Nevada Sen. Dean Heller is Democrats’ top Senate target in this so-called Democratic-wave cycle. Democrats need Rep. Jacky Rosen to beat him. It’s just not an option for him to win re-election. The problem for Democrats is that Heller is quite good at winning elections. He’s run in them continuously since 1990 and has lost a grand total of zero (0) races, eking out many by very close margins. He’s the sort of gritty incumbent that Democrats would want to have a buffer against heading into Election Day, but they might not get it. Call it the “Kavanaugh bump” or just “Republicans remembering in October that they hate Democrats,” but the two most recent polls from reputable pollsters give Heller a 2-percentage-point lead over Rosen, bringing the race to a tie in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Were this any race in any other state, I’d suggest that Democrats, being Democrats, were en route to blowing it, but Nevada is home base to the only competent Democratic electoral organization in America: Harry Reid’s political machine. So the hottest seat this week is the one I won’t try to predict.

Former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, thanks for playing. This one is going down an awful lot like former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh’s comeback attempt in 2016: Democrats land a recruit with high name recognition who’s remembered fondly from a red state’s pre-polarization era, only to be obliterated by the modern red-state machinery down the stretch. In the last two polls, GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn has posted 5- and 8-percentage-point leads over Bredesen. It doesn’t appear that he’s hit the bottom, either. And the Democrat seemed hapless in Wednesday’s debate, missing opportunities while Blackburn created her own with every answer, linking him to unpopular national Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Bredesen hands these opportunities to her when he makes inexplicable moves like visiting New York to fundraise with Michael Bloomberg. And now he’s got James O’Keefe on his case. Christ. You can tell things are getting desperate when a candidate thinks celebrity wattage will save him. It won’t.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Senate Democrats’ most endangered incumbent, was trailing Rep. Kevin Cramer well before Senate Republicans’ October resurgence. Were she only trailing by a point or 2, the textbook political play might have been to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. From where she was sitting, though—down by double digits with a month left—that wouldn’t have changed much of anything. She needed to take a risk. So she not only decided to vote against Kavanaugh, she amplified her vote, speaking out about it on 60 Minutes and releasing a campaign ad explaining her decision. Odds are that North Dakota’s answer to this will still be a decisive “Bye,” but it’s refreshing to see a red-state Democrat taking a chance for once. Now, if only there weren’t a new state law blocking her voters from voting.

This one too? A quick polling recap of the past month here: GOP Rep. Martha McSally got a brief boost out of her primary victory over Joe Arpaio and Kelli Ward in late August, but Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema quickly took it back. The latest poll, though, shows McSally on top by 6 percentage points, the largest lead she’s had. But do I really need to belabor this? I could write about all the “hits” Republicans are making on Sinema, but by now you get the point: The Senate map looks awful for Democrats this week. Just … ick. Let’s not talk about it anymore.

Progressive Democrats won a series of gubernatorial primaries earlier this year, and the results have been mixed. Andrew Gillum’s campaign in Florida appears to be going just swell, while Stacey Abrams is behind but hanging tough in Georgia, where her opponent gets to decide who votes and isn’t sure that “black people” will make the cut. One place where progressives’ bet is an absolute dud, though, is in “safely blue” Maryland, where incumbent GOP Gov. Larry Hogan is trouncing former NAACP president Ben Jealous. It’s not clear that any Democrat could have beaten Hogan, a popular centrist, this cycle, but this is looking like a blowout. According to the most recent Washington Post poll, which shows Hogan with a 20(!) percentage point lead, Hogan is neck and neck with Jealous in Montgomery County, a vote-rich suburban county and a beating heart of “the Resistance.” Hogan lost this county by 25 percentage points in 2014. It turns out that Maryland is a blue state, but it’s not an ideologically progressive one. A lot of federal workers live there, and they don’t want—and specifically, don’t want to pay for—what Jealous is selling.

Alaska Rep. Don Young, the dean of the House, has been in Congress for 44 years. He is a caricature of a cantankerous old corrupt politician. For four decades, his job has been to secure as many federal dollars for his home state as possible through whatever means necessary. He’s good at it. He’s also good at making sexist and racist remarks and threatening people with knives on the House floor. He’s not a pleasant person, as any reporter who’s ever asked him a question will tell you. So. Could he finally lose? Probably not. The main race-ratings groups have the statewide seat as “likely Republican.” But Republicans could lose a couple of those “likely Republican” races, and a recent poll shows Alyse Galvin, an independent nominated by the Democratic Party, within 4 points.*

Correction, Oct. 12, 2018: This story originally misstated that Alaska congressional candidate Alyse Galvin is a Democrat. She is an independent nominated by the Democratic Party.

The asymmetry in campaign strategies between GOP Rep. Andy Barr and progressive champion Amy McGrath must be baffling to the voters in this central Kentucky district. It’s important to note, first, that the only thing airing on television networks in this district is an endless, hellacious loop of congressional campaign ads from these two extremely well-funded camps. Barr has been using that time to run almost entirely negative ads against McGrath, at one point releasing a new one around the same time each week as appointment viewing. McGrath, though, has not run any explicitly negative ads against Barr. It’s a fitting climax to this strategy, then, that Barr is calling President Trump into the district for a rally this weekend, where he will presumably spit hot venom in McGrath’s direction, and she will respond by painting smiley faces or something. The race is close.