If this latest USA Today/Gallup Poll holds up, the Democrats are likely to gain control of the House and pick up seats — but not gain control of — the Senate.
The net result, if you strip away the partisan competition, is that if this happens the era of complete one party control of government will be over — and there will be some aggressive Congressional oversight:
As the Labor Day weekend launches a final nine weeks of campaigning, USA TODAY/Gallup Polls in five key states show Democrats poised to gain Senate seats but facing an uphill battle to regain control.
Democrats seem more likely to carry the House in the Nov. 7 elections, which are being shaped by voters’ unease over Iraq, jobs and health care and a sense that the nation is on the wrong track.
“The environment for the majority party is extremely bad,” says political scientist David Rohde of Duke University. “There’s certainly plenty of time for things to be shaken up … (but) it would take something really huge” to turn around GOP fortunes.
In the House, the number of seats independent analysts rate as up for grabs has been swelling. Since January, Stuart Rothenberg of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report has doubled the number ranked “most competitive.” Of 39 seats now in that category, 35 are held by Republicans. He predicts Democrats will pick up the 15 seats they need to control the House.
In the Senate, Democrats need to gain six seats, which would require winning at least two races where Republicans are now favored. The statewide polls found some GOP senators already in trouble.
One of the races USA Today cites is the race in Pennsylvania where “Sen. Rick Santorum trailed Democrat Bob Casey by 18 percentage points among likely voters, by 14 points among registered voters.” However, it’s worth nothing that Santorum’s polling trends have been a lot more favorable since he started warning about “Islamfascism,” which has sparked some denunciations in some quarters — but has apparently helped get his numbers up.
And, again, remember polls are snapshots in time. The questions become (a) is there some event that’ll happen before the elections to change the political mix? and (b) will the Democrats find a way to grab defeat out of the jaws of victory?
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.