Data from the TargetSmart report, which is a combined count of returned ballots from states that publish the data for party registrants and a predictive model of voter affiliation in the states that don’t, puts Democrats ahead nationally at 50.4% of votes (14.8 million) to Republicans’ 39.4% (11.5 million) with the other 10.2% (2.9 million) seen as unaffiliated. Partisan split-wise it’s remarkably close to 2020 at the same point -6 days to the election, at which Dems held 49.5% of the vote to 40.0% GOP. In absolutes overall turnout so far is above 2018’s by about 1.5 million, and the GOP actually had a slight (46.5% to 46%) lead in early turnout at this point before the last midterm.

Now the caveats are this data isn’t perfect and that voters registered as or are predicted to be Democrats aren’t necessarily going to vote for Dem candidates. That aside, it’s hard to square this with all the polling results and horserace circlejerk in the MSM indicating armageddon for the Dems. Strategically this level of early turnout gives Dem campaigns and get out the vote efforts a huge advantage in knowing where to target in order to squeeze more votes out of people before or on election day. It leaves Republicans pinning all their hopes on a 12 or 14 hour window in which any and all sorts of shit can happen to their voters on an individual basis and assholes like Mark Levin soberly imploring fans on Monday to vote early despite widespread antipathy in MAGAmerica.

There’s another part of Levin’s plea worth mentioning: “We have got to turn out in numbers like we did in 2010 and the Tea Party,” he says, referring to the massive Red Wave which took 63 House and 6 Senate seats from the Dems. Well he doesn’t actually want that because GOP turnout that year in absolute numbers was 44 million votes nationally in the House. With total turnout this year projected to hit 125.6 million – up from 118.5 million in 2018 – that kind of showing would be an utter slaughter. We’re not working with numbers much different than Levin’s here, the ones he cites were from the US Elections Project as of Sunday. Now while we can’t expect it to be as low as 44 million, especially considering House GOP candidates got 50.9 million votes nationally in 2018, it serves as a reminder that there is definitely a ceiling for Republicans somewhere in there.

How much realistically can they turn out when so many MAGA voters didn’t show up to help out in the 2018 because Trump himself wasn’t on the ballot? 60 million? 65 million? That right there is almost certainly the difference between a Republican takeover of one or both majorities in Congress and being stuck with another Dem trifecta. For a real Red Wave to materialize we need to see the GOP hitting closer to 70 million, just shy of what Trump got in the highest turnout election in history. We could certainly be wrong but we simply don’t see that happening. This is a knife fight in which the Dems have already inflicted some flesh wounds bad enough for a demented little scumbag like Mark Levin to take his glasses off and issue a stern warning to the camera.