With exactly four weeks to go before Election Day, CQ Politics' Balance of Power scorecards for the Senate and House of Representatives establish one certainty -- that the Democrats will maintain control of both chambers when the 111th Congress is sworn in come January -- and the very strong likelihood that the Democrats will expand the majorities they won by dominating the 2006 elections.
Our scorecards do an imperfect job of predicting how big the Democrats' gains might be, for the simple reason that the totals take in only those seats that each party is currently favored to win -- and exclude those that we rate as No Clear Favorite, or tossup. But the sizable number of races in that category, and the disadvantage facing Republicans in the number of seats they are defending, give strong indications of how big the Democrats' gain may end up being.
Starting today, and continuing every week through Election Day, we'll try to refine the Balance of Power scorecards to give a clearer indication of how big a swing these elections can be expected to produce.
As of today -- with the usual caveat that major changes can still occur -- it appears plausible that the Democrats will gain at least six seats in the Senate, and 15 seats or more in the House.
The Senate Scenario Current (110th) Congress: 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, 2 Independents
111th Congress Projections: 54 Democrats, 42 Republicans, 2 Independents, 2 seats are a toss up.
Democrats have the edge in races for five seats currently held by Republicans. They are strongly favored to win two seats left open by Republican incumbents: the Virginia seat held by five-term Sen. John W. Warner and the New Mexico seat of six-term GOP Sen. Pete V. Domenici. They also are rated as leading in races for the Colorado seat of retiring two-term Republican Wayne Allard and the seats being defended by first-term New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu and six-term Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is on trial for failing to report substantial gifts from an Alaska corporation.
Should the Democrats maintain their edge in all those races, they would match their six-seat gain from 2006 just by splitting the two races for Republican seats currently rated No Clear Favorite: first-term incumbent Elizabeth Dole's increasingly troubled bid in North Carolina, and Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker's effort to win a special election for a seat to which he was appointed last December to fill a vacancy.
Democrats have set an even higher goal, though. They are aiming for a "filibuster-proof" majority of 60 seats, so called because a three-fifths vote is needed to cut off debate on controversial legislation and send it to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. Since the Democrats currently control just 51 seats -- a figure that includes Independents Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who caucuses with the Democrats -- they would need at least nine seats to get to 60. They might actually need a net gain of 10, because sentiment is strong within the Democratic ranks to bounce Lieberman from their caucus because of his alliance with John McCain.
And there are enough additional Republican seats in play to make such a gain more than a Democratic pipe dream. Four seats currently held by the GOP are rated Leans Republican: Oregon, Minnesota, Maine and Kentucky, where recent polls show Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at much greater risk than had been expected.
By contrast, only one Democratic seat, in Louisiana, is currently rated as competitive. And even there, two-term Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu has established a solid lead in recent polls.
The House Outlook Current (110th) Congress: 235 Democrats, 199 Republicans, 1 Vacancy
111th Congress Projections: 235 Democrats, 179 Republicans, 21 No Clear Favorite
Fixing a number on the Democrats' likely House gain requires a bit more guesswork, simply because there are so many more races currently in the tossup category.
An initial glance at the Democratic number in the House Balance of Power scorecard might suggest this is actually a status quo election year. After all, 235 seats are rated as Leans Democratic, Democrat Favored or Safe Democratic -- one fewer than they control in the current Congress, if you assume the seat vacated by the death of Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones in an overwhelming Democratic Ohio district.
But a deeper look at the ratings shows Democrats currently favored to win five seats held by Republicans: those left open by the retirements of Reps. Vito J. Fossella of New York, Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, Rick Renzi of Arizona, Jerry Weller of Illinois and James T. Walsh of New York and the Alaska at-large seat of Republican Don Young, whose chances for re-election have been clouded by ethics controversies. The Republicans currently are not favored to win in any Democratic-held district.
The reason that these potential gains are not reflected in the scorecard's bottom line is that there are seven Democratic seats that currently are rated as No Clear Favorite. But Republicans have 14 seats residing in the tossup category. Democrats would need to win just less than half of all these tossup races -- a modest goal, given the party's momentum right now -- to score a double-digit gain. Winning roughly two-thirds of the tossup races would push the Democrats up to a 15-seat gain.
But wait, there's more. There are 35 other races currently rated by CQ as highly competitive, 17 Democratic seats rated Leans Democratic and 18 Republican seats rated Leans Republican. And there are longer-shot bids for 39 seats, 24 for Republican seats rated Republican Favored and 15 for Democratic seats rated Democrat Favored. Despite our best efforts to get all of our ratings right on the mark, there almost certainly will be some upsets out of these categories, as there have been in virtually all previous election cycles.
There are more Republican seats vulnerable to these upset bids than Democratic ones. And here is where the overall political atmosphere comes into play.
President Bush, who has abysmal job approval ratings, is still the head of the Republican Party, much as many of its candidates, including presidential nominee McCain, are trying to distance themselves. Violence in Iraq, a top agenda item for many voters in 2006, has diminished. But the war has been superceded among most voters' concerns by an economy that was stumbling even before the massive troubles in the nation's financial sector prompted the controversial $700 billion bailout plan enacted last week -- and economic downturns historically have worked against the political interests of the party holding the White House.
And even the generic polls - which ask whether voters would favor an unnamed Democrat or an unnamed Republican in their district or whether they wanted the Democrats or Republicans to control Congress - show Democrats with advantages ranging from 7 to 14 percentage points.
All in all, a much more promising scenario, four weeks out, for the Democrats than for the Republicans.
