The Trump campaign will not go quietly into that good night. For all the incoherent ravings that have spilled out from the mogul’s gaffe-hole over the past seven days, he’s made one thing perfectly clear: If he’s going down, he’s going down in flames.

And Republican Senate candidates are starting to feel the heat. Last week, FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast gave Democrats a 56 percent chance of winning the upper chamber — today, that figure is 73 percent.

Before we dig into where and why the winds of electoral fortune have shifted, let’s quickly review what needs to happen for Chuck Schumer to become Senate majority leader. Assuming Hillary Clinton wins — and Tim Kaine becomes the Senate’s tie-breaking vote — Democrats need to gain four seats on November 8 to seize the majority. Republicans have already left two of their incumbents for dead — Mark Kirk in Illinois and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.+
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Ultimately, turnout could be the decisive factor in all of these races. The central hope of every anxious GOP operative is that, eventually, Trump’s collapse will actually redound to the benefit of down-ballot Republicans. The idea being that Americans will vote for a check on President Clinton, out of a misguided belief that divided government would produce compromise, instead of dysfunctional gridlock. - NY Magazine