Polls showed the Democrats poised to retake the 435-seat House of Representatives after 12 years of Republican control and with a good chance of winning back the Senate. To win both chambers, the centre- left party must pick up 15 House seats and six in the Senate.
Candidates on Monday threw tens of thousands of dollars into last- minute television and radio spots, supporters walked door to door handing out leaflets and volunteers worked phone banks to get out the vote.
Bush went on a final campaign swing to rally his centre-right Republicans. To a cheering crowd of party activists in Florida, he touted an Iraqi judge's death sentence Sunday for deposed leader Saddam Hussein as 'a landmark event in the history of Iraq.'
But although Bush is not on the ballot, his approval ratings below 40 per cent and an especially deadly October for US troops in Iraq have made it hard for him to combat the sour national mood.
By calling for an exit strategy from Iraq and appealing to voters fed up with political scandals in Washington, the Democrats have what most analysts believe is their best chance in a decade to retake Congress. Former president Bill Clinton and labour-union activists were out on Monday to give the Democrats a final push.
Bush has refused to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal, but he acknowledged Monday that many Americans do not view Iraq as important to their security. He insisted that Iraq is the 'central front' in the fight against terrorism and 'we have a plan for victory.'
US Senator Charles Schumer, who helped lead the Democratic campaign, laid out his side's divergent vision.
'We have to make 2007 a year of transition, where we redeploy our troops, putting many, if not most of them, out of harm's way, both in and outside Iraq,' he told a news conference Monday.
Surveys consistently show voters ranking Iraq as their top issue, ahead of the economy and the fight against terrorism - themes Bush has highlighted in claiming that the Democrats for higher taxes and a less-safe America.
A New York Times/CBS public opinion poll released last week found 61 per cent of respondents were for a change of US strategy in Iraq, and another 27 per cent explicitly supported a troop withdrawal.
An opposition-controlled Congress would likely step up pressure on Bush to change course on Iraq, but he would retain broad powers to set foreign policy and as commander-in-chief of the US military.
Regardless of the outcome, Bush's second term runs until January 2009. He is constitutionally barred from seeking another term, and contenders are already jostling to seek the major-party nominations for the next presidential election in two years.
Many Republican candidates have sharply distanced themselves from Bush's Iraq policy and if Tuesday night turns into a rout, he could preside over the worst Republican defeat since the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
But the White House brushed off the notion that Democratic gains would force a change of course in Iraq.
Bush's goal is 'victory in Iraq, and it's full speed ahead on that basis,' Vice President Dick Cheney said in an ABC interview aired Sunday. 'It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter, in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right.'
In a move that could mobilize socially conservative Republicans, eight states will vote on same-sex marriage bans Tuesday. A wave of such ballot questions helped turn out Bush supporters for his 2004 re-election, though the issue's momentum seems to have dwindled.
Hollywood star Michael J Fox, who shakes visibly from Parkinson's disease, has led a campaign for Democratic candidates who support stem-cell research. Bush has sought to limit embryonic stem-cell research for reasons related to his anti-abortion stand, but most Americans broadly favour using the technology to seek new cures for diseases.
The issue is on the ballot in Missouri, where it may swing a close Senate race that could decide whether the Democrats take the upper chamber. Democrats also hope that their campaign for raising the US minimum wage will bring left-leaning voters to the polls.
In other races Tuesday:
- Democrat Keith Ellison of the north-central state of Minnesota is poised to become the first Muslim in Congress. He is a US-born convert to Islam.
- Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr could become the first black US senator from a Southern state since the 19th-century period that followed the 1861-65 American Civil War, which ended slavery.
- James Webb, who was Navy secretary under the late Republican president Ronald Reagan and is one of several military figures recruited by the Democrats, is statistically tied with a Republican incumbent in a potentially decisive Senate race.
- In Ohio, the state that sealed Bush's 2004 re-election, Republicans are struggling across the board after a scandal enveloped the governor, and a Congressman pleaded guilty to taking bribes from a Washington lobbyist.
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