U.S. Senator Barack Obama (Democrat of Illinois) (right) shares a laugh as he campaigns for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. during a rally in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday. - REuters

WASHINGTON (AP):

A half-dozen Republi-can congressmen ushered into office in the 1994 Republican tidal wave that tossed Democrats from power may be swept out in today's elections, casualties of a Democratic surge fuelled by voter anger over the Iraq war.

Yesterday, the eve of the congressional elections, Republicans were hoping their acclaimed get-out-the-vote operation would ensure majority control. But some said privately they had a slim chance of retaining the House after a gruelling campaign centred on turmoil in Iraq, President George W. Bush's sagging approval numbers, political scandals and corruption investigations.

First female speaker

"It all gets down to Republicans turning out the vote," said Congressman Tom Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the House Republicans' election effort.

Democrats need to gain 15 seats to seize control of the House.

Sidelined for 12 years, Democrats appear poised to win the House in a shift that likely would elevate Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California to speaker, the nation's first woman to hold that office, and herald in at least two years of Democratic rule.

"We are playing offence across this country, in every region of this country," boasts Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the head of the House Democrats' campaign committee. "I'd rather be us than them."

At least 50 Republican seats in the 435-seat House are endangered, many with incumbents facing fierce challenges from Democrats who have sought to capitalize on the public's intense disenchantment with one-party rule. All the House seats are up for a vote today.

Among those Republican lawmakers in hard-fought races are several vying for their seventh, two-year terms, first elected in the Republican revolution of 1994.

Back then, the party gained 52 seats to end four decades of Democratic control of the House, with promises of balancing the budget and enacting term limits. Hankering for a change in the status quo, voters that year elected Newt Gingrich's hard-charging followers who proposed the vaunted Contract with America.

"The Republicans came to power in 1994 to change Washington, and Washington changed them," Emanuel said Sunday, while he and Reynolds sparred on NBC's "Meet the Press."