archived: 22 - 28 Oct, 2006         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  OCTOBER 24, 2006 

                        IN SEARCH OF TSUNAMI  

Will Democrats recapture one or both Houses of Congress?  Will it be a political tsunami – Democrats recapturing both Houses of Congress and a majority of governorships?  Pundits and prognosticators wade in on the subject daily.  

Robert Novak does not see a tsunami.  He has Democrats picking up four Senate seats and 21 House seats.  His reasoning:   

      1.  While our seat-by-seat analysis shows Democrats winning the House by a four-seat margin, the overriding question is whether a "wave" will deliver a really big Democratic majority. That presumes an overwhelming sentiment that negates seat-by-seat analyses. 

2.       Actually, waves-overriding all previous expectations-are very rare in recent American political history. The only wave we have seen during the 39-years of this publication was the Watergate election of 1974, when the 49-seat Democratic gain surpassed all forecasts. . . .  The famous Gingrich election of 1994 was not a wave. We predicted a 45-seat gain, based on seat-by-seat analysis, and the actual pickup was 51.

3.       The reasons for the 2006 wave talk: a) the huge generic edge by Democrats over Republicans in current party preference, which never has been a good predictor of House elections; b) the mood inside the Washington Beltway, also a poor predictor historically; c) the run of bad news for Republicans and the Bush Administration; and d) unpopularity of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War.

4.       The Bush-Iraq popularity is a constant and a major factor in many (but not all) races. But the corrosive political fact of higher gasoline prices has been mitigated, and the impact of the Mark Foley scandal has diminished. Still to be determined is how the conservative base's unhappiness over government spending and immigration will factor in the election.

5.       . . . A more sober Democratic analyst . . . currently forecasts a gain of 21 seats in the House and four in the Senate-exactly what we expect.

6.       Our current count is that, if the elections were held today, Democrats would gain control of the House, with a pickup of 21 seats, but Republicans would kept the Senate while losing four seats. 

TPJ’s current assessment is close to Novak’s.  Polling over the past week indicates that Democrats have slipped ever so slightly in Missouri and Tennessee.  The average of the last five polls, taken from Pollster (a TPJ favorite), Republican Corker has opened a 3% lead over Ford in Tennessee and Sen. Talent has opened a 2% lead over McCaskill in Missouri.  Both “leads” are within the margin of error, but they do reflect a slight momentum towards the Republicans.  

In Virginia, Webb has closed the gap with Allen to a mere 2%. Good news for Democrats.  But, in order to win majority control of the US Senate, Democrats must win two of the three Senate contests from Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia.   

The problem with political tsunamis is that they are rarely predicable until they descend.  Charlie Cook, The Cook Report (a TPJ favorite) explains: 

At this point . . . campaign-related or domestic political events probably couldn't pull public attention away from the issues that are so hurting the Republicans. It would take a major international or domestic crisis -- something powerful enough to shove Iraq and scandals off the front pages and out of the first 10 minutes of TV news broadcasts.

Democratic voters are champing at the bit to cast their ballots. Republicans, meanwhile, seem depressed and far less interested in this election than they were in the 2002 and 2004 contests, when the GOP beat the point spread by turning out unexpectedly high numbers of voters. Indeed a recent Pew Research/Associated Press survey found that Democrats are even more motivated than Republicans were in 1994, the year they wiped out the Democrats by gaining 52 House seats and eight Senate seats.

No rational person is talking about Democratic gains of that magnitude. The relatively low number of open GOP seats -- and other structural factors -- will hold down the Democrats' pickups. But unless something major happens, we are still looking at big Democratic gains.

As of now, Republicans appear to be headed toward losing at least 20 House seats -- perhaps 30 to 35 or even a few more. The competitive races are there: 45 GOP-held seats are vulnerable and another 18 are potentially so.

In the Senate, the Republicans will most likely lose five or six seats. Six, of course, would give Democrats control of the chamber. It's possible -- though less likely -- that the GOP will lose as few as four or as many as seven Senate seats.

In big-wave elections, analysts tend to underestimate the number of seats that the party in power will lose. And so far, no political analyst has figured out how to accurately predict the size of an electoral wave before it crashes ashore. 

The message for Democrats in the closing 10 days of the election is simple.  If there is to be a tsunami, we have to go out and make it happen.

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UPDATED:  OCTOBER 24, 2006

                        A BURNING BUSH   

Four new polls, highlighted in blue, have been issued since our last report on Bush’s approval rating.  Collectively, the four polls changed nothing.  Bush’s approval rating remains at 37%, his disapproval rating remains at 57% and the spread is slightly over 20%.  

TPJ is most impressed that the spread between approval and disapproval is the third highest average recorded in our poll plots.  At this level, Bush cannot significantly help the Republicans in the closing weeks of the election.  Bush has simply “burned” his credibility with the American public.  

With two weeks until the election, it is doubtful that these numbers can move significantly absent a dramatic event.