US News
Bush's majority in Congress at stake in US elections
By Tony Czuczka
Nov 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - US voters riled by the relentless war in Iraq were electing a new Congress on Tuesday, with opinion polls signaling a wave of discontent that could cost President George W Bush's Republican Party its majority.

Pre-vote surveys showed the opposition Democrats poised to retake the House of Representatives after 12 years of Republican control and with a chance also to break the centre-right's hold on the Senate.

Close races, particularly in the Senate, could delay final results until Wednesday morning - or even later, if the outcome turns on the counting of a record number of absentee ballots. Polls started opening at 1100 GMT on the East Coast, and will close the last doors five time zones away in Hawaii at 0400 GMT Wednesday.

Amidst voter uncertainty over new electronic voting and charges of manipulation during the razor-edge 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the federal government was deploying an unprecedented 850 monitors to 22 states to guard against intimidation.

Equipped with a variety of languages, including Arabic and Spanish, the monitors will look for improper challenges to voters 'on the basis of their race, color, or membership in a language minority group.'

Democrats have tried to turn the election into a referendum on the killing in Iraq, corruption and sex scandals in Washington and Bush, whose slumping approval ratings are stuck at about 40 per cent.

'When the election is a referendum on change, George Bush and his rubber-stamp Congress lose. When the election is a referendum on the war in Iraq, George Bush and his rubber-stamp Congress lose,' Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said Monday.

Bush is not on the ballot, but surveys show that a majority of Americans believe his Iraq policy is off-track, a sour mood that has helped the Democrats. Though hardly united on details, the centre- left party has broadly called for starting to bring US troops home.

Bush portrays the Democrats as the party of higher domestic taxes that would abandon Iraq without a clear plan and make America less safe. He has rejected calls for a withdrawal plan for US troops.

'I want to assure you, I see the danger. That is why we will stay in Iraq, fight in Iraq and win in Iraq,' Bush told cheering Republican activists in Florida on his final campaign swing Monday.

Bush has limited campaigning largely to friendly areas, seeking to rally the Republican vote. Even in Florida, the Republican candidate for state governor skipped Monday's rally with Bush, apparently viewing the president as damaged goods.

At stake Tuesday are all 435 House seats and one third of the 100- seat Senate. To win both chambers, the Democrats must pick up 15 House seats and six in the Senate.

An opposition-controlled Congress would likely step up pressure for Bush to change course in Iraq, but he would retain broad powers to set foreign policy and as commander-in-chief of the US military.

Bush's second term runs until January 2009. He is constitutionally barred from seeking another term, and contenders are already jostling for major-party nominations for the 2008 presidential election.

While analysts generally predict a Republican defeat in the House, the Senate may turn on several state races where conservative Democrats are challenging Republican holders, including Virginia, Montana and Pennsylvania.

Also on the ballot in eight states are same-sex marriage bans, an issue that has mobilized Republican voters in the past.

In the Midwestern state of Missouri, a proposal backing embryonic stem-cell research - a Democratic theme - may swing a close Senate race that could decide which party wins the upper chamber. Measures to raise the minimum wage in several states may also help the Democrats.