Conservatives have never seen predictions for the Senate midterm elections such as these:

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Last week, Republican primary voters passed their first Senate test, producing a North Carolina nominee, Thom Tillis, who is merely imperfect, not catastrophic. After the disasters of recent years, national Republicans will happily take it.

The North Carolina result did nothing to change the expectation among most observers that the Republicans have a 50-50 or better shot at taking the Senate majority. It might even have enhanced those odds. The conventional wisdom is reasonable: We know that the president is unpopular, the president’s party typically performs poorly in midterms and the Democrats are overextended on this year’s Senate map. One of the ways the Republicans could hurt their chances is by running bad candidates in some of these races. Tillis might turn out to be that kind of candidate, but he was clearly the most credible nominee in the primary field.

So where is the Senate right now? Hypothetically, there’s still a wide range of potential outcomes – and all the likeliest ones involve at least some kind of Republican wave, perhaps delivering the magic six-seat gain that would dethrone Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Let’s adopt a mariner’s, or a meteorologist’s, terminology to make sense of the situation. Democrats hope for no wave at all: Something akin to “beach week,” the post-finals getaway that some of my University of Virginia students are celebrating this very instant on the Atlantic seaboard. Beach week for the Democrats, though, is about as likely as the undergrads’ dream of putting off adulthood. More realistically, Democrats can hope for fearsome-sounding waves that crash loudly but do little structural damage. Republicans, on the other hand, are rooting for an impressive tidal wave, if not a full-fledged historic tsunami.

The following table offers a wide range of Senate outcomes, along with their likelihoods.

Some of these scenarios have virtually no chance of happening, particularly the ones where Democrats play even in the Senate or even gain a seat. The Democrats have only a couple real chances to play offense, and their odds in either case are not great.

The two Republican primary candidates the establishment fears most in the open GOP seat in Georgia – Reps. Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun, who have inspired headlines with the words “Todd Akin 2.0” – are lagging behind other, more electable candidates in polling ahead of the May 20 primary and a likely runoff. A solid GOP candidate there should be able to beat Democrat Michelle Nunn in a Republican state in a Republican year. The same goes for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky: Polls there are close, but this is a Republican running on very Republican turf. These races are competitive, but they are not tossups, either.

Meanwhile, there are 14 Democratic seats that are at least marginally practical targets for Republicans. The bigger the wave, the greater the number that could sink come Election Day.

Read the full artilce here: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/2014-midterm-gop-wave-106598.html#ixzz31c0j5Clk

Or,  at American Thinker, here.