The United States may be within a week of momentous political change in midterm elections that could destroy the Republican Party’s monopoly on Washington and hand Democrats power to check President Donald Trump. But take a beat.

It’s far too early to size up any Democratic wave. There’s no guarantee there’ll even be one in an election season characterized by political volatility, redrawn districts, a gusher of outside cash — including hundreds of millions of dollars of GOP funding from Elon Musk — and ambiguity over who will turn up to vote. Pundits may be increasingly bullish that Democrats will give Republicans a shellacking. But at this point, what is the purpose of speculating?

More than 31 million early votes are already banked. And after years of apprehension over American democracy, voters will take part in a noble biennial ritual next Tuesday to deliver the only verdict that matters.

Still, almost everyone involved in politics expects Democrats to erase the Republican majority and win back the House, in a classic rebuke to a sitting president who seems to have forgotten he promised to cut the cost of living on the 2024 campaign trail.

But given Trump’s past triumphs, Democrats would be foolish to take a big night for granted. And the wrinkles of the US political system mean that polls showing a wide Democratic lead on the generic congressional ballot might translate into a more equivocal result than expected.

The 10 or so races that will meanwhile decide the Senate’s destiny are mostly neck-and-neck. This means Democrats could run close in all of them but still miss most of their targets. Disengaged GOP voters might also respond to Trump’s appeals for one last rodeo and turn out in higher-than-expected numbers.

And Democrats are trying to do something spectacular and rare on what was long considered a prohibitive Senate map this cycle. They need an unlikely winning streak through solid GOP territory to find the net gain of four seats needed for the majority. But there are certain signs that may bode ill for the GOP.

Many Republican lawmakers suddenly find themselves in closer races than they expected. And Trump’s campaign blitz is mostly focused on red America as he tries to rescue them. On Monday, for example, he held a rally in Mississippi, where he won by 23 points two years ago. Now, incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing an unexpectedly strong Democratic challenge.

“You know, I’m here because Cindy’s doing great, but I just got to make sure. I can’t take a chance,” Trump said.

None of this proves that Democrats are poised for a victory lap. But it explains why Republicans, with one week to go, seem to be building a last line of defense.

The administration also seems to be preparing contingency plans. Its preemptive legal maneuvers in Alaska and California could foreshadow possible voting challenges. And they recall the president’s previous bid, in 2020, to deny voters’ right to choose their leaders after an election he lost.

There is one, however, undeniable indicator amid all the uncertainty: The gruesome political environment for Republicans only two years after Trump’s stunning comeback is not abating. If anything, it’s worsening by the day.

Voters are desperate for relief from high prices for groceries, gasoline and housing and still haven’t got the answers Trump promised in 2024. And with his war in Iran and his tariffs, the president seems to have handed voters a tangible demonstration that his decisions are making the cost of living crisis worse.

His bizarre antics are hardly helping. If an unpopular president had set out to design a strategy to hurt his own side, it might look little different from Trump’s approach. The billionaire in chief keeps insisting that the country is basking in a historic economic golden age. With gasoline averaging more than $4 a gallon, he celebrated oil company profits on Sunday.

And instead of empathizing with tight family budgets, he waxes on about trivialities at his increasingly out-of-touch rallies — like his new obsession with the rear ends of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted and rapper Nicki Minaj.

Election forecasters are almost universally predicting that Democrats will take the House of Representatives, despite polls showing they’ve yet to win back public trust. That would mean an onslaught of investigation against Trump and senior administration figures — and almost certainly two years of performative showdowns and legislative gridlock in Washington.

Hakeem Jeffries, the probable speaker in any Democratic majority, was sufficiently confident last week to tell CNN’s Manu Raju that his party is “very likely” to regain control, saying that the “environment is clearly on our side.”Indeed, it would be a stunning surprise and a departure from history if the GOP clings on to a majority that has barely functioned in recent months. Incumbent presidents almost always get a bloody nose in midterm elections, and Trump’s approval ratings are particularly low.

Still, even as Democrats target more Republican seats, years of gerrymandering and the uncertainties introduced by Trump’s redistricting campaign this year mean that of the House’s 435 seats, perhaps only four dozen or so are considered truly competitive, even with a political storm lining up for the GOP.

So Democrats could pile up millions more votes but only win by a few seats. The Senate is a toss-up.

Insiders in both parties think North Carolina may already effectively be in the Democratic column. And former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is well-positioned to return to Washington. If networks make an early call for Democrats in a state where Trump romped home by 11 points two years ago, the rout could become reality.

Democrats also think they can unseat Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan. But then the road to a majority quickly gets bumpy. Republican Sen. Susan Collins, for instance, is threatening another act of political escapology in Maine.

And it’s measure of an extraordinary political year and the mountain that Democrats must climb that a CNN analysis last week deemed Texas — which last elected a Democratic senator in 1988 — the fifth most likely seat to change hands. Democratic nominee James Talarico has emerged as a rare political talent, and Trump did him a favor by muscling scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton through the Republican primary. But the mirage of a statewide Democratic victory in the Lone Star sate has shimmered before. No one will believe it until it happens.

A true blue wave might bring Trump-country seats in Kansas and Iowa within reach for Democrats. And even in South Carolina, Sen. Darline Graham can’t be certain of keeping the seat she inherited from late brother Lindsey Graham.

But Democrats have their own worries. Their Senate dreams may be dashed if Michigan nominee Abdul El-Sayed fails to win a margin-of-error race to retain retiring Sen. Gary Peters’ seat in a contest that is testing the progressive movement’s potential in a purple state.

All year, there have been signs that Trump’s 2024 is coalition is splintering. Multiple polls show he’s alienated Latino voters, who helped put him back in the White House, with high prices and a ferocious immigration purge. Polls now show that Democrats have reversed Trump’s gains among younger voters two years ago.

The limited insight that can be gained from early voting statistics also looks favorable for Democrats. The party’s voters seem more enthusiastic than their GOP counterparts in Texas, for example. CNN reported Tuesday that returns suggest turnout among the youngest Republican voters in Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina is well behind 2024. In several key states, Democrats make up a larger share of early voters than at the this point two years ago. All this is encouraging for the party. But Democrats could still fall short of Election Day expectations.

Conservative media is clinging to the hope that polls are underestimating Republican turnout, as has been the case several times in the Trump era. The president is beseeching GOP voters to pretend he’s on the ballot — even though Democrats also want a referendum on an unpopular president.

There’s one other possibility: that this time, pollsters might have failed to fully capture Democratic turnout. That’s how a potential narrow win could become a landslide.

Trump has always been a singular political figure. But if his unorthodox midterm strategy saves his party, he’ll have busted expectations yet again.

The president’s repeated attempts to spring an October surprise, however, seem to be failing. There’s no sign that his promise of $5,000 for every American adult if the GOP wins is changing the race — or that voters take it that seriously. His sanctions-busting diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin put the US on the side of a ruthless tyrant with Ukraine’s blood on his hands, and may have done more political harm than good.

And the president has dived into the deepest gutter in politics by warning that El-Sayed, a Muslim, supports “terrorists” and would need to “go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”The president also backed an ad put out by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that cast doubt on alleged childhood abuse suffered by his opponent, Amy Acton.

In 2016, this kind of searing MAGA rhetoric helped Trump to shatter the playbook. But Trump has always been more effective in elections as an insurgent planning a shakeup than an incumbent judged on his record. Now, he just seems oblivious to the nation’s sour mood. Most people think they know what’s going to happen. But until next week, no one can know for sure.