ASHINGTON - Six weeks before the election, a confluence of factors is giving Democratic officials renewed hope that they will not only win the White House but that they will also capture a more elusive prize: control of the US House.
While all sides agree that the battle for the House will be one of the closest in decades, Democratic candidates have been boosted by factors ranging from Al Gore's
surge to prescription drugs' emergence as a campaign issue.
At the same time, Democrats are capitalizing on advantages they had all along: an aggressive fund-raising machine, a flourishing national economy, and the fact that they need a net gain of six seats to take control in the House.
Republicans insist that they will maintain control of Congress and that, as in the presidential race, the House elections favor their candidates more than might be apparent. A Virginia representative, Tom Davis, head of the committee in charge of electing Republicans, says a Democratic sweep is ''not nearly as likely as it might have been a year or six months ago.''
But few deny that for the first time since 1994, the Democrats appear genuinely capable of winning.
''I'm not sure anyone can say the House is going to go one way or the other,'' said a prominent Republican pollster, Linda DiVall. ''It's a very competitive situation. ... I think it's something we probably won't know until election night.''
''It's very tight,'' said Mark C. Allen, another Republican pollster. ''Everything is in this very sort of equal balance.''
At the moment, however, an analysis of House seats up for grabs, as scrutinized daily by strategists on both sides, reflects a picture that is tilted somewhat in favor of the Democrats.
Most strategists agree that incumbents' seats are largely safe. They expect perhaps as few as four congressmen to be defeated.
That leaves both parties vying for 35 open seats. While 25 Republicans are vacating office, either to retire or run for higher office, only 10 Democrats are doing so. On its face, this is a clear advantage for the Democrats.
That accounting is somewhat deceptive. At most, party affiliations will change in 15 of those open seats.
But according to numerous political analysts, even a slight numerical advantage for the Democrats is critical, given how narrow the margin is.
''The race for the House could literally come down to one seat,'' said Amy Walter, a political editor at the Cook Report. ''We've never seen anything like that in recent memory.''
Yet if the numbers game initially inspired Democrats to try to recapture the House, a combination of other forces, including a $60 million fund-raising spree, has heightened their optimism. Unlike the presidential campaign, in which the effectiveness of issues and advertising can be gauged at a national level, each House race must be assessed on its own terms.
And in select places, Democrats see glimmers of hope.
Representative Don Sherwood, for example, is a Republican incumbent who, after a tough election in 1998, worked to build support in his northeastern Pennsylvania district. But the district, where one-fifth of the residents are older than 65, also fits into a central Democratic strategy: Emphasizing the rising cost of prescription drugs for seniors, and the Republican proposals to partially privatize Social Security.
In recent months, the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO have launched an advertising blitz in the 10th District of Pennsylvania focusing on those two issues, all with the intent of portraying the Republican incumbent as insensitive to seniors' needs.
And Sherwood, now in a rematch with his 1998 rival, Patrick Casey, has felt the heat. Rather than ride the coattails of his party's presidential nominee, coattails that many Republicans had hoped might be much longer than they are today, Sherwood has been forced to distance himself from the Medicare prescription drug plan proposed by George W. Bush.
Introducing Bush at a rally this month, Sherwood gave faint praise to the GOP prescription drug plan, then said he expected to ''have to tweak it a little bit.''
''There are a lot of seniors in that district, and prescription drugs, combined with the traditional Democratic issue of health care, is going to have an impact,'' said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a nonpartisan newsletter.
Such may also be the case in the Florida seat held by Representative Clay Shaw, a 20-year House veteran and a powerful subcommittee chairman. Shaw, a respected member with name recognition, was once considered a greater long-shot target for Democrats than most. But he is also facing another weapon in the Democratic arsenal: vast campaign funds.
His opponent in the 22d District race, Elaine Bloom, has received about $1.6 million from the national Democratic Party. That boost, Shaw said in an interview with the Palm Beach Post, ''turned this campaign into an invasion.''
Shaw is now, by one estimate, waging a campaign that could cost up to $4 million in the end.
Some Republican supporters have voiced fear that Shaw will suffer from the presence of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman on the Democratic presidential ticket, given the large Jewish population in the south Florida district.
Rothenberg, who compiles a quarterly ratings sheet on the House races, recently moved Shaw into a more endangered slot, calling his reelection a ''question mark.''
By contrast, the rating suggests, Democrats are solidly defending the seats they hold. One example is Representative Jay Inslee, a freshman incumbent from Washington state, who had been expected to be an easy target for Republicans.
Inslee's district, just outside Seattle, has been inclined to favor moderate Republicans. But the Democrat is faring far better than expected; in an open primary, Inslee beat his opponent with 57 percent of the vote.
That partly results from a series of issue ads in a year when ''the issues work for him,'' said a media consultant Bill Carrick. It also reflects what Walter called the ''generally pro-incumbent mood.''
''There is no throw-out-the-bums mentality,'' Walter said.
Republicans, who have 223 House incumbents on the ballot compared with 210 for the Democrats, hope the mantle of incumbency will work in their favor as well - especially if Gore continues to hold his own in the national polls.
''The really surprising thing is that as Bush has tumbled a bit,'' House Republicans have not lost ground, said Representative Davis of Virginia.
''The reason is, people voting for Gore want to keep things the way they are. If you reelect the president, you also reelect the Congress.''
But the presidential race could have a more subtle effect.
In northwestern Kentucky, for example, where Representative Anne Northrup, a Republican, is locked in one of the more heated House battles, Democrats expect the 3d District's preference for President Clinton in 1992 and 1996 to draw Democrats to the polls again this year.
That, in turn, they say, may boost the chances of their challenger, Eleanor Jordan, an African-American Democrat - even if Gore loses.
''It's not a very good district for Republicans at this point,'' said Rothenberg, who moved Northrup into a more endangered category this month.
Republicans say that almost all of the Democratic tactics - from spending huge sums, to hammering the health care issue, to hoping Gore will increase voter turnout - could falter at any moment, especially with so much time before Election Day.
They also point to one recent glaring misstep: The primary loss of Mike Forbes, the Long Island representative who switched to the Democratic Party, and who was subsequently defeated.
And analysts, wary of poll numbers in such a tight race, caution against predictions.
Regardless of who wins the House, it will be by a tiny margin, possibly even smaller than the Republicans lead of 222 to 211 seats, several said. (There are also two independents.)
''This is like threading a needle,'' Walter said.
''It's like in the Olympics, the luge: Where all they do is move a pinky, and the entire sled flips into the air. That's what this is like for the Democrats. If they have the right form and everything falls into place, they could do it. But it's still very tight and very tough.''
