By Munir K. Nasser
Chief Correspondent, Washington, DC
Albawaba.com
After a year of listening to intensive campaigning, American voters will head to election centers on Tuesday to deliver their verdicts on the makeup of the United States government, including the presidency and the Congress.
As the voting day begins, political analysts and pollsters cannot predict with certainty which of the two major parties will win the White House for the next four years. In their last day of campaigning, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush focused their attention on a handful of key battleground states where the closest election in decades will likely be decided.
Bush held a slight edge in most national surveys going into Election Day on Tuesday, with his Democratic rival Gore trailing by less than five points. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan remained in single digits, with Nader hoping to win the 5 percent of the popular vote needed to qualify his Party for federal funding in 2004.
In the Electoral College, which will actually choose the president, the outcome was in doubt in enough large states to leave both Bush and Gore’s prospects uncertain. Both major parties were engaged in last minute intense get-out-the-vote campaigns.
On Monday, the candidates spent their time repeating the themes they stressed throughout the past year and a half of campaigning. Gore has cast the election as a referendum on the prosperity of the past few years, warning that Bush's plans for a $1 trillion-plus tax cut would undercut the foundations of the US economic boom. Gore also promises to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, the federal medical insurance program for seniors. He has vowed to diminish the roles of a variety of special interests in Washington.
Gore, who has been criticized throughout the campaign for being stiff, urged voters on Monday to remember that the presidency is not a "popularity contest." Gore and President Clinton credit their administration's eight-year federal budgeting strategy for turning the recession of the early 1990s into an atmosphere that has brought a balanced budget agreement, some 22 million news jobs, and low rates of unemployment in most regions of the country.
Bush argues that though the economy has shown improvement since his father left office, the reasons have little to nothing at all to do with Gore or Clinton. But with voters unlikely to want broad economic reforms, Bush has chosen instead to focus on other sensitive areas for overhaul. Those include the public education system; the armed forces; the 35-year-old Medicare health insurance program; and Social Security.
Bush also included a call to restore honor to the White House in nearly every campaign appearance, in clear reference to Clinton's affair with a former White House intern, which led to his 1998 impeachment and acquittal by the Senate the following year.
The Gore campaign estimated that it will have put about 50,000 volunteers into the field, sent 50 million pieces of direct mail, made 40 million phone calls and sent 30 million pieces of e-mail by the time polls close Tuesday. In contrast, the Bush campaign sent as many as 243,000 volunteers onto the streets in 28 battleground states, and involved making up to 70 million phone calls and sending out 110 million pieces of mail.
Analysts consider this election to be the most expensive race in US history. The 18-month campaign has cost an estimated $3 billion for all federal offices, which is considerably larger than the $2.2 billion spent in 1996. Bush alone spent nearly $100 million to win the Republican primaries; Gore, about $48 million during the primary season.
Vast segments of the voting public are relatively content with their personal financial good fortunes, brought about by several years worth of a high-flying stock market propelled for the most part by the rapidly growing information technology sector. That widespread contentment has translated into complete unpredictability when pollsters and political observers have tried to translate voter sentiment into potential presidential voting patterns.
Gore adopted a populist message that urges those who are comfortable with their current financial situations to keep the prosperity rolling by voting him into the presidency. But Gore has said he isn't satisfied with the work the administration has done. Large segments of the population have been left behind by the economic boom, he says, and they must be given an opportunity to catch up with everyone else.
As one of the most closely fought presidential races in the last quarter-century, the battles for control of the Senate and the House of Representatives appear to be extremely close -- the Republicans currently hold the majority in both chambers.
A comfortable Republican majority in the House of Representatives was reduced significantly two years ago, and Democrats are now excited at the prospect of taking the chamber back. With the 106th Congress still in session, the Democrats now need only six seats to wrest the House from the Republicans. Of 435 seats in the House, the Republicans hold 222 to the Democrats' 209.
Observers believe whoever takes the House this year will likely hold one of the slimmest majorities in congressional history, making life for either Gore or Bush difficult at best. Both hope to push social agendas based on their deep-seated views of how the federal budget surplus should be spent.
In the Senate, there is some fear that the Democrats could pick up enough seats to significantly diminish the power of a Senate Republican majority. There may even be an outside possibility that the Democrats could take the chamber. Of the Senate's 100 seats, two for each state, 34 are up for consideration this year. As the 106th session comes to a close, the Republicans hold 54 of those seats, the Democrats 46. That means the Democrats would have to pick up five seats for a slim 51-seat majority.
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