We won’t have to stay up late on Nov. 7 to see whether Democrats win back the House. By shortly after 8 p.m., the result should be clear.

The polls close by 7 p.m. EST in Kentucky and Indiana, where six GOP-held seats are up for grabs. They close at 7:30 p.m. in Ohio, with three seats, and at 8 p.m. in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which together have a total of seven more contested seats.

The final tallies won’t be in until later, of course, but results in the early states should show whether Democrats will pick up the 15 seats they need.

Right now, polls, the pundit consensus and the estimates of both Democratic experts and some Republicans all suggest that GOP rule in the House will end, conceivably with a Democratic pickup of 30 seats – double what’s needed.

The RealClearPolitics.com average of the last four generic Congressional polls gives Democrats a 12.2-point advantage – a historically huge gap that’s far above the 7-point GOP vote margin in 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 seats and took over the House.

Democratic experts say that it will take a 5-point vote advantage on Election Day this year to win 15 seats and recapture control.

Robert Richie of the electoral reform group FairVote calculates that gerrymandering of House districts means Democrats will need 54 percent of the national House vote to win 15 seats. The GOP got 53.5 percent in 1994.