RALEIGH – With less than three weeks left in the 2010 election cycle and one day left until the start of early voting, I decided to take a quick look at polling data and other information to see if I could detect a major change in the political trends I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

The short answer is: I couldn’t see one. Republicans seem poised to have their best off-year election since 1994. It’s possible this year’s performance will exceed their historic gains that year.

In the race for the U.S. House of Representatives, the GOP will win between 50 and 60 seats if current trends continue, more than enough to recapture the majority. Republicans will have harder time taking the U.S. Senate, but a 50-50 tie wouldn’t be at all surprising.

Here in North Carolina, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is cruising to reelection. His financial advantage over Secretary of State Elaine Marshall is now being put to work on general get-out-the-vote efforts that will help GOP candidates down the ballot, a situation that is giving state Democrats heartburn. I don’t think it would be fair to blame Marshall, though. It’s unlikely that Cal Cunningham or Ken Lewis, her primary opponents, would have done any better.

In the crucial battle over control of the General Assembly, Republicans would probably win majorities in both houses if the election were held today. The GOP has raised more money than ever before, recruited better candidates than ever before, and is benefitting significantly from a combination of the national anti-Obama trend, unpopular state legislation, and recent Democratic scandals in state government.

Democrats currently enjoy a 30-20 majority in the Senate and a 68-52 majority in the House. Based on publicly available polling, fundraising, district ratings, and candidate characteristics, I consider 36 seats to be in play – 11 in the Senate and 25 in the House. All the Senate seats are currently Democratic. All but three of the House seats are, too.

I further divided the districts into three groups, playing off the popular analogy of “low-hanging fruit” to rate the seats according to how likely they are to flip. Four Senate seats and seven House seats are Strawberry districts this year, meaning that Republicans need only bend down and pick them up. Assuming they do so, that would take the Senate to 24-26 and the House to 56-64 (all three current GOP seats in play are Strawberries). In the Senate, these are the 8th, the 9th, the 24th, and the 43rd. In the House, they are the 3rd, the 10th, the 86th, the 88th, the 103rd, the 111th, and the 112th.

The next group of districts, the Apples, are winnable for Republicans in a normal year. If the 2010 GOP wave materializes as expected, they’ll probably win most of these. There are two Apples in the Senate, both in the mountains: the 45th in the High County and the 47th out west. If both go Republican, the Senate flips.

In the House, nine districts are Apples: the 4th, the 6th, the 25th, the 41st, the 44th, the 51st, the 81st, the 93rd, and the 116th. If Republican win at least five of these, they’ll likely have a majority.

Finally, the Plum districts are purple rather than red, placed high in the tree rather than hanging down, and not-so-friendly territory for Republicans in a normal year. In 2006 and 2008, both Democratic years, most of these weren’t particularly competitive. This year, it’s different.

The Senate Plums include the 5th, the 10th, the 11th, the 19th, and the 50th. Right now, Republicans lead in three of them – and in the 11th and 50th the leads are in the double digits. This is why the conventional wisdom in Raleigh is that the Senate is lost to the Democrats.

In the House, there are nine Plums: the 1st, the 2nd, the 9th, the 22nd, the 34th, the 45th, the 77th, the 118th, and the 119th. Right now, Democrats lead in most of these seats. If Republicans end up winning some of them, however, that likely means they’ve won virtually all of the Apples and have already achieved a majority.

In just three weeks, we’ll discover just how adept Republicans are at harvesting fruit.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.