United States voters go to the polls in midterm elections on November 7th. They are likely to reverse the Republican control of both houses of Congress established in 2002 and preserved in 2004.
President Bush has used this dual majority to reinforce executive control enormously during the Iraq war. Growing voter disenchantment with that war, combined with the cover-up of a sexual scandal involving the Republican congressman Mark Foley, could give Democrats the victory, according to consistent poll findings. Mr Bush has failed to give his candidates the boost they hoped for and many of them are now distancing themselves from him.
Although Americans remain deeply divided between the two parties these elections could herald a wider realignment of the electoral coalition that has divided the country between red and blue states - if the Democrats can convert their current favourable position into more permanent gains. There are signs that the coalition forged by Mr Bush between white working class males, evangelical Protestants, Southerners and business interests is under strain as a result of the war and economic inequalities.
Sceptics point out that the Democratic leadership has proved all too capable of missing such opportunities in the past. They remain concentrated in the east and west coasts of the US, missing out on the demographic shifts towards the outer suburbs and the southwest which sustained the shift to the Republicans. They seem unable to propose alternative policies taking full account of changing domestic and international circumstances. And up to now they have failed to match the Republicans' extraordinary success under Mr Bush of micromanaging their committed voters and energising them with a heady mixture of security fears, tax cuts for the rich, economic growth and cultural resentment of liberal elites.
Midterm elections normally have a low turnout, averaging 40 per cent. Variable intensity of commitment makes a difference in such campaigns, and on this occasion it seems to be more active on the Democrats' side. Barring a similar scandal in their ranks during the final stages of the campaign, and assuming they can maintain their new-found discipline to drive home their message about the bankruptcy of Mr Bush's political agenda, they are likely to regain control of Congress for the first time since 1994.
This would be a welcome result. It would restore a much needed political balance in US politics and reassert congressional scrutiny of Mr Bush's executive power. It would become easier to find a cross-party political formula for scaling down and eventually withdrawing US troops from Iraq.
And it would set the scene for a fascinating campaign in the 2008 presidential elections, when the central issue would be how to respond to Mr Bush's legacy of war, patriotism and uneven prosperity.