With Democrats looking unlikely to pick up the 25 seats necessary to regain control of the House, there hasn�t been all that much news coverage of the individual races. But as someone who views the battle for the House as an early-warning system of the national political environment, this year�s contests will be providing lots of clues to the mood of the electorate, particularly in the critical swing states.
Indeed, simply by looking at five battleground-state House races, voters will get more of a sense of how the presidential race is shaping up than by looking at in-state polls or focus groups. Call them the Dow Jones 500 of the political world�they won�t precisely track the election results, but should come pretty close. And with voting patterns in congressional campaigns increasingly aligning with voters� opinions of the president, it�s a safe bet that the outcomes of these bellwethers will foreshadow the presidential election.
Here are the five blue-chip House races worth paying close attention to until Election Day:
1. Colorado 06 � Rep. Mike Coffman (R) versus Joe Miklosi (D)
A former secretary of state with a military background, Rep. Mike Coffman looked like a rising Republican star when he came to Washington, not to mention a likely future candidate for the Senate or governor. But in the redistricting process, Coffman found his solidly Republican district redrawn into a suburban Denver battleground�and then proceeded to act as if his political fortunes hadn�t changed one bit.
One of the first bills he introduced in Congress ended requirements for ballots to be printed in languages other than English, a reasonable proposal for a conservative legislator, but one out of sync with a district that�s 16 percent Hispanic�more than double the percentage of his old district. Adding insult to injury, he drew national scrutiny when he told a town-hall meeting in May that he believes �in his heart