Sullen Voters Set to Deliver Another Demand for Change

At WSJ, "If Republicans Win Control of Senate, It Would Be Fourth Such Control Switch in Less Than a Decade":

Odds are good that the U.S. midterm elections will mark the fourth time in less than a decade that voters oust a party from control of Congress or the White House, a remarkable period of instability that has left neither party with a firm grip on power.

If, as polls suggest, Republicans win a majority in the Senate, they will face anew the question: What can they do to address the voter dissatisfaction that keeps washing through the electorate and producing “change elections,’’ as in 2006, 2008 and 2010?

“Traditionally in American history, politics is like a seesaw: When one side is up the other side is down,” said Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush . “Now it’s as if the seesaw is broken: the public is distrustful of both parties.”

As voters head to the polls on Tuesday, the most important test of this mood lay in about a dozen closely contested Senate races. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to win control of the Senate.

Across the country, candidates and party leaders made their final appeal to voters. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who stands to become Senate Majority Leader if Republicans win the majority, flew around his home state campaigning with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.)

“We’re going to send a message to President Obama,” Mr. Paul said at a joint rally. “This will be a repudiation of President Obama’s policies.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who has maintained a punishing campaign schedule this year, traveled to Florida to appear Monday night at a rally with Charlie Crist , who is running for governor in Florida. Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney , also widely traveled during the campaign, appeared in Alaska with GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan.

At the White House, officials insisted that there remained a chance that Democrats could retain a Senate majority. “I don’t agree with the oddsmakers,” Vice President Joe Biden said on CNN. “I predict we’re going to keep the Senate.”

Going into Election Day, the electorate appeared exceptionally dissatisfied with the political system, and almost $4 billion spent on the campaign appeared to do little to change that.

For Republicans, the risk is that, unless they find a way to address that underlying dissatisfaction, a 2014 victory could prove transitional, not durable. The parties will fight over the Senate once again in two years, on terrain more hostile to the GOP.

More broadly, the drive to address mounting voter dissatisfaction also figures to weigh heavily on both parties as they prepare for the 2016 campaign to succeed Mr. Obama.

“This is what I call a short-term election,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. “I don’t think it’s a tidal wave because there is no agenda or message that comes out of this election.”

Although officials from both parties—and the well-funded outside groups supporting the parties—have tried to rally voters by arguing that the stakes are enormous in the 2014 fight for control of Congress, the campaign has had little of the passion, grandeur or sweep of other recent “change” elections.

In 2010, intense tea-party anger about the economy and the new health-care law propelled Republicans into a House majority. In 2008, voters’ hunger for changing Washington’s partisan ways carried Mr. Obama to the White House. In 2006, matters of war and peace helped bring Democrats back to power in the House and Senate.

By contrast, the 2014 election campaign has been mostly tactical, negative and narrowly framed. Republicans ran against an unpopular lame-duck president; Democrats ran away from him. Voters overwhelmingly feel the country is on the wrong track, polls found, and seemed to be losing hope that either party has a plan to fix it.

“Do I think there’s going to be any change? No, I don’t,” said Mike Foohey, 70 years old, of Maggie Valley, N.C., who participated in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. “I just don’t see anybody cooperating in order to get anything done.”

That poll, conducted in the final week of the midterm campaign, is shot through with evidence of voters’ unquenched thirst for change—and of the nation’s divisions about what kind of change they want.

Among people who say they want Congress controlled by Republicans, 44% say that is because they want to express opposition to Mr. Obama rather than positive support for the GOP.

The poll found that two thirds of all voters want significant change in the direction in which Mr. Obama has been leading the country. That includes 47% of Democrats, suggesting the midterms may mark the beginning of the post-Obama era for Democrats.

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