At a seven-seat gain, Republicans would presumably win all of their gimme seats or win six out of them and one tougher contest, a range of possibilities that may or may not satisfy those remembering law number two. Democrats would need to win two seats to undo the ultimate prize, the majority, and based on 2010 results, that is quite doable: Pennsylvania and Illinois were counted long into the night and barely went red then. With that, rule number three is broken.

At an eight-seat gain, however, Republicans have won all of the gimme seats, or at least six of them and two tougher races, and they match their performance in the 1994 revolution. Democrats would need to win Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to undo this in 2016 without any vulnerabilities of their own cancelling them out (Nevada and Colorado come to mind). It is also highly improbable that an eight-seat gain would be a “net” result wherein Democrats lost Kentucky or Georgia, satisfying the first law. For historical precedent, it would be very tough to argue “no wave” when eight meets or exceeds every previous wave besides 1980 in the past third of a century.