Updated Nov. 6 | 12"45 p.m. EST

Voters show little desire for dramatic change in deciding hotly contested races

By CHUCK RAASCH
GNS Political Writer

WASHINGTON — Americans gave a hint of direction to Congress on Tuesday by giving Republicans narrow control of the Senate again. But the broad parity that has defined and restricted U.S. politics over the last decade remains.

By the numbers, it was a narrow electoral triumph for George W. Bush and his Republican Party, made so finally by Sen. Jean Carnahan's concession in Missouri after an extremely close loss. But even after a night of close elections, it became more decisive than Bush's own disputed presidential victory two years earlier.

Bush had spent most of the last week of the campaign blazing a trail through some of the closest contests in recent election history, and his party won enough of them to seize back control. Bush also may become the first Republican president to gain seats in the House of Representatives in his first mid-term election since Teddy Roosevelt exactly 100 years ago.

But it may be a bittersweet victory if Republicans control Congress because expectations for the GOP will be much higher even though they will be nominally in control of both the House and Senate.

So it came down to this: A country in the midst of a war on terrorism and economic worries at home begrudgingly tilted the scales to the GOP. Democrats knew they were beaten on the margins, but beaten still, and were heavy into second-guessing even as a slew of states were still counting votes.

Analysts were split as to whether the Democrats blew it or whether a perfect storm of election conditions gave Bush and the Republicans the opportunity to defy history. No single domestic issue dominated the debate, and the prospects of war with Iraq bifurcated voters' views even more.

``Ironically, $1 billion could be spent in this election to preserve the status quo,'' Democratic consultant Gary Nordlinger said late Tuesday night. He was speaking of estimates of how much money was spent on campaign advertising in this long and increasingly bitter election season.

Some Democrats conceded that Bush's focus on the war on terrorism, and a potential war with Iraq trumped their ability to make the economy the issue.

``The president did a good job talking about Iraq and taking the oxygen out of the room,'' said Richard Michalski, legislative and political director for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

In Florida, the Bushes got vindication to supplant the sour aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, easily won, further ensconcing that family as the first political dynasty of the 21st century.

Some Floridians tacitly admitted that stature in their votes.

"The debates, the commercials, they didn't mean a thing," said Lou Ackerman, a service manager of a Melbourne, Fla., car repair shop who voted for Jeb Bush. "Bush has a brother in the White House, and it's better for Florida. I figured, go for the clout."

And the backlash predicted from the bitter 2000 election did not materialize as Democrats had long contemplated.

Turnout in Broward County, ground zero to some of the worst voting problems in 2000, was lower than Democrats had predicted, provoking finger pointing while the votes were being counted.

"The Democrats were not energized by Bill McBride," said Broward Country Democratic activist Jack Shifrel, speaking of his party's gubernatorial candidate.

Some said Democrats failed to take on the GOP on economic issues, in part because of Bush's popularity, in part because many Democrats in tough races had voted for Bush's tax cuts.

"The only issues left to talk about were little issues, not the kinds that change people's positions about which party they want to support," said Thomas Riehle, president of the polling firm Ipsos-Reid. Left without clear debates between the two parties, Riehle said, "the parties left voters to figure it our for themselves."

Americans sometimes lament the gridlock produced by such close margins in the House and the Senate, but on an individual basis, some seemed comfortable with continuing the era of political parity.

"I like to have the checks and balances," said independent Robert Obszarny, 52, a fabric salesman from Meutchen, N.J., who voted for victor Democrat Frank Lautenberg in that state's Senate race. "If you don't, you risk having runaway government, and that would scare the hell out of me."

Left without issues for which to cleave major advantages, political professionals dug in for a late ground war. Nowhere was that more apparent than South Dakota, where political ads began more than a year ago. Democrats had to go to Nebraska to rent vans to take people to the polls on Election Day. Republicans claimed to have called more than 200,000 Republicans and people likely to vote for Republicans on Election Day, urging them to vote.

So many get-out-the-vote calls were being made into that politics-saturated state that Steve Erpenbach, a top adviser to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, got a recorded call from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani urging him to vote Republican. He declined.

(Contributing: Ledyard King from New Jersey, Susan Roth from Washington, D.C., and Larry Wheeler from Florida.)