Republican chances of getting to 51 Senate seats look good.

But is 51 really the magic number?

All summer, I wondered whether the GOP could reach 51 Senate seats, the number it needs to assume control of that chamber. All summer, I fretted that the chances of this happening were no better than 50 percent and probably somewhat lower.

Now, it seems to me more likely than not that the GOP will get to 51 seats in the Senate. Even before last night’s Oz-Fetterman debate, the Pennsylvania race seemed to be moving in the Republican’s favor. After the debate, Oz should, I think, be considered the favorite.

Other seats held by Republicans are in play, to be sure. However, Republicans are the clear favorites in all of them.

Thus, if Oz wins, there’s a good chance that, in what’s shaping up as a good year for the party, the GOP will retain every Senate seat it now holds.

In that case, to get to 51 it will need to win only one seat the Dems hold. Nevada seems like a decent bet to be that seat. Georgia, where Herschel Walker is coming on fairly strong, represents another possibility.

But, at the risk of being accused of moving the goal posts, I wonder whether 51 is the true magic number. The House is almost certain to flip to the GOP. This means that even without capturing a Senate majority (1) Republicans can block Democratic legislation and (2) they can hold pretty much whatever hearings they desire.

To be sure, a Democrat-run Senate would still cause more damage than a Republican-run Senate. But the main damage it would cause is the confirmation of Joe Biden’s left-wing judicial nominees.

Unfortunately, to prevent the full scope of that damage, 51 GOP Senate seats likely would not be enough.

Susan Collins holds the view, sensible in theory but outdated in practice, that the Senate should grant significant deference to the president on nominees (judicial and otherwise) unless they are genuinely unqualified or truly extreme. And, being a moderate, Collins’ view of what’s truly extreme is pretty generous to left-liberal nominees, at least from the conservative perspective.

Lisa Murkowski behaves the same way as Collins in this respect. Unlike her colleague from Maine, Murkowski is on the ballot this year. She’s in a tight race with her conservative Republican rival Kelly Tshibaka, in which a ranked-choice voting scheme will decide the winner.

Thus, to have a reasonable expectation of denying the confirmation of left-wing Biden nominees, the GOP needs to get to 52 or 53 seats, depending on what happens in Alaska. (Lindsay Graham used to share the Collins and Murkowski view on confirmation. At this stage of his career, I think he’s far less likely than those two to rubber stamp Democratic nominees, though he might still vote for some who are viewed as objectionable by most conservatives.)

Can the GOP get to 53? Yes, it can.

Assuming Republicans hold all of their current seats and win Nevada, they will reach 51. Georgia would make 52.

And these aren’t the only Democrat-held seats in play. The Arizona race has tightened. So has the New Hampshire race, which I had written off until recently. If a big Red Wave emerges, additional seats like Washington and Colorado could be in play.

What are the probabilities of getting to 52 and 53? Nate Silver’s model puts the likelihood at 32 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

But Silver’s model is still projecting that the Dems retain control of the Senate. It places the probability of this outcome at 54 percent (and dropping daily, it seems).

Silver himself seems to have lost confidence in the model. And if you believe, as I do, that the GOP more likely than not will gain a majority in the Senate, it follows that the likelihood of getting to 52 or 53 is greater than what Silver’s model projects — perhaps more like 40 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

All of what I’ve written here about Senate-race outcomes is speculation, and by someone who probably lacks the expertise to indulge in it. However, it’s not speculation to say that for Republicans to obtain effective veto power over large numbers of Biden’s judicial nominees, they need to hold at least 52, and maybe 53, seats in the next Congress.

UPDATE: In a comment below, Bill makes the important point that even if the Republicans hold only 51 seats, McConnell, as the Majority Leader, can block nominees by not scheduling hearings on them, the way he did for the better part of a year when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland.

I think it would be unwise politically for McConnell to refuse to hold hearings for two full years on a large number of Biden nominees below the Supreme Court level. Therefore, I don’t think McConnell would do it.

However, McConnell almost certainly would slow down the confirmation process. He would also likely go full-Garland on some of Biden’s most objectionable nominees.

So let’s return the goalposts to 51, but hope fervently for 52 or 53.