Profile of the Congressional Races

As InstantReplay continues election analysis, one of the things often lost in a Presidential election is that a lot of other political careers and the majorities in both houses are also on the ballot. While IR won't be able to profile every single race, I think it worthwhile to look at the broad picture and some of the key races, which will be discussed here throughout the fall.

Senate and house elections are serious business. OpenSecrets.org shows that, including primaries, the House races have brought in $460 million in donations and the Senate races $340 million. Together that's almost one and a half times the presidential candidates' take!

In the Senate, the Republicans have a distinct advantage going in. Despite their slight majority in that august body, the G.O.P. must ante up only 15 of its seats in the Senate, while the Democrats are risking 19. Worse still for the Dems is that 5 of their incumbants are retiring, compared to 3 Republicans. The retirees on the left side of the aisle are all from the South: Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. With Bush primed to win big in the South, it could be tough for the Democrats to hang on, let alone steal the Senate.

In the House, things can move a lot quicker, especially if one presidential nominee runs away with the election. MyDD.com, a Deaniac blog, lists 60 House races as "competitive", with just 15 listed as "toss-ups". In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby rails eloquent against the dictatorship of incumbancy in House elections, where the re-election rate has remained at 98% since 1998, after a modern low of 90% in the Republican Revolution of 1994.

What we can surmise is that while the contest for presidency rests on the edge of a knife, the G.O.P. can relax in the House and Senate: margins are just as likely to grow as to shrink, and even a big Democratic win would be unlikely to overturn both Houses. Perhaps I'm not the first person to stumble upon this...perhaps the Republican Congress itself has realized that they can keep ransacking the budget with impunity; after all, it's not their jobs that are on the line.