WE ARE NO LONGER an equally divided, 50-50 nation. America is now at least 51-49 Republican and right of center, more likely 52-48, maybe even 53-47. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, created a new political era, and the midterm election on November 5 confirmed it. Sure, a shift of 20,000 or 30,000 votes in a couple of states would have kept the Senate in Democratic hands. But the GOP gains were from top to bottom: an unprecedented Senate takeover plus a bigger House majority, a majority of governorships, the defeat of more incumbent Democratic governors than Republican, and a plurality of state legislatures. The legislative pickup gave Republicans more state legislators nationwide than Democrats for the first time in a half century. And most amazing: All this was achieved against the historic tide of a midterm election, which normally produces sizable losses for the president's party.

It's true that no "issues" dominated the fall campaign. But September 11 had produced two things that did. First, it created the circumstances for a strong, popular leader to emerge and President Bush seized the opportunity. And second, it introduced a factor that affects politics and policy even when it goes unmentioned. That factor: the vulnerability of America to terrorists and a national yearning for security. It is like the Cold War all over again, a wartime situation that is mostly peaceful, but with the threat of terrible violence always at hand. This kind of situation is more helpful to Republicans than Democrats on Election Day.

Democrats have largely ignored the anxiety over security or taken it lightly. The party's national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said the Republican victories were "tactical" and thus not especially significant. Well, they're important enough that he's likely to lose his job because of them. Certainly the gains were a personal triumph for Bush, who, along with risking his sky-high job approval, campaigned more relentlessly for his party's candidates than even President Clinton did in his first midterm in 1994.

But the Republican triumph was not just about George Bush. It had breadth and depth. Capturing the Senate for the president's party in his first midterm election--that has never happened before. In a normal midterm, the president's party loses 30 House seats, but this time Republicans gained 6. The raw vote--the total of all 435 House races--was 53-47 percent Republican, roughly the same as in 1994, when Republicans blew Democrats away in a national sweep. As for state legislative seats, the average loss in an initial midterm is 300, but the GOP added 225 on November 5.

The Democrats' alibi was that their base--liberals, minorities, feminists, and union members--didn't show up in large numbers. In truth, the base turned out in most states. In Minnesota, there was a record turnout, and Democrats still lost the governor's office and a Senate seat. In many areas, there was evidence of a large black turnout that went strongly against Republicans. But what Bush produced was a bigger white vote that was as overwhelmingly pro-GOP in House races as it was in 1994. As a result, non-incumbent Republican candidates for governor broke through in blue, or Al Gore, states (Vermont, Minnesota, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maryland) and red ones (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Alaska, New Hampshire, and South Dakota).
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