A historic shift in the making this election?

„Voters seem to think Congress is like a weedy lot - that anything done to it will improve it - so they seem poised to produce something not seen since 1981-82. Then, for the first time since 1952, a majority of senators were in their first terms. This was the result of three consecutive churning elections - 1976, 1978 and 1980.

There certainly will be new senators from 14 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia. Furthermore, Alaska's incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, whom the American Conservative Union ranks as the fourth-most liberal Senate Republican and who already has been rejected by Republicans in the primary, may lose her sore-loser write-in candidacy. Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is behind by 20 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is behind by an average of 6.7 points. And Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet of Colorado, appointed to the seat vacated when Ken Salazar became secretary of the interior, trails by a RealClearPolitics average of three points.

So there could be at least 18 freshmen senators in January. And several other incumbents - all Democrats - could lose. Since popular election of senators became mandatory in 1913, the largest crop of freshmen, 20, resulted from the 1978 upheaval that presaged the 18 new senators produced by the 1980 election. If senators in their first terms are a majority of the body in 2011, there might be an anomalous condition that would have perplexed and perhaps vexed the Founding Fathers: The average seniority of House members might be higher than the average seniority of senators.”