THE ELEPHANT ROTS FROM THE HEAD:

There are 43 Republican seats now without an incumbent on the ballot. That's more than one out of every six Republicans in the House -- a record in at least a century,[Dave Wasserman, the Cook Political Report's House analyst] says. [...]

Wasserman says the most important sign that 2018 will be a "wave" year -- with Democrats winning control of the House -- is the intensity gap between the two parties. In polls, Democrats consistently rate their interest in voting as significantly higher than Republicans. And Democrats have voted in extraordinary numbers in the special elections held the past year, despite Republicans holding on to win almost all of these races. [...]

Wasserman has a vivid way of describing the most harmful dynamic for Republicans in November. "This election is the year of the angry female college graduate," he said.

"The most telling number in the most recent NBC/WSJ poll is that Trump's approval rating among women with college degrees was 26 percent. That's absolutely awful and the intensity of that group is extraordinary. They're already the most likely demographic to turn out to vote in midterms. But never have they been this fervently anti-Republican."

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