Jessica Hill/Associated Press - Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Linda McMahon, left, shakes hands with Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Chris Murphy at the end of a debate in Rocky Hill, Conn., on Oct. 7, 2012.
In the past six years, there have been three national elections, each of them producing a wave, in which races up and down the ballot moved in generally the same direction. Democrats won big in 2006 and 2008, only to see those gains reversed in the mid-term election of 2010.
This year, however, the better analogy in many states may be a breeze. The presidential contest will ripple the waters but not necessarily determine which way they flow.
STATE OF PLAY | Explore the 2012 Senate, House, governor and presidential election maps and view unemployment and demographics.
The final four weeks
For political junkies, it’s time to speculate about that out-of-nowhere event that shakes up an election.
The chamber’s majority has not changed hands during a presidential election in 60 years.
All 50 states will vote for president this year, but voters in 11 states also need to pick a governor.
That’s partly because the presidential race is so close, and its battlefield is so narrow. Just four weeks before Election Day, fewer than 10 states are in play for the presidential contest, which allows for separate dynamics to take hold in House, Senate and gubernatorial races elsewhere.
There is also a paradox at work. While the amount of territory being contested in the presidential race is relatively small, “this is the largest Senate map that I can remember, certainly in a decade,” said Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The same is true among House races, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO, though he said that could be because so many of them have been under the radar in this presidential election year.
“It looks like suddenly a lot more races are in play,” he said. “But I think a lot of them have been in play all along, just people didn’t know about it.”
Many of the most competitive House races are taking place in what Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) calls “orphan districts,” places that the presidential campaigns are all but ignoring, and where there is not even a hotly contested Senate race.
And even in some of the battleground states, candidates say they are all but ignoring what is happening at the top of the ticket.
Former House member Charlie Wilson, one of a handful of ex-lawmakers seeking to return to Congress, said he cannot count on President Obama’s performance in Ohio to carry him over the top in his conservative southeastern district.
“I run my race, and he runs his, and I can’t mix the two,” Wilson said.
Once-a-decade redistricting also has changed the equation. In some of the battleground states, such as Ohio and Virginia, it has strengthened the hold that Republican incumbents have on their districts and made them less vulnerable to the outcome at the top of the ticket.
But in California, where only one House seat changed parties over the past decade, the newly drawn lines have created something the state usually doesn’t see in congressional elections: suspense.
This year, the district lines have been so altered by a new nonpartisan reapportionment process that at least four of California’s 53 congressional races — all of them in seats currently held by Republicans — are rated as tossups by the authoritative Cook Political Report.
In recent weeks, the political tide has turned ever so slightly in House Democrats’ favor, particularly in late September as GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney stumbled.
Still, to gain the 25 seats they need to return to the majority in the House, Democrats probably need to defeat at least 35 Republican incumbents. That appears unlikely, although Republicans concede privately that their ranks are likely to be reduced somewhat.
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