Both Parties Looking for Hope
Nov. 5, 2006 — -- The last weekend of almost any national campaign presents a complicated task for those trying to anticipate (read: "predict") the outcome. There are always enough public and private polls for both sides to seize on, in individual races and nationally, to suggest they will win on Election Day.
Republicans this weekend, as they have all year, acknowledge that they have the wind in their face heading into the midterms, with George W. Bush in his sixth year in office (almost always a bad election for the president's party) and the perceived lack of progress in the Iraq souring many Americans on unified Republican leadership.
Even as some Republican strategists have grown gloomy in the last few weeks, President Bush and his chief political strategist, Karl Rove, have projected consistent optimism that their party will find a way to keep majority control of Congress, even as they lose some of the 15 seats Democrats need to take the House and the six required to switch the Senate.
With the polls set to open early Tuesday morning, several Republican strategists have begun to express more optimism this weekend, echoing the long-standing White House argument that a combination of incumbency, a strong closing message on terrorism and taxes, and the party's superior mechanical get-out-the-vote effort would save significantly more GOP seats than most pundits are predicting.
Two new national polls released Sunday -- one from ABC News (LINK) and one by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press -- showed Democrats' lead nationally on voter preference in the congressional races to have shrunk to single digits.
In addition, Republicans were heartened by some state polls showing their candidates hanging in there to be competitive on Election Day, and by what they said were the indications that their vaunted "72-hour program" for turning out voters with a steady series of contacts, with supporters in person and via different technological means, was kicking into gear. That operation was crucial to surprising Republican victories in 2002 and in Bush's own re-election in 2004. And in many targeted races this year, Democrats might not be able to match it.
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