Big victory expected for Republicans

'Six-year itch' phenomenon works against Democrats in US midterms

Republicans appeared to be in the lead across the United States as the clock wound down to Tuesday's midterm elections.

Polls and experts pointed to a strong possibility that Republicans will capture a majority of seats in the Senate and add to their current majority in the House of Representatives.

Monday's Real Clear Politics average had the Republican Party - also known as the Grand Old Party or GOP - ahead by 2 points, while The New York Times' LEO model put the likelihood of Republicans achieving a Senate majority at 70 percent, and The Washington Post's Election Lab model gave Republicans a whopping 97 percent chance. Many individual experts also gave Republicans a significant edge over the Democratic Party of US President Barack Obama.

"Republicans likely will do well in this year's midterm elections," Brookings Institution's senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua News Agency. "It looks like Republicans will pick up seats in the House and Senate. They have a strong chance of getting majority control of the Senate."

Republicans have a historical advantage known in political science parlance as the "six-year itch" - a tendency for the electorate to turn against the party in power during the second half of a president's second term.

"The GOP has a natural advantage in this election because second-term midterms are marked by a fatigue for the president in power, in this case Obama," Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua.

The phenomenon goes back several decades. The minority party gained 72 seats in 1938 during President Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Four seats were gained in 1966, during the second-term midterms in the Kennedy-Johnson era, and again in 1974, during the Nixon-Ford administration. Six seats were gained in the 2006 second-term midterms, when George W. Bush occupied the White House.

In Tuesday's midterms, the magic number for the Republicans is six - the number of seats required to take back the Democrat-controlled Senate. The GOP currently controls the House of Representatives, and a big win on Tuesday would make Republicans the masters of both houses.

Midterms naturally favor Republicans, experts say, as their base tends to vote reliably, while the Democrats' base - youth, women and minorities - tend to have a stronger turnout in presidential election years.

"The electorate in midterms tends to be older, whiter and more male," Mahafee said.

Moreover, many pundits, experts and observers say the midterms are a referendum on the leadership of the president.

(China Daily 11/05/2014 page12)