Voters this week look set to do something not seen since the early 1950s: Oust a substantial number of sitting House lawmakers for the third election in a row.
The apparent Republican resurgence suggests the country is caught in a cycle of political volatility witnessed only four times in the past century, almost all during war or economic unease.
The see-saw nature of the nation's politics raises a question: How can the country solve its long-term problems—deficit spending, an underfunded Social Security system, spiraling health-care costs—when voters seem so uncertain which party should lead the charge?
This fall's election has generated dozens of House races, from the suburbs of Denver and Chicago, across the South, and up the Ohio River Valley into New England, where voters who rejected Republicans in the past two elections are threatening to throw their support back to the GOP. In many cases, they're returning to the same candidates they rejected earlier.
The phenomenon is on full view in Indiana, where Democrats are fighting to keep three House seats they won in 2006. Voters in all three districts have a history, going back more than a century in some cases, of rejecting incumbents in moments of strain.
"We know what we don't want better than we know what we want," said Steve Ellison, a commercial real-estate broker who hosted a campaign event in his Mishawaka home for Republican challenger Jackie Walorski, who is trying to unseat two-term Democrat Joe Donnelly in the state's Second District. "I suppose that helps explain the schizophrenia."
If Republicans win big on Tuesday, as polls suggest, it is far from clear how firm a foothold they will have. Voters hold unfavorable views of both parties. Republican leaders acknowledge they could easily be tossed in 2012, just as they were in 2006.
The country has seen similar gyrations before. Financial panic in 1893 set the stage for a series of sharp swings in the 1890s. Republicans won a landslide in 1894, picking up 135 seats, but then lost 48 seats two years later, despite Republican William McKinley's triumph in the presidential race.
Then, in 1910, labor unrest and divisions within the GOP cost the party 57 House seats that year and 28 in 1912. World War I and its aftermath created a period of almost continual seesawing, with only one election (1916) seeing fewer than 20 House seats changing hands.
A realignment similar to 1894, but to the left, came in 1932 when voters wracked by the Great Depression elected Franklin D. Roosevelt as president and tossed out 101 Republicans from the House and nine from the Senate. That election, the third in a series of big swings in party support that began in 1928, marked the start of a Democratic dominance of Congress that lasted for decades with few interruptions.
But until now there has been only one other prolonged stretch—from 1946 to 1952—in which either party lost more than 20 seats. A wave of post-war strikes and President Harry Truman's low approval ratings helped Republicans gain 55 seats in 1946, and their first House majority since 1928.
Two years later, voters reacted to a "do-nothing Congress" by tossing out 75 Republicans. The GOP regained the House in 1952, but lost control in the next election. That drought would hold until Republicans roared back in 1994.
Some involved in politics today wonder if the current volatility will become part of the country's political fabric. Changes in the U.S. electoral map, with Republicans increasingly controlling the South and the Democrats dominant on the coasts and the industrial Midwest, plus changes in the makeup of the two parties, have deepened the country's political divide over the past 40 years, they say.
"You used to have clear liberal and conservative wings within each party, but that is less and less the case," said Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia who ran the National Republican Campaign Committee from 1998 to 2002. "Now, the parties are sharply drawn along ideological lines."
The result is a larger and more restive bloc of unattached voters, razor-thin margins in presidential votes, and frequent upheavals in control of Congress.
Amid all this, polls show voters themselves appear uncertain over what they want from elected officials. A Zogby International poll of more than 1,000 likely independent voters last month found that more than 70% wanted candidates who are "flexible" and "not afraid to be independent of their party."
But another survey, by the Allegheny College Center for Political Participation, found more than half of all registered voters wanted elected officials to shun compromise and stand firm on principle. Among likely Republican voters, those favoring no concessions topped 70%.
Analysts who dissect voting trends say the swings of partisan support being seen now, particularly among independent voters, is evidence more of serial disappointment than of chronic indecisiveness.
"You don't see voters changing their minds so much as independent and moderate voters looking for the same thing and never getting it," said William Galston, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who studies governance issues at the Brookings Institution. "So you have a series of negative elections and rejections of the status quo."
The urge to reject those in power can be found this year in some unusual places. In Indiana's Second District, Mr. Donnelly, the two-term Democratic congressman, announced his re-election bid in the United Auto Workers union hall here in the car-factory town of Kokomo.
And for good reason: Measures passed by President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress clearly saved Kokomo from bigger trouble last year. The auto bailout kept the local Chrysler, General Motors and Delphi car-parts factories afloat. The plants employ more than 6,000 people in a city of just 48,000 inhabitants.
From his third-story office downtown, Mayor Greg Goodnight can point to some of the fruits of the more than $100 million in federal stimulus money the city and surrounding county have received over the past 18 months. Kokomo has newly reconfigured sidewalks, fresh rows of streetlights, repaved streets, a new bus system.
"But does Obama get the credit?" asked Mr. Goodnight, a Democrat who previously served as the head of the local steel union. "No, he doesn't. People want to blame someone, and he's the president. We all want immediate results."
Mr. Donnelly, in turn, is locked in a tight race against a challenger who says the auto bailout, the bank rescue and the Democrats' stimulus package were government boondoggles that have simply driven the country deeper into debt.
At Jamie's Soda Fountain a few blocks from City Hall, eight of the city's leading figures come together over mugs of coffee to debate politics and the latest news.
Mike Stegall, president of Community First Bank, gives Mr. Obama high marks for helping rescue the banks and the car companies last year. But he dings the president for the health-care overhaul and this summer's rewrite of the country's financial regulations. "He's selling an agenda no one really gets," Mr. Stegall said.
Local UAW president Richie Boruff jumps in. "Without Obama, Kokomo would be dead, including your community bank," he said.
Scott Pitcher, a local developer and the table's lone independent, says he voted for Mr. Bush in 2004 and for Mr. Obama four years later. But he isn't pleased by what has followed. "I am disappointed that there is so little confidence in the market, and I blame Obama for that," he said.
The debate, like the country, gets more volatile. Voices are raised. Mr. Stegall talks of a spreading "paranoia and fear." County Attorney Lawrence Murrell, joining the group late, speaks of impending socialism and says, "We are in a fight for our nation's soul." The comment draws a protest from Mr. Boruff.
Going around the table, in a town where the unemployment rate last year shot above 20% but has since dipped below 12%, four men in the group give the president a grade of D. Two give him an A. Mr. Obama comes out with an average grade of C-minus.
