It’s been the conventional wisdom all year that November’s election would be bad news for Republicans. As we approach the actual time for voters to decide, however, the Republican presidential ticket is edging above the Democratic one in the polls and now, according to Gallup, the battle for congress suddenly looks competitive.

A potential shift in fortunes for the Republicans in Congress is seen in the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, with the Democrats now leading the Republicans by just 3 percentage points, 48% to 45%, in voters’ “generic ballot” preferences for Congress. This is down from consistent double-digit Democratic leads seen on this measure over the past year.

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If these numbers are sustained through Election Day — a big if — Republicans could be expected to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

When it comes to the approval rating for congress — and no less the approval rating for President Bush — one factor that I believe is pivotal for many Americans is the price of a gallon of gasoline. President Bush, contrary to what the left would like to believe, is not the most hated president in history. Most Americans, I truly think, respect him and view him with a good degree of affection. However, no president is going to get a high job approval rating when people pull up to the pump and see relentlessly rising gasoline prices. (The price is no longer relentlessly rising, of-course, but it is still much, much higher than it was a few years ago, and people have not gotten used to it.) Put gas prices back where they were before this pattern of increase began, and I’m convinced that President Bush would have a reasonable approval rating of something over 50 percent. The war in Iraq is on a path of success. The economy has problems, to be sure (many of which are exacerbated by high fuel prices) but contrary to the drumbeat of expectations in the media, it is not in recession and is far from being in free-fall. The economy so far has been weathering some pretty bad circumstances pretty well. If oil prices continue declining, it seems to me that things are likely to get better.

The gas price factor also affects the Democratic-controlled congress — which of-course has an even lower approval rating than Bush. And there is this added twist, which goes a long way towards explaining these latest Gallup results: the Democrats are known by the electorate to be on the side of preventing additional oil exploration and drilling in the United States. They are also known to oppose increased use of nuclear energy. Bluntly, they are against the only practical solutions that currently exist to the high energy prices that are putting sour faces on ordinary Americans every day. This issue has steadily gained traction and, unless something happens to change it, the results at the ballot box this November will be very far from what Democrats anticipated just a very little while ago.

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