The Washington Post has another story that can be boiled down in a sentence: so much for stories of a week ago that the election was likely to be a Democratic blowout:
Republicans seized on signs of movement in their direction yesterday as they unleashed a massive election-eve voter mobilization operation in an effort to stave off potentially substantial losses in the House and preserve at least a slender majority in the Senate.
Democrats answered the Republicans’ get-out-the-vote machinery with intensified efforts to contact infrequent and still-undecided voters in a handful of tight Senate races as well as in a dozen GOP-held House districts where races were too close to call.
So the GOP has placed its legendary GOTV machinery in operation and the Democrats — who have had two years to prepare some kind of counter machinery — are using theirs. The Post notes the polls we’ve reported on in other posts:
A Pew Research Center poll showed a significant narrowing in the partisan advantage in House races that the Democrats have enjoyed for much of the year, findings that echoed those of a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Saturday showing the Democrats with a six-point edge.
The Pew poll showed that the Democratic advantage had dropped to 47 percent to Republicans’ 43 percent among likely voters, down from 50 percent to 39 percent two weeks ago. The poll found a drop in Democratic support among independents, but Pew Director Andrew Kohut said the most significant change over the past two weeks is that Republicans now outnumber Democrats among likely voters.
That’s not good news for the Democrats. Is Election Night Nov. 7, 2006 going to shape up as another night of bitter disappointment for Democrats convinced by earlier polls that they were about to win? AND:
Other weekend polls by Time and Newsweek magazines continued to show Republicans at a steep disadvantage, with Democrats enjoying double-digit margins in party preferences for the House.
GOP strategists said they believe their prospects continue to improve as voters digest the guilty verdict against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, positive economic statistics and the prospect of Democrats taking control of one or both chambers of the legislative branch. “I have always believed that Republican voters in many cases come home later, particularly this year,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.
In other words: polarization of the electorate seems to be working once again. Or is it?
A senior GOP strategist said party officials anticipated that the so-called generic vote — the question of which party voters are likely to support in House elections — would tighten, but they do not consider the shift significant enough to change the contours of this election. More than 20 GOP incumbents are tied with their opponents heading into the final days. “It is the 50-50 districts that turnout can help,” said the strategist, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk about strategy.
Democrats, mindful of the Republicans’ success in getting their voters to the polls in the past two elections, expressed nervousness at signs of tightening in some of the national polls. But they said private and some public polling in contested House districts continued to show their party in a position to win enough seats to claim the majority.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
On Wednesday it’ll be easier to make something of it…
If the GOP keeps both houses, it will be seen as a vindication of administration policies the past 6 years in the style, scope and substance — and there will be more of the same. It would be “stay the course” in Iraq. There will then be monumental finger-pointing within the Democratic party to place the blame (and probably finger giving to Senator John Kerry).
If the GOP loses one house, it’ll return the U.S. to divided government and give the Democrats a power-platform to begin to provide a countervailing force to challenge GOP political and policy dominance and, more importantly to some voters, bolster the House as a chamber providing vigorous oversight of the executive branch. And there will be fingerpointing in the GOP.
If the GOP loses both houses, it would be a shock and probably spark
political bloodletting within the GOP. Present polls don’t suggest that is going to happen. The conventional wisdom has a short shelf life in this election cycle…
And then in the end there will be the question of what independent and moderate votes did. When the ballots are finally counted, did they make a difference? Or will Karl Rove & Co. be proven correct, that independent and moderate voters don’t actually exist and the key to winning and governing is to go after, activate and please your base? Did independents truly hold and tilt the balance? If so, in what direction? And, if not, are they relevant anymore in political terms?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.