Watching for a Wave

Strategists from both parties think that the Democrats will make big gains in the House and the Senate. Mike Madden starts with a historical comparison before listing key House seats and Senate races to watch for on election night.

That year, Franklin Roosevelt swept into office, and along with him came 97 new Democratic House members and 12 new Democratic senators. What's remarkable about that, besides the staggering numbers -- a pickup of nearly 25 percent of the House in one fell swoop -- is that two years prior, Democrats had gained 52 House seats and eight Senate seats, as an unpopular Republican president dragged down GOP incumbents during tough economic times. (It sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?)

Those two cycles in the Depression era were the last time the country saw two Democratic "wave" elections in a row in Congress. More typically, after a midterm election like the one in 1930 -- or in 2006 -- a party gives back a bunch of the seats in the next presidential election, especially in the House; taking 30 new seats, as the Democrats did two years ago, means defending brand-new incumbents in districts that may lean Republican by nature.