Takeover of House, Senate not likely

The only thing that can be said with any certainty about the 2006 midterm elections is that none of the top campaign forecasters is flatly predicting Republicans will lose the House or Senate — yet.

President Bush’s job approval polls are the lowest in his presidency; the Democrats are leading Republicans in the generic congressional election polls by an average of 13 percent; and voter surveys suggest a strong anti-incumbent tide is building. But leading analysts still think at this point that Republicans will hold on to majority control of both chambers, though with reduced numbers.

“The 2006 midterm elections are a political analyst’s nightmare. The national climate seems to portend big changes, yet race-by-race analyses reveal formidable odds against a Democratic takeover of either the House or the Senate,” veteran elections tracker Charlie Cook says in his latest National Journal election preview.

Several structural problems confront the Democrats in the House elections. Just three- to four-dozen House races out of 435 at stake are truly competitive. And among the 18 Republican seats that are open, only half are in districts where “Democrats have a remote chance of winning,” Mr. Cook says. Making matters worse, the Democrats were able to recruit only second- or third-tier challengers in many key districts where the Republicans looked vulnerable.

Stuart Rothenberg, Mr. Cook’s chief rival in the political predictions business, believes “the House definitely is in play” and has increased his estimate of likely Democratic gains “from 5-8 seats to 7-10 seats,” short of the 15 seats needed to topple Republicans from power, though he thinks there could be “greater Democratic gains.”

As for the six to eight Senate seats that are in play this year, there appear to be nearly as many races where Democrats are leading, as in Pennsylvania and Maryland, as races where Republicans are competitive, like Washington, Minnesota and New Jersey. Neither Mr. Cook nor Mr. Rothenberg see the Democrats taking control of the Senate, but they could make some gains in the GOP’s 55-45 seat majority, they say.

But to win, Democrats would need a strong national anti-Republican wave behind them, Mr. Rothenberg writes in his latest House forecast. Many Democrats think that opposition to the war in Iraq, $3 a gallon gas prices, unhappiness with the economy and the GOP’s handling of illegal immigration is creating that wave.

“I think we are in one of those cycles in politics where the Republicans in Congress are getting hit on every front and obviously the president’s polls don’t help, and that, combined with a series of unprecedented crises, from the war to gas prices, concerns over the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and with conservative Republicans expressing great concern [about their party’s political direction], it’s almost as if they can’t catch a break,” said Democratic adviser Leon Panetta, who was President Clinton’s White House chief of staff.

“The anxiety of the country is there and people are angry and frustrated and wondering where the country is going. In light of that, there isn’t any question in my view that Democrats would be able to win control of the House and probably capture additional seats in the Senate, though it’s going to be much harder to get control of the Senate,” Mr. Panetta said.

But independent pollsters like John Zogby say the Democrats could “blow this opportunity” if they do not come up with an agenda that appeals to swing voters, and Mr. Panetta, among other Democrats, is urging his party to come up with “an agenda and a message for voters, sooner rather than later.”

“They ought to present a very clear vision to the country in four or five areas. People want to know they stand for something. The public is hungry to know what solutions this party is going to present,” he said. “If they wait too long, they won’t have enough time to say what they stand for.”

He is also worried about the political fallout from a growing anti-incumbent mood that he says could hit both parties in November. “This could be one of those years that could produce a lot of surprises where we could see some Democratic incumbents not winning easy seats and that could be true for Republicans as well,” he said.

Both parties enter the last five months of the 2006 election with political advantages that they hope to exploit in the final weeks of the campaigns, but with problems and divisions, too.

The Republicans’ biggest political advantage lies in its congressional district boundaries, which have been redrawn over the past decade in GOP-friendly ways. A number of district lines were strengthened after the 2000 census in both Republican and Democratic districts. As a result, Republican redistricting strategists say, the GOP now has many more districts that can withstand a stiffer Democratic challenge.

In the past decade or more the re-election rate for House members has been running from 97 percent to 99.5 percent. And despite the Republican Congress’ low approval polls, surveys show that an average of 59 percent of the voters like the job their representative or senator is doing.

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