Wave of Change Expected on Election Day W Post

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301074_pf.html

Wave of Change Expected on Election Day
Academics Forecast Democrats Will Retake House, Make Gains in Senate

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006; A17

The wave is coming.

At least that is what political scientists are predicting about the midterm elections on Nov. 7. The academics could be wrong, of course; they often are.

But one of the peculiar facts about American politics is that every once in a while citizens in disparate parts of the country decide in the same year to reject an unusually large number of candidates for Congress from one party and to replace them with candidates from the other party.

That kind of outpouring is known as a wave, and it last occurred 12 years ago when Republicans gained a whopping 53 seats in the House and took control of that chamber for the first time in 40 years. Polls are now showing signs that the tide of public opinion is flowing in the opposite direction and that voters could vote Republicans out of office in droves this year, returning Democrats to power in the House and possibly in the Senate as well.

"This is going to be a wave year," said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "The only question is whether it will be medium-size wave or a high wave for the Democrats."

Indiana State University's Carl Klarner and Stan Buchanan used fancy computer models in June to predict that Democrats would pick up 22 seats in the House, enough to give them 224 seats, six more than they would need for majority control. Alan I. Abramowitz of Emory University in Atlanta used his own model last month to forecast that Democrats would gain 29 House seats. The professors did not predict that Democrats would take charge of the Senate -- a six-seat gain is needed to win a majority there -- though they do envision Democratic gains in that body of two to three seats.

Nonetheless, the realization of these numbers would constitute a wave.

This year's anti-Republican swell -- if it arrives in the dimensions professors imagine -- would be a wavelet by historical standards, said Linda L. Fowler, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. Voting waves were tsunami-size in the 19th and 20th centuries. Seven times before World War II and once afterward (in 1948), 70 or more seats flipped in the House.

But no one is expecting a change of that magnitude this year.


FULL story at link above.
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[C_U_L8R]

1. Start banging the drums

and make sure everyone you know gets out the vote
(and everyone you don't know too)

We are a WAVE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[babylonsister]

2. I LOVE waves! And change, especially now. nt