My colleague Mike Allen, who's covered a few midterm elections in his time, says it's rare to see so much evidence of a trend accumulate so many months out, only for all the signals to be proven wrong.
The big picture: Yes, the punditocracy is being cautious about 2018 because it has fresh memories of how humiliating it felt to wake up on Nov. 9, 2016, with Donald Trump as president. But the graphic above tells a stark story and shows the pundit class may be underestimating the odds of a devastating election season for Republicans.
The bottom line: The signals look every bit as bad for Republicans as they did for House Democrats when they got wiped out in the 2010 Tea Party wave.
- "Every metric leads you to one conclusion: The likelihood of significant Republican losses in the House and state/local level is increasing by the week," said the Republican operative who did this statistical comparison to 2010.
- "The depth of losses could be much greater than anticipated and the Senate majority might be in greater peril than anticipated."
Go deeper: Read the Washington Post's Dan Balz on the under-covered battle for the Senate.