Senate races, Iraq war dominate national issues
THE SENATE: The Democrats need a net gain of six seats to have a majority in the Senate. One early indicator will be whether Republican challengers win Democratic-held seats in Maryland and New Jersey. Both Michael Steele and Tom Kean Jr., the GOP nominees in Maryland and New Jersey, respectively, have run highly effective campaigns, casting themselves as agents of change. Kean, particularly, has distanced himself from President Bush. A GOP win in either race would make it exceedingly difficult for Democrats to take control of the Senate.
Meanwhile, Democrats are expecting to defeat Republican incumbents Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio. Should either of them pull it out, the Democrats will be very hard-pressed to take the Senate. Privately, most Democrats also believe they'll defeat Republican incumbents Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Conrad Burns of Montana.
Polls have shown Democratic challengers clinging to leads against both Chafee and Burns. The Democrats probably will need to win both races to have a realistic chance to take control.
If they hold serve in Maryland and New Jersey, and beat the Republicans in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, and Rhode Island, Democrats would still be two seats short. One that could be ripe for the picking is Virginia, where GOP Sen. George Allen has run a gaffe-prone campaign; some polls show challenger James Webb moving into the lead. A Webb win would leave the Democrats one short of a majority.
Missouri is their next-best bet, where Republican Senator Jim Talent and Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill are running neck-and-neck. A McCaskill win could conceivably put the Democrats over the top.
Other races to watch: Democrats have an outside chance at winning GOP seats in Tennessee, where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is retiring, and Arizona, where Sen. Jon Kyl is running for re-election. And some Republicans believe they have outside chances against Democratic incumbents Maria Cantwell of Washington and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
THE HOUSE: The Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats to win the House, which is potentially a bigger prize than the Senate. While Senate rules make the body difficult for any party to control, the House rules favor the majority, no matter how slim its margin.
There are roughly 50 House seats in play, and there are many ways for Democrats to gain a majority. Among the most hotly contested seats are the three held by Connecticut Republicans Rob Simmons, Christopher Shays, and Nancy Johnson. If all three go to the Democrats, it's a safe bet to assume the party will seize control.
Democrats hope to gain at least three seats in Florida, one in North Carolina, three in Pennsylvania, three in New York, three in Connecticut and one in New Hampshire, giving the party 14 new members on the East Coast alone. But if they win even half those races, they'll still have a good shot at winning control, since there are multiple competitive races in Ohio and Indiana, and Democrats are hoping to gain individual seats in Texas, Kentucky, Colorado, and Arizona, among other states.
ISSUES: Anxiety over the Iraq War plays out in different ways in different parts of the country. In the liberal Northeast, Democrat challengers have sought to tap into outrage over the mere fact of the war -- the alleged deceptions that led to the Iraqi invasion, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the continuing death count.
Elsewhere in the country, however, Democrats have been careful not to condemn the war, only President Bush's handling of it. They've vowed to oppose a hasty pullout, but to provide more aggressive oversight of the administration's policies in Iraq.
Republicans have emphasized some good economic news in recent weeks, including a falling unemployment rate. They claim a Democratic Congress would allow Bush's tax cuts to expire, eventually resulting in tax increases of hundreds of billions of dollars.
BALLOT INITIATIVES: Among the many issues on the ballot in states across the country are amendments banning gay marriage, proposed increases to the minimum wage, a state initiative in Missouri to promote embryonic stem-cell research, and a state initiative in South Dakota to restrict abortions except when necessary for the health of the mother.
The abortion battle has been intensely fought in conservative South Dakota, which also is among the states with a proposed ban on gay marriage and domestic-partner benefits. South Dakota also has an unusual ballot question that would hold judges personally liable for their verdicts.
In all 205 measures are on ballots in 37 states.
VOTING: The Republican party claims to have the most reliable turnout operation in political history. Its centerpiece is a database that mines lists of consumer data to predict how people will vote -- and thus allow the GOP to tailor arguments to them, and arrange for those supporting Republicans to get to the polls. The GOP claims the turnout operation could mark a swing of as much as four percentage points in state races, enough to prevail in most of the close Senate races.
Democrats, however, claim they're upgraded their own database and vow to be much more precise about turning out voters than in 2004, when tens of thousands of eager volunteers lacked the necessary information to locate Democratic supporters.
Meanwhile, both parties will have teams of lawyers ready to fight any voting irregularities in any state.
STATE RACES: The Democrats are poised to claim the governorships in several large states, including New York (where Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has a large lead), Ohio (Congressman Ted Strickland leads), and Massachusetts (Deval Patrick.) They are also hoping to oust GOP incumbents in Maryland and Minnesota.
Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a large lead in California, and the GOP is hopeful that Charlie Crist will succeed Jeb Bush as govenor of Florida.
