Previewing the Election Year Ahead

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

It was just a year or so ago when a newly re-elected President Bush announced he had earned political capital and intended to use it. But what followed was clearly the most difficult year of Mr. Bush's presidency: the war in Iraq, the response to hurricanes, higher gasoline prices and scandals within his party. This year, Republicans once again have to defend their control of both the House and the Senate. Democrats need about 15 seats to win back the House. They'll need six seats to recapture the Senate. And despite favorable signs for the party, it will be an uphill task. Joining me to talk about what's at stake are NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson and political editor Ken Rudin. Hello.

MARA LIASSON (NPR National Political Correspondent): Hello.

KEN RUDIN (NPR Political Editor): Good morning, Renee.

MONTAGNE: Let's begin with you, Mara. You've studied the polls. How does the public see the Republican Party at this point?

LIASSON: Well, the Congress, and, of course, it is a Republican Congress, is seen with pretty low ratings in the low 40s; lower than the president's. However, these are not historic lows. They aren't as low as the Democratic Congress got before the big Republican revolution of the mid-'90s. But on a number of issues, like the economy and jobs, the war in Iraq, on government spending, Republicans are seen as worse than Democrats, or not as well able to handle those issues. However, I should point out that we're not seeing a see-saw effect in the polls. In other words, Democrats are not going up as Republicans are going down.

MONTAGNE: So, Ken, turning to you, how does this all feed into what is an historical six-year itch, if you will, of the party in power in the White House?

RUDIN: Right, Renee, and we've seen in the past historical elections that when there's a national theme or there's an overriding viewpoint among American voters, there was a big reaction against the party in power that's been the party in power in the White House for six years. In 1958, for example, we saw that we had the Eisenhower recession and some scandals going on. Democrats picked up 49 House seats, plus 17 in the Senate. In 1966, with the reaction against the war in Vietnam and civil unrest in the streets, Republicans picked up 47 seats in the House. So usually, when you look at six-year itches, it usually hurts the party in the White House pretty badly. But having said that, in 1998, we had a supposed six-year itch with Bill Clinton, the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But there was a sense that the Republicans overreached that year. And, in fact, Democrats picked up seats in that six-year election. So historically--it's one thing to point out historical trends. It's another to see what the actual mood of the country is.

MONTAGNE: Why don't we turn to talking a bit about what's at stake.

LIASSON: Well, in terms of what the Democrats would have to do to retake one house or the other, in the House of Representatives, as you mentioned, they need about 15 seats. That's a pretty high hurdle. You need to have--most people say--about 30 to 50 truly competitive races; in other words, seats that are really in play, to get a net pickup of 15. And over the years, the majority parties--both parties have become much more adept at designing safe congressional districts for their incumbents. So they put up a pretty mighty fortress around incumbents that makes it a lot harder to defeat incumbents. And both parties have been pretty good this year at keeping retirements down, meaning they have reduced the number of open seats that are available. Open seats are easier for the opposite party to pick up.

In the Senate, they need a net gain of six, and that's going to be pretty tough for the Democrats because there's only one Republican open seat and that's in Tennessee. Senator Frist, the majority leader, is stepping down. Now that means they need to defeat five incumbents, assuming they got that one open seat. That is a very, very high hurdle.

RUDIN: And for--obviously, for Democrats to capture control of the Senate, they have to defeat every vulnerable Republican incumbent. That means they have to beat Conrad Burns in Montana. They have to beat Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island; Mike DeWine in Ohio. They have to beat Rick Santorum in probably the premiere Senate race in Pennsylvania. And maybe Jim Talent in Missouri, and then take Bill Frist's Senate seat. And then they have to hold their own. Everything has to fall in line and that's a huge hurdle for the Democrats in 2006.

MONTAGNE: NPR political editor Ken Rudin and national political correspondent Mara Liasson, thanks again.

RUDIN: Thank you.

LIASSON: Thank you, Renee.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.