Voters evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans

The pundits cannot make up their minds whether this mid-term election is really a referendum on President Clinton or whether the voters have other things on their minds such as the economy, social security and the education of their children.

Two months ago the Republicans were confident of substantial gains as the voters used the elections to show their disgust at President Clinton's behaviour with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent finger-wagging denials. And Democrats feared this would be the case.

Now things are looking different. Polls show that most Americans will not use their vote to express their views about the Lewinsky scandal and that they appear evenly divided in their voting intentions between Democrats and Republicans.

This is disturbing for the Republicans. In almost every midterm election - the ones between presidential elections - the president's party loses seats to its opponents, sometimes heavily, as happened to the Democrats in 1994 when there was a Republican landslide.

So this year there should have been further Democratic losses even if there had not been a Lewinsky factor. Last August, when the president admitted that he had lied for eight months about his affair, there was much talk of a Republican landslide in the November election.

It now seems that this was a serious miscalculation by the Republicans - and many pundits. Today, President Clinton's approval rating is at an amazing 68 per cent and most Americans have made it clear that they do not favour his impeachment.

The outgoing House of Representatives voted for an impeachment inquiry, but it will be the new House elected next Tuesday which will be called on to vote whether to impeach the President or not. At present the Republicans have a 22-seat majority among the 435 members of the House so the Democrats could win back control by gaining a dozen or more seats.

But Republicans still hope they can win up to 20 seats in spite of the polls. They have much more money to spend than the Democrats in a TV advertising blitz in the last week and they also hope that the Lewinsky factor will influence the electorate.

This week, the Republicans for the first time in the campaign ran TV ads reminding voters about the President's lying in an effort to energise their supporters. Democrats claimed that the ads show Republican panic as the electorate dismisses the Lewinsky affair as irrelevant to their everyday lives.

President Clinton refuses to get excited. Asked if he thought the ads were unfair and how he felt about the Republicans trying to make the election into a referendum about himself, he preached atonement.

"I hope the American people have seen in me over these last few weeks a real commitment to doing what I told them I would do from the beginning - trying to atone to them for what happened and to try to redouble my efforts to be a good president." Then he launched into a list of issues that people are more concerned about, such as his efforts to protect social security, improve education and health care and take on the tobacco giants.

Another imponderable is the turn-out. For a mid-term election it could be as low as 35 per cent. The lower it goes, the more seats the Republicans will win as it is Democrats who tend to stay at home. The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans will win up to 10 seats and thus increase their narrow majority in the House.

This would be bad news for the president. It would mean the Republicans could outvote the Democrats and impeach him on some of the allegations listed in the Starr report, such as lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

If the House votes for impeachment, it would then be up to the Senate to try President Clinton and vote whether to convict him or not. But a conviction would require a two-thirds majority of the 100 senators.

At present the Republicans outnumber the Democrats in the Senate by 55 to 45. In Tuesday's election 34 Senate seats are in contention and Republicans are expected to make a small net gain.

This would leave them short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to convict and dismiss President Clinton if the House impeaches him. But then some Democrats could cross party lines to vote with Republicans.

However, barring some fresh revelations, even Republicans are backing off the appalling vista of the Senate being tied up for months with the trial of a popular president essentially for sexual conduct that most Americans see as a private matter and certainly not warranting his removal from office.

Minimal Republican gains next Tuesday will be interpreted as a signal from the electorate that the impeachment business has gone far enough. If the Republicans lose seats, this will be an even stronger message that the country has had its fill of presidential sex and lies.

So if the election is not really a referendum about President Clinton's fate, what is it about? The pollsters are calling it an election without any burning issues.

In contrast to the last mid-term election when "angry white males" hammered the Democrats over President Clinton's mishandling of the health care issue, gays in the military and foreign policy blunders, this time the country exudes prosperous contentment. Unemployment and inflation are at record low levels, Wall Street has steadied after some wild swings and the President can point to successes in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.

Frustrated Democrats used to call the Ronald Reagan years the "Teflon presidency" as none of the scandals of his term in office seemed to stick. Now the tables are turned and the Republicans are reduced to grudging admiration of the Clinton survival skills.