I hate useless armchair prognostication about elections. Ignore the talking heads and keep up with these sites today and tomorrow for the most reliable information about how things will break:

1. Pollster.com – this new site has quickly become the definitive resource for opinion poll information and analysis. The most important feature is that it aggregates information across polls, providing far more reliable estimates.

Currently, the site is projecting 49 Republican seats in the Senate, 47 Democratic seats, and four tossups. In particular, Tennessee has moved into the lean Republican category and Maryland is now projected as a tossup. This means that Democrats would have to hold all the projected Democratic seats and win all four tossups (MT, MO, MD, VA) to take control of the Senate.

On the House side, the site projects a majority of 220 Democratic seats, 187 Republican seats, and 28 tossups. A Democratic takeover seems extremely likely.

2. Tradesports.com – the best political futures market. The site offers contracts on a wide variety of individual races, but the most important ones right now are for GOP control of the House and Senate. Currently, their prices indicate that there is a projected 22% chance of the GOP retaining the House but a 77% chance of the GOP retaining the Senate, numbers which are consistent with the scenarios described above.

3. Political Arithmetik – the blog of Charles Franklin, a political science professor at Wisconsin who works on Pollster.com. He’s currently reporting that the national Democratic tide is subsiding in House, Senate and governor’s races, but that the Congressional generic ballot isn’t showing the same change. Franklin concludes that the Democratic margin in the House may be smaller than expected and that a Senate takeover will be increasingly difficult.