Will Dems Lead Fizzle Out?

[drisley]

PUNDITS predict that the Republicans will be swept from power on Capitol Hill on November 7 by an elemental force of voter anger aimed at President Bush and Congress. Some are forecasting a “Democrat tsunami”, while Charlie Cook, the pre-eminent American election guru, talks of a “Category 5 hurricane”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2428558,00.html

[mbossman2]

while it is possible that the dem's may take the house, I do not beleive that the left has prepared themselves in case it doesn't happen...

Remember, they were all set for President Kerry and then they lost...

[drisley]

If it doesn't happen, they need to all find another line of work.

[troysvihl]

The party that has the White House, with a single exception, has always lost about a dozen seats in the House and a half-dozen seats in the Senate.

[jedi_knight01]

Will see if Kerrys remarks hurt the dems even more...

[Karel]

Could you guys tell me which presidents in the recent past (30 yrs) were in office while congress was "against" them?

And how (in general) did that influence things?

[troysvihl]

Pretty much all of them. Clinton had both houses during his first 2 years. I think Reagan had a republican Senate for a 2-yr stint, though I might be wrong about that.

Other than that, I think Bush is the only modern-day president that had Congress controlled by the same party for any real length of time.


Engram has a pretty good historical analysis of the 6th year elections here:

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-past-elections-suggest-about-our_23.html


Today, the average polls suggest that the Democrats will pick up several seats in the Senate, and it is hard to imagine that it won't happen. After all, it fits with what one would expect even if we had nothing to rely on but historical trends, as Larry Sabato pointed out a while ago:

Let's look at the last half-century of midterm elections for the U.S. Senate from 1950 to 2002...On average, the president's party has lost three Senate seats in each of those 14 elections.

So that's the baseline expectation. In fact, it's even worse than that because of what might be called the 6th-year itch (i.e., anti-incumbent results that occur in the 6th-year of a president's term):

There have been six of these elections in the post-World War II era (1950, 1958, 1966, 1974, 1986, and 1998). The average loss for the White House in these sixth year elections has been six Senate seats--double the overall midterm average loss of three seats....

Never in modern times has a president been able to add Senate seats in the dreaded sixth-year election.

In other words, at best, it is tough going for a president in his 6th-year. According to my last look at the averaged polls, the Republicans will lose 5 plus-or-minus 1 Senate seats on November 7, in which case this would, at worst, turn out to be an absolutely typical 6th-year election.

[Karel]

Dank U Troy