Geraghty did an absolutely bang-up job blogging the 2004 campaign at NRO's The Kerry Spot. Another great catch for him here.

Recent history has almost always seen Republicans do better at the polls on Election Day than in the opinion polls before it. Even Bob Dole confounded most polls by his stronger than expected showing in losing. Similarly, the media is generally surprised by Republican strength at the polls.

Disclaimer: there may have been some election year recently where Republicans' results fell short of polls and expectations, but if so, it's the outlier. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Your mileage may vary.

Lorie, I appreciate & share your optimism. While I still think the GOP will lose seats this year, I don't think the losses will be significant enough to shift control in either chamber.

You may be right about losing some seats, but like you, I really don't think it will be like the predictions say. I think it is really too early to do much predicting. I could see us losing some seats, but could also see us gain a few.

Lorie, we are in deep trouble in the Senate. We have incumbents trailing badly, and that is never a good sign. The open races where we have a slight chance at a pickup are in solid blue states, and even there we are trailing in the early polls.

Maybe, just maybe, we won't lose all 5 seats in MT, PA, OH, RI, and MO - but there is a good chance of doing so.

Each race should be examined on its own merits, and if done so, one will see why these 5 are in trouble.

For that reason thought, I do not see us losing the House - because if you go race by race (given that most aren't competitive anyway) it is hard to imagine everything swinging the Dems way.

But the Senate is a disaster. My one confidence is that I don't see us losing any other Senate races, and thus we hold a 50-50 tiebreaker with Cheney. Maybe, Talent can pull through and we will stay 51-49.

And don't ask about the governorships - where we are definitely going to lose the edge there...badly.

Steve,

Don't worry about Jim Talent in Misouri. He will win by 5 to 7%. Jon Kyl in Arizona will win in a landslide. Rick Santorum has picked up 4 to 6@ in the last month, he is still behind, but I expect him to win. He is a 2 term incumbent and has just started his capmaign advertising.

Chaffe in Rhode Island... Please vote for anyone else, it DOES NOT MATTER who!!! Republicans will hold Tennessee and MOST PROBABLY pick up Minnesota. I expect Republican pick-ups in Washington (McGavick over Cantwell) and New Jersey (Tom Kean, Jr. over Menendez).

Sherrod Brown, the Stalinist candidate in Ohio, cannot defeat the RINO DeWinne. He is too blatantly anti-semitic and anti-American. He is a Kos nutroots favored candidate. Just look at what he supports. It makes decent humans puke.

Burns in Montana also has a BLATANT and VERY SHRILL anti-everyone far left-wing opponent. In a Red State, of all things. Burns does have issues but that left wing idiot is NOT an ALTERNATIVE.

Polls are like foolproof stock market systems-- fantastic at predicting yesterday's trend.

Besides the inadvertant bias which makes them 40% worthless and the intentional bias which brings them to 80% worthless, pollsters have to base the weighting of the responses on what happened last time.

At some point-- and maybe it's not this election-- the Democrats will reach the tipping point with the American people. The polls will be incapable of showing this-- in fact, they will "correct" it away.

Expect to see a better showing for Repubs as the election nears and sensible people realize that a protest absention is a vote for the Dems.

When Hugh Hewitt put the question to Martin Peretz of The New Republic, he could not bring himself to declare allegiance to the Democrats. He spluttered and stammered. Not every registered Dem is a moonbat. And when they do notice what's happening to their party-- woe to the nutroots' socialist dreams.

Lorie, I agree. Republicans could suffer catastrophic defeats, but I don't expect it. Dems and the MSM forever try to influence events with skewed and unfounded polls and "news" items, which lead to pessimism among Republicans and optimism among Dems. Dems believe their own hype, which in the last several elections was directly responsible for their PEST, their denial, and what appears to be their permanent dysfunction. The more they have been punished by voters for their lack of ideas and principles, the more lacking in those ideas and principles they have become. I still think voters can discern the truth.

However, Dems will turn anything less than total defeat into victory. Republicans are better at seeing reality and adjusting to it; Dems will continue to fool themselves, fail to challenge themselves, and be a mediocre party.

IF the Republicans lost the House - I think there is no way they lose the Senate - it would be only a two-year interruption of their era of control. It would take only that long to make the public wish they had never heard of the Democratic Party.

Take all the polls you want as "evidence" of incumbent Senators in trouble. Ho-hum. Can anyone show any relation between poll trends in early August and actual results in early November? Incumbent Senators in their second term or more are reelected at a 95% rate. Don't count out any of the incumbents just yet - Chaffee has only served one full term, and could be the most vulnerable.

Even in Presidential elections, nearly half the electorate doesn't give a rip until after Labor Day, a third don't decide until the last ten days before the election, and many will change their mind in the last month. In midterms, it is worse.

In recent years, the Democrats always take heart in early spring, get their hopes up in summer, and have their hopes dashed in the fall. At some point, we need to recognize the pattern.

Talent is in trouble. I live in Missouri and trust me Talent is in trouble.

I understand your intention to rally the troops with the "Aug 2002" comparisons contained in the NRO editorial, but the effort seems a little disingenuous.

For comparison, today, the Approval ratings of Bush are 40% approve, 56% disapprove..in 2002, they were 68% approve, 26% disapprove...in short, those numbers have worse than flopped om the intervening 4 years.

Looking at the approval ratings of Republicans in cogress, in 2002 they were at a 47% approval rating. Today, it is 25% approval...barely half the number of four years ago.

Things are looking dire for the chances of republicans maintaining control of even one house of congress in the 2006 midterms. If you wish to get out the vote, people must inderstand this fully.

Let's stick to the facts.

I agree with the previous comment. It was pretty clear what he had done when one of the articles mentioned Bush "campaigning vigorously" for Republican candidates nationwide. That's the key difference in this election versus that of 2002 -- Bush has become baggage; his support wouldn't serve to ameliorate the standing of any Republican.

Guys, if you look at each of the five Senate races I mention, they all have different dynamics, but they all spell trouble to the GOP.

And keep in mind another detail from 2002. The nation not only was in support of Bush, they were ticked that Jeffords had flipped control of the Senate to the Democrats, who were being total obstructionists. Bush was hardly in lame duck status in his first 2 years, especially after 9/11 - and their position (especially in blocking all the judges) was despised.

Therefore, the many close, open races in 2002 fell our way.

Yes, incumbents typically win reelection. I will even grant the 95% stat made by our friend Adjoran. Sounds probable.

But how many of those 95% incumbents were sitting at 40% or so in the polls with 3 months left to go?

I would bet that ALL of the 5% who did lose were probably sitting there.

I don't have the figures on that, but I suspect you are correct that probably all those who lost were in trouble already at this stage.

Bush has much lower approval numbers this time than in 2002, to be sure. He isn't on the ballot, and it is ridiculous to discount the fact of Congress' even lower approval numbers. The GOP draws only 27% approval while the Dems get 29%. Both sides are FAR lower in popularity than the President!

The historical average of President's second midterms in the last century has been a loss for his party of 53 House seats and seven Senate seats. Does anyone believe the Democrats will come anywhere close to that? If so, have you left your drink open and unguarded lately?

The public is disaffected with both parties. This might mean trouble for incumbents, or not. Oftentimes when we perceive the choice as between two evils, we prefer to stay with the devil we know, as opposed to the devil we don't. And voters tend to disapprove as Congress as a whole, while also believing their own Rep. is doing a good job.

In recent years the polls leading up to elections have usually overestimated Democratic results. We'll know in less than three months, and then we can argue about what happened and why.

:-D

The Aug 2002 piece is not relevant today. Back in 2002 Bush was fairly popular and 9/11 was still fresh in peoples minds and we weren`t mired in an unpopular war.
Also you had several democrats in the south who were retiring and the dems had no chance to keep the seats.
If we keep the senate losses to 3 we will be doing well.I expect that we will lose 5 senate seats but lickily i don`t see a sixth winnanble one for the dems.On the house side it`s hard to say, they probably have a 50/50 chance of retaking the house .
Be realistic, this year is not going to be good for the gop and if we don`t lose congress it will be a miracle.

Santorum just picked up Gov. Rendell's endorsement over the weekend, which will help him in SE PA. Cantwell is going to have to explain her vote against the minimum wage packet in WA; Menendez is going to have to explain his vote against tax credits for college in NJ. There's a very good column in the WSJ about why operating as obstructionists hurts Dems, which is the choice that Reid has made for these mid-terms.

So we might lose 2, but I doubt we lose 5 and we might pick up 2 (NJ and WA) and possibly Steele in MD. I share Lorie's optimism - this might not be a banner year for the GOP, but I don't think it's going to be a killer year for us either.

Didn't someone at RealClearPolitics recently write that the House NEVER throughout history has switched without a Senate switch as well? I'll have to look for the article....

RI - We know if Chafee loses the primary this seat is gone, and even if he wins, there is a high chance of loss. Republicans are openly rooting for the guy to lose.

MT - We need to stop looking at Presidential races to describe some of these states as "dark red" - they are not when it comes to other offices (look at the Dakotas). We have major scandal here, and a state that is getting more and more environmental wackos to move there. I have close ties to MT, and it is NOT as conservative as some think.

OH - Again, we have Republicans openly rooting for DeWine to lose to send a message on immigration (and RINOism in general) - Remember the OakLeaf debates I had at Polipundit. The GOP is in shambles in Ohio, and the state is not as solid Republican as it once was - and DeWine is ticking off the base more and more by voting left.

MO - I remind you that Talent was only capable of beating an incompetent widow, who was purely a rubberstamp for whatever Kennedy wanted, by one measly point - despite the GOP advantages that existed in 2002, and don't today. This is his first reelection, and he is running against someone who has in fact won a statewide race before - and the stem cell issue is giving him some problems. He is CONSISTENTLY underperforming in the polls for months, compared to what safe incumbents should be doing.

PA - The weird thing is that in some ways I am most confident about pulling this one out - however, Rick is SO far behind in the polls, that I have my doubts. If Rendell keeps campaigning for him, that has to help. Maybe the Dems don't want Casey in there - fearing he will truly be a social conservative as he claims - and thus would rather have Rick to demonize nationwide for 6 more years.

Now, we can hope we defeat blue seat incumbets in WA or MI, or win blue state open races like MD and MN - but our track record is hardly encouraging there.

Whistle, you "Reds". Graveyard is approaching. cb

Talent's problem is he is as about exciting as a "wet dishcloth" ! He just does not inspire people to "vote for him".