RALEIGH – Once more, I fearlessly stride into the fray and offer my election predictions for the 2010 campaign – confident in the knowledge that if my picks turn out to be prescient, my readers will sing my praises, and that if they are wildly off the mark, my readers will be considerate enough to forget this column was ever published.

Deal? Good, let’s get started.

First, let me say that I haven’t simply called races according to how I’d like to see them come out, or picked winners out of a hat. Instead, I have employed the five basic tools of political prognostication: 1) generic-ballot polling for Congress and the General Assembly; 2) district-by-district analysis of fundraising, polling, and candidate quality; 3) academic models that ignore political and polling data and predict votes solely on economic indicators; 4) investor-driven prediction markets such as Intrade and Iowa Electronic Markets; and 5) a careful reading of sheep entrails.

At the national level, I predict that Republicans will achieve net gains of 60 seats in the U.S. House, eight seats in the U.S. Senate, seven governorships, and 12 to 15 legislative chambers. This will put the GOP in charge in the House by a comfortable margin and leave a 51-49 Democratic edge in the Senate (including the two independents who caucus with the Dems, Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders).

At the state level, these results would give Republicans a clear majority of the nation’s governorships, at 31, as well as a slight majority of the nation’s legislative chambers.

My predictions are lay within the fairly narrow range of what the national pundits are predicting. Larry Sabato forecasts a net GOP gain of 55 seats in the House, eight in the Senate, and eight governorships. My friend Scott Elliott at ElectionProjection.com forecasts 62 seats in the House, eight in the Senate, and six governorships. Liberal political analyst Nate Silver of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight estimates a 54-seat House gain, seven in the Senate, six governorships. Charlie Cook has posted similar numbers.

As for North Carolina, we’ve devoted a lot of ink – well, pixels – to the races for state house and senate. Right now, my best guess is that the Republicans will take both chambers of the General Assembly, with something like a 28-22 majority in the state senate and a 64-56 edge in the state house. Former NC FREE head John Davis is predicting similar results, 29-21 and 64-56 respectively.

I haven’t been following North Carolina’s county commission races as closely as in some past election cycles, but I’ll go a little out on a limb to predict that Republicans will gain majorities on several commissions in 2010, including Wake County. Democrats made substantial local gains in the 2006 and 2008 cycles, picking up a total of 34 commission seats and going from a 56-44 Democratic edge in county commissions to a 64-36 majority, the biggest one since 1992. Given how competitive North Carolina has become, it stands to reason that this year’s Republican wave will wash over some of the commission races, too, and restore a less-extreme Democratic edge in county control.

If Republicans do as well in congressional and legislative races as pre-election trends would suggest, I think that augurs well for their performance in judicial races. Both parties have been identifying their favored candidates for court of appeals and supreme court, but if the GOP wins the turnout war their voters should tip the scales. At the very least, I’ll predict that Barbara Jackson will defeat Bob Hunter for the supreme court vacancy. If I’m wrong, please don’t sue me.

Finally, there are 11 county referenda to raise local sales taxes. I think most of them will go down in defeat as fiscal conservatives turn out in greater numbers than fiscal profligates this year.

Now, fair warning: after Tuesday night, I may feel the need to check this column over once more for typos. If I somehow flub the editing software and the whole column disappears from the Internet forever, it will be merely an accident.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.

p.s. Also, if you want to read up on the key races that define the 2010 election cycle in North Carolina, there’s no better place to go than Carolina Journal’s Exclusive Series Covering the 2010 Elections.