Karl Rove on "All Things Considered" yesterday speaking with NPR's Robert Siegel on the elections in less than two weeks:

Rove: I see several things; first, unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races and after all this does come down to individual contests between individual candidates. Second of all, I see the individual spending reports and contribution reports. For example at the end of August in 30 of the most competitive races in the country, the house races, the Republicans had 33 million cash on hand and Democrats had just over 14 million.

Siegel: We are in the home stretch though and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about.

Rove: Not that you would exhibit a bias, you just making a comment.

Siegel: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.

Rove: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally........I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.

Rove crystallizes the disconnect going with the analysis in this election. The press and pundits appear to be overly obsessed with the generic national polls that show big Democratic leads but when you start to break down the individual races that Democrats have to win to get control of each chamber it is far from a sure thing that the Democrats will capture either house. The Senate has improved noticeably for Republicans these last few days, the current RCP Senate Averages now project only a 4 seat pick up for the Democrats, two short of what they need for control.

Looking at the House, RCP currently has 9 seats ranked as leaning Democrat and 15 races ranked as toss ups, which provides a fairly broad range of 9-24 seats for the Democrats - if you were to allocate toss ups all one way. Continuing with a crude estimate if you split toss ups down the middle Dems would take the House barely with a 16-17 seat Dem pick up, with a 1/3rd-2/3rd kind of split giving the Dems a gain in the 14 - 19 range.

For a number of reasons, the confidence level is considerably higher in the Senate and I would use the Senate playing field as a barometer with the House ranges. With the Senate in the 4-5 seat range for Democrats, I feel pretty good about a 14-19 range in the House. If the Senate shifts up to 5-6 seats I would bump the House range into the high teens/low twenties and it is when the Senate gets to the 6-7 seat pickup area for Democrats where I think you start to get the real possibility of Democratic gains over 25 in the House.

For those who think Democratic control of Congress is a lock, another concern is that all these scenarios are with the national generic ballot currently showing a 15+ point deficit for the GOP -- a deficit that is far more likely to shrink between now and election day, rather than grow.