Democrats braced for election mauling

US President Barack Obama’s Democrats are braced for an elections rout today, as a wave of 11th-hour polls showed Republicans on course for big gains in Congress amid deep voter anger at the sour economy.

Obama, fearing a ballot-box repudiation just two years into his campaign for change, planned a wave of radio interviews and telephone calls to Democratic volunteers key to boosting party turnout today, the White House said.

Feeding Democratic worries, the respected Gallup polling organisation’s final pre-vote survey of likely voters nationwide found Republicans held the most commanding mid-term lead either US party has held in a generation.

Republicans led Democrats by a 55%-40% margin, the widest such gap since the 1974 contest, when Democrats romped to victory amid public outrage at the Watergate scandal.

The poll lent weight to analyst predictions that Republicans would retake the House of Representatives and slice deep into the Democratic Senate majority, though experts forecast the upper chamber would not change hands.

The election for 37 Senate slots, 37 governorships and all 435 House seats, came as the euphoric hope Obama stirred in the 2008 White House race seemed an age away and with America’s trademark brash optimism drained by a narrative of national decline.

Republicans, electrified by the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, vowed to reverse Obama’s sweeping health care reforms and promise a budget crunch and tax cuts they said would reduce the deficit, and reduce unemployment.

“We just can’t afford another two years like the past two,” Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, who would all but certainly replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, said in an op-ed in USA Today.

In a sign of Democratic angst, party chairman Tim Kaine told ABC television that Obama would set about making “some adjustments and corrections” over the next few weeks in the face of a re-energised Republican opposition.

Polls and forecasters predicted Republicans will pick up anywhere between 45 and 70 seats in the House, more than the 39 they need to gain a majority, in a reversal of the huge losses they suffered in 2006 and 2008.

Control of the House would allow Republicans to thwart Obama’s ambitious plans to tackle global warming and immigration reform, and to control committees that could launch damaging probes into the administration.

In close Senate races, Democrats worked to hold back the Republican tide in California, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Obama’s old senate seat in Illinois. The list of endangered Senate Democrats included Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was locked in a too-close-to-call battle with Republican and “Tea Party” favourite Sharron Angle in Nevada, home to the country’s highest unemployment and home foreclosure rates.

Also on the ballot today are the governorships of 37 states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas. Republicans seem poised to gain about a half-dozen governor’s seats.

Some 160 ballot questions will be decided in 37 states.

One of the most well-known ballot measures is the California initiative to legalise recreational use of marijuana.