’s condoms.

I remember Henry Olsen saying something to the effect that giving people a reason to vote is the best GOTV operation. Whatever the effective uses of technology by the Democrats, I saw people bringing their kids into vote in 2008 and 2012 because those voters saw those elections as something meaningful. That was the most important Democratic turnout advantage. By the same token, whatever the glitches with the Republican GOTV mobile apps, the real problem in 2012 was that millions of voters who didn’t like Obama anymore, just couldn’t stomach voting for Romney — so they stayed home. It is just one guy’s view of the world, but I see no reason to think that the Democrats have the enthusiasm advantage that they had in the last two presidential elections.

3. In terms of presidential job approval, Republicans have the most favorable midterm environment of the post-Reagan era. Obama has a lower job approval number and a higher disapproval number than either Clinton in 1994 or Obama in 2010 at the same stage of the campaign. The geography of the Senate contests favors the GOP. Republicans did a pretty good job of candidate recruitment. If Republicans can’t catch a wave under these circumstances, it means that demographic (marital, ethnic, age cohort) changes have tilted the electoral playing field in ways that should send the Republicans past panic and straight into some cool, relaxing despair.