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It’s time for some alarm about the midterms.

The most recent polls have underscored the real possibility that Republicans will keep control of both the Senate and House. “On balance, it’s been a good 10 days of ... polling for the GOP in a lot of important battlegrounds,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s elections analyst, writes.

Democrats now appear highly unlikely to take back the Senate, which was always going to be hard for them, given the conservatism of the states holding Senate elections this year. And while Democrats are still favored to win the House, many races remain so close — with neither candidate yet polling above 50 percent — that they could break either way in the final weeks. It’s easy to see a scenario in which many Democratic-leaning voters fail to turn out, as often happens in the midterms, and many Republican-leaning voters remain loyal to the party.

[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]