Post Monday, November 04th, 2002
In case you haven’t heard, the mid-term elections are tomorrow. All the pundits are predicting a 50-50 photo-finish election about nothing. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Republicans will take back the Senate and gain seatsin the House. For Republicans, this would be a tremendous historic achievement. If I’m wrong, I still get to keep my day job 
Why do I think so?
First, pundits are a contrarian indicator. In 1994, none of them saw the Republican tidal wave. In 1998 they all predicted that the GOP would gain 15-30 House seats and gain 2-5 Senate seats. Instead, the Democrats defied history by picking up seats in the House and staying even in the Senate. In 2000, the pundits thought that most seat changes would be in the House. Instead, the GOP lost 4 Senate seats and the entire Senate when Jim Jeffords defected.
Second, this isn’t an election about nothing. Two big issues are in play: Fear and Power.
The Fear argument for Republicans is obvious. Given everything from Osama Bin Laden, the DC sniper and stock market uncertainty, the American people will turn to a President they trust - George W. Bush - who still enjoys the highest approval ratings of any President going into a mid-term election.
The Power argument is harder to explain. Elections are won by creating bogeymen for your base to vote against and then putting forward a cohesive agenda to vote for. The Democrats haven’t created a bogeyman. In fact, most Democrats tie themselves closely to the President. On the other hand, the Republicans have successfully created a Democratic bogeyman in Tom Daschle. His approval ratings are actually a net negative! Daschle embodies the worst in Democrats - smooth talking, ruthlessly partisan and willing to stoop as low as necessary to keep power. It’s hard to paint the soft-spoken South Dakotan as evil, but Republicans have done it successfully. Then there was the October Surprise of Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial service/pep rally when the crowd got out of hand, booing Trent Lott and Jesse Ventura and calling on Republicans to drop out of races in Minnesota. This event cemented for Republicans the image of Democrats as fanatical, nasty cheats who cannot be trusted with the post of Dog Catcher. (Here’s an excellent article about this Democratic image) It’s hard to overstate the impact of the Wellstone rally. Conservative talk radio hosts have been playing it up all day and the Republican base is thoroughly energized. As usual, the pundits, with their liberal D.C-area dinner party friends, have been unable to catch the strong undercurrent of anger that runs among Republicans today.
The polls bear out my hypothesis.
The NY Times showed a dramatic swing in thegeneric congressional ballot for Republicans, who now lead by 7 points among likely voters. The Times buried this number at the bottom of its poll analysis. Ordinarily, I’d attribute this to the pervasive Liberal bias at the Times; but, this time, I think they simply couldn’t believe their own poll numbers.
Gallup shows the same dramatic swing over the last couple of days. Republicans now lead by 6 points in the congressional generic. The internals are just as startling. 35% say they’re casting a vote to show support for the President and only 18% say they’re casting a vote to show their opposition to him. The fact that the President has so much influence on a mid-term election is unusual. Add to that voter intensity (64% of Republicans say they’re more likely to vote than 2 years ago, only 51% of Democrats say so) and it becomes apparent that Republicans have the momentum to win close races.
This election will be decided by a few thousand votes in a half dozen tossup House and Senate races. Democrats have gotten very good at turning out the vote in the last two election cycles and outperforming their pre-election poll numbers. However, with polls showing Republican determination to take back the Senate and keep the House, I’d bet on the Republicans’ intensity putting Republicans over the top in most of these close races.