Beyond the tipping point

By Amy Walter, Cook Political Report

updated 6:13 p.m. ET Nov. 3, 2006

Until mid-September, House Republicans' built-in advantages appeared strong enough to protect their majority, despite the electorate's increasingly anti-Republican mood. The GOP had few vulnerable open seats, most of its incumbents were skilled at waging hard-hitting campaigns, and the party seemed to have plenty of time and money to defend its most-endangered seats.

Now, in the final days before Tuesday's election, Democrats are poised to take control of the House by flipping more than the necessary 15 seats. And the real question doesn't seem to be whether they will succeed but how large their majority will be. A Democratic edge of five to 10 seats, perhaps more, looks probable.

All of the political storm gauges suggest that the climate is now at least as bad for Republicans as it was for Democrats heading into the 1994 election, when they lost control of both the House and the Senate. President Bush's job-approval rating, 37 percent in the latest Gallup Poll, is 9 points lower than President Clinton's was at the same point in Gallup's 1994 pre-election survey. Moreover, just 26 percent of voters in the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (October 13-16) said the country is headed in the right direction, while a whopping 61 percent said it is on the wrong track. That's more pessimism than the electorate showed 12 years ago, when the same poll found 39 percent of likely voters saying "right direction" and 48 percent saying "wrong track."

Difficulty shifting the debate
Even though the number of competitive races continues to grow, Republican operatives are still hoping to localize enough of them to preserve their majority. The most-competitive GOP-held House districts are being flooded with Republican messages -- financed by the National Republican Congressional Committee and the candidates' own campaigns -- that depict the Democratic challenger as an unacceptable alternative to the unpopular status quo. But because the national spotlight has been riveted for weeks on the issues that are most hazardous to the GOP -- the chaos in Iraq, the dysfunction on Capitol Hill, and the unhappiness with Bush -- Republicans have found it all but impossible to shift the debate to topics that might work in their favor.

The political playing field is tilted dramatically against the GOP. In recent elections, the number of competitive House districts was not only small, it was also fairly evenly divided between GOP-held seats and Democratic ones. In October 2004, National Journal's Cook Election Preview listed just 39 competitive seats -- 22 held by Republicans, 16 held by Democrats, and one newly created by redistricting. Likewise, in 2002, Republicans had to defend only about half of the 44 seats in play.

Previous NBC/WSJ polls (pdf files) July 29, 2009 June 17, 2009 April 28, 2009 March 3, 2009 Jan. 14, 2009 Dec. 10, 2008 Nov. 3, 2008 Oct. 21, 2008 Oct. 6, 2008 Sept. 24, 2008 Sept. 9, 2008 Aug. 20, 2008 July 23, 2008 June 11, 2008 April 30, 2008 March 12, 2008 Jan. 24, 2008 More polls

This year, Republicans hold the vast majority of vulnerable seats -- 53 of 60. And of that 60, all 10 of the most endangered are held by Republicans. In other words, not a single Democratic-held House seat is among those most likely to change party. If Democrats do lose any of their own seats, those of Reps. Jim Marshall (GA-08), John Barrow (GA-12), and Melissa Bean (IL-08) are the most likely to go.

The Republicans' 53 jeopardized seats fall into three levels of vulnerability. The first tier comprises 10 districts that the GOP will be lucky to hold. In all 10, the Republican candidates are trailing in the polls. The rapidly expanding next tier comprises 30 battleground districts -- up from 18 just a month ago -- that could go either way. Polls show these races in a tie or with the Republican very narrowly ahead. The GOP's chances are no better than 50-50 in any of these races. And if the widely forecast Democratic wave materializes, the GOP could lose 75 percent of them. In the third tier are 13 longer-shot opportunities for the Democrats.

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