RALEIGH – Public officials, reporters, lobbyists, and activists are paying close attention to every announcement out of the Republican caucuses in the North Carolina General Assembly.

That alone serves to demonstrate the historic nature of the 2010 election. In the past, GOP leadership elections and committee assignments commanded little attention from the state’s political class. Things have changed.

Nationwide, the significance of the election cycle is in greater dispute. Republicans retook the U.S. House after four years in the political wilderness. At the same time, however, they lost a couple of U.S. Senate seats and governorships that many thought they had a good shot at winning.

Democrats may have taken a “shellacking,” in President Obama’s words, but some Democratic politicians and their allies have sought to spin the results as a non-ideological rejection of Washington stalemate, a non-ideological vote against incumbents during a recession, or a temper tantrum by Tea Party extremists. As always, the best response to such rhetoric is to repair to the ramparts of cold hard facts.

The American Enterprise Institute provided a fascinating comparison of midterm election cycles in the latest edition of its AEI Political Report. Here are some of the key stats:

• Republicans appear to have gained at least 63 seats in the U.S. House. That’s about double the number of seats Democrats gained in their 2006 wave, but still below the biggest-ever GOP gain in the House (the anti-Roosevelt wave of 81 seats in 1938) and the biggest-ever Democratic gain (the 76 seats picked up in 1922, just after a sharp recession).

• The Republican gain of six seats in the U.S. Senate is similar to the Democrats’ five-seat gain in 2006 and ranks only 8th in midterm Senate turnover. Democrats gained 15 Senate seats in 1958, just after another recession, while Republicans 13 Senate seats in 1946, 10 seats in 1942, and nine seats in 1994.

• The Republican net of six governorships also isn’t particular large by historical standards. There were double-digit gains in two Democratic midterm waves (1922 and 1970) and two Republican ones (1938 and 1994).

• For Republicans, perhaps the most significant gains were in state legislatures. In addition to both houses of the North Carolina legislature, the GOP gained 17 other legislative chambers around the country, while turning their slim majorities in other states into massive supermajorities. Republicans gained nearly 700 seats, a feat topped only three other times during the past century of midterm elections.

In summary, write the AEI scribes, if all midterm wave elections since the turn of the 20th century are ranked according to gains across federal and state offices, the 2010 election would rank 6th – a high showing, to be sure, but lower than the anti-Republican wave of 1922, the anti-Democratic wave of 1938, and the Republican Revolution of 1994 (3rd).

A shellacking? Sure, that’s a pretty good word for it. But don’t expect the 2010 elections, or any election cycle, to be the final word. As I’ve said many times before, politics is not a movie. There is no final resolution of a two-hour plotline. Politics is a daytime soap opera. By the time you get to Friday, it may look like several plotlines are about to be resolved – but stay tuned. By Monday, a seemingly happy couple will be headed to Splitsville, a long-lost relative of a major character will appear come back from the dead, and a familiar character will suddenly get a new face and voice without any explanation.

The 2010 elections are over. The 2012 elections have just begun. The drama never ends. Cue music.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.