As 35,000,000 poor voters go to the polls today they are confronted with a serious dilemma. For if they register discontent with the current domestic policy of the Truman Administration (there have been no great differences on foreign policy since 1943) they run the concurrent risk of rendering impotent the total forces of the government. The lessons of 1918, 1930 and many other mid-term contests are ample to illustrate the overall frustration that results from a division of partisan leadership between Capitol Hill and the White House. The question remains whether the unmistakable swing to the Republicans is as strong as B. Carroll Reece would have it, or as hypothetical as Hannigan would claim.

Area by area, it appears that the outright landslide predicted by the Republicans has been exaggerated to lend a bandwagon effect. The trend is unmistakable, but it is more than doubtful whether the deluge will carry 26 seats in the House and 9 in the Senate to allow for the first right-of-the-aisle Congress since 1930. Certain facts must be dealt with--the South, except for heresy in Kentucky, will still be solid. The southwest, claims of insurgent Democrats withal, will string along with tears in its eyes. And the balance in the east will not be fundamentally altered. Joe Guffey seems to be the major Democratic loss in this area, whereas landslide Republican gains throughout New York, New Jersey and New England are based as much on the fact that people guess that the Democrats are this year's "outs," as on a clear analysis of partisanship. Lehman of New York and McGrath of Rhode Island are favored to retain their hold. The story is much the same in the congressional jousts.

If the G.O.P. is to win a congressional majority it must turn the trick in the middle west. Again, signs seem to indicate that the mid-western Republicans might just do it. They stand to gain a Senatorial seat in the election of Honest John Bricker in Ohio, another in the defeat of former Democratic Governor Townsend in Indians, and can add to the margin by decisions in close West Virginia, Wisconsin and Missouri races. Coupled with at least fair G.O.P. chances in California, Montana, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Wyoming, this edge in the corn country might be the force which would put Massachusetts' Joe Martin the Speaker's Chair, and seat the first oppositionist President of the Senate since the Civil War.

But there are mitigating factors to this swing. With labor still the force it is, and with labor still predominantly of Democratic registration, the main effort of the Republicans must be to disaffect the Jeffersonian and non-union Democrats. The middle and far west are excellent spawning grounds for this dissatisfaction, with unpopularity of the O.P.A. and the current red scare providing the impetus. The loss of Henry Wallace will produce the same result at the other extreme. Yet the question remains whether the key Democrats in this key area will desert in numbers large enough to allow a clean oppositionist sweep. For nothing less will give the Republicans control of the House and Senate and their first clear electoral victory since 1928. Nothing less than this sweep will pit one branch of the government against the other in a standoff 'til '48.