Stuart Rothenberg has turned the corner on the 2006 midterms. Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato are nearly there, too. But here's Rothenberg's latest take on what's happening before our very eyes. This is going to big, folks. That's why we can't let down our guard, why we have to work extra hard to make sure we get all we deserve.
With only a couple of weeks until Election Day, we know there will be a Democratic wave on Nov. 7. And we can be fairly certain that by historical standards it will be high - possibly very high. But we still don’t know how many Republicans once considered safe will be swept out of office.
The national political environment currently is worse than it was in 1994, when the Democrats lost 52 House seats, eight Senate seats and 10 governorships, and when Republicans won GOP control of the House for the first time in decades.
You heard me right: It’s worse this year than it was in 1994, when voters were dissatisfied with the first two years of the Bill Clinton presidency.
President Bush’s approval ratings are worse than Clinton’s were - Bush’s are in the upper 30s, while Clinton’s were in the mid-to-upper 40s - and the 16 percent approval rating for Congress in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll ranks far below where Congress stood prior to the 1994 midterms (24 percent).
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How High the Wave? Don’t Just Think 1994; Think 1974, 1958, 1982I feel strongly that the national pundits have had this election year all wrong. Now I'm seeing that some people other than me are seeing the true importance of those big issue poll numbers. Two weeks out and Rothenberg is the first to join me, however as I indicated above, both Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato have published similar sentiments, albeit considerably toned down. Those candidate polls are telling the picture. The GOP is in for a real shocker on November 7th.
