By Bob Benenson, CQ Staff

It has always been hard to measure how many American voters give much consideration to whether they prefer a federal government run completely by one party or a government in which a president of one party serves as a check on a Congress run by the other.

But unless something changes drastically in this year’s campaigns for control of both chambers of Congress, the public will face a clear choice on the question of “united” versus “divided” government — because continued Democratic majorities in both the Senate and House appear nearly certain when the 111th Congress is elected this fall and convenes next January.

With the necessary caveat that much can change over the roughly seven months left before Election Day, it appears that the public will face a key decision on Nov. 6: whether to elect the Democratic nominee, be it Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and give that party a chance to prove it can break the policy gridlock that has infused national politics in recent years, or to elect Republican Sen. John McCain as a check on the Democrats’ agenda.

This presumption is based on CQ Politics’ ratings of this year’s Senate races and House contests.

Last week’s Jigsaw Politics column about our Senate ratings discussed how the Democrats, though they currently have a razor-thin operational majority of 51 seats, appear more likely than not to expand their majority — and how the idea of the nine-seat gain the party would need for a “filibuster-proof” three-fifths majority, although a considerable longshot, can’t be completely dismissed as crazy talk.

This week’s column looks at the outlook for this year’s House contests and again finds the prospects as bright for the Democrats as they are gloomy for the Republicans. And let us quickly allay any thoughts that there’s any “liberal media bias” involved here. Not only does CQ Politics adhere to the strict nonpartisanship that has governed all of Congressional Quarterly’s journalism, but our success as a business enterprise depends on drawing readers of all partisan persuasions. We love our Republican readers, and don’t hesitate to provide them with good news when it occurs.

Unfortunately for the GOP faithful, good news has been hard to find lately. The political atmosphere is still challenging for the GOP as it was in the 2006 campaign that cost the party its congressional majorities. The party has suffered untimely incumbent retirements, and that has been exacerbated by Republican candidate recruiting struggles and Democratic successes. Democrats have a big advantage over the Republicans in fundraising for their national House campaign committees. And just plain bad luck has pushed several competitive races for Republican-held seats in the direction of possible Democratic takeovers, and loosened the Republicans’ grip on some seats that had looked firmly in their grasp.

Over the past couple of weeks, CQ Politics changed its ratings on several House races and reported news developments in other races for which ratings had been changed earlier. All but one of these changes reflected improved Democratic chances.

The first of these stories summed up how dramatically the Republicans’ fortunes have declined in four short years since 2004, when a small net gain of seats extended the GOP’s control of the House to 12 consecutive years and ensured that Illinois Rep. J. Dennis Hastert would spend a fourth two-year term as Speaker, the longest tenure ever for a Republican in that lofty position.

The Democrats’ 2006 takeover victories forced Hastert to quit the GOP leadership and prompted him to resign his seat last November, and on March 8, Democrat Bill Foster scored a stunning coup for his party by capturing the seat in Illinois’ 14th District that Hastert had held for more than 20 years. Although the district leans Republican, Foster’s status as the new incumbent — and the fact that he faces a November rematch with the Republican he defeated, businessman Jim Oberweis — spurred CQ Politics to change its rating on the general election race to Leans Democratic from No Clear Favorite.

Near the top of the Republican incumbents facing serious Democratic takeover bids is Alaska at-large Rep. Don Young , who after mainly dominating races for the state’s sole House seat over more than three decades has run into a storm of ethics allegations as he prepares for this year’s campaign. Three prominent Democrats got off to early starts in their bids for the nomination to challenge Young, whose problems deepened recently with the emergence of serious competition in his Aug. 26 Republican primary. CQ changed its rating on the race to No Clear Favorite from Leans Republican.

The most recent ratings-related stories were about the races for two upstate New York seats left open by Republican incumbents that highlight problems faced by the GOP in candidate recruiting. In the contest for the 26th District seat of retiring five-term Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds , the Republicans’ most sought-after recruit, state Sen. George D. Maziarz, decided not to run, as did the party’s top backup choice, state Rep. Jim Hayes. This has left the GOP to scramble to find another strong candidate for a race for which CQ Politics recently changed its rating to the competitive Leans Republican category from Republican Favored, even though the district typically has a Republican lean.

The GOP faces unexpected challenges in recruiting a candidate in New York’s nearby 25th District, as the party’s consensus candidate to succeed retiring 10-term Rep. James T. Walsh — Peter Cappuccilli, the former director of the New York State Fair — suddenly dropped out of the race this week because of health concerns. Republicans now must resume their candidate search in a swing district that narrowly favored Democrat John Kerry over President Bush in 2004 and where their choice would face former congressional aide Dan Maffei, who in 2006 gave Walsh the most serious challenge of his House career. Walsh’s January announcement that he would not seek re-election prompted CQ Politics to change its rating on the race to No Clear Favorite from Leans Republican.

An even bigger Republican candidate snafu caused CQ Politics to shift its rating on the race in Illinois’ competitive 11th District, left open by retiring seven-term Republican Rep. Jerry Weller , to Democrat Favored from No Clear Favorite. While the Democrats are touting the strength of state Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson as their nominee, the Republicans are searching for a candidate to replace Tim Baldermann, the mayor of the Chicago suburb of New Lenox and police chief of nearby Chicago Ridge, who won the Feb. 5 GOP primary but quit the race two weeks later citing his responsibilities in his local office.

The district has a typical though not overwhelming Republican lean and that party may again make this race more competitive if they recruit a strong new candidate. This week, Martin “Marty” Ozinga, owner of a local cement company, emerged as the front-runner to fill the vacated ballot slot.

Republican strategists have just about thrown in the towel on Texas’ 17th District, even though it includes Bush’s ranch in Crawford and gave the president 69 percent of its votes in 2004. Nine-term incumbent Chet Edwards , who has crafted a profile as a conservative Democrat and an advocate for military veterans, did such a good job fending off concerted Republican efforts to defeat him that he has drawn a little-known and underfunded Republican challenger for this year’s race. CQ now rates the contest as Safe Democratic.

On the other side of the equation, strong Democratic recruiting has put in play seats that otherwise would be out of reach, including those in Missouri’s 6th District, where former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes is challenging four-term Republican Rep. Sam Graves ; Alabama’s 2nd District, where Bobby Bright, the conservative Democratic mayor of Montgomery, is seeking the seat left open by retiring eight-term Republican Terry Everett ; and Louisiana’s 4th District, where longtime prosecutor Paul Carmouche recently emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for the seat left open by retiring 10-term Republican Jim McCrery . All of these races shifted from Safe Republican to the much more competitive Lean Republican category.

One recent ray of hope for Republicans came with the unexpected early March decision by conservative nine-term Democratic Rep. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer to retire from his seat in Alabama’s Republican-leaning 5th District, after which CQ Politics changed its rating on the race to No Clear Favorite from Safe Democratic. Yet even this rare opportunity is no sure shot for a Republican pickup. While Democrats have recruited a credible candidate in state Sen. Parker Griffith, the Republicans are still waiting to see who will meet the fast-approaching April 4 candidate filing deadline.

As many of these races indicate, the Republican Party’s ability to seriously make a dent in the 30-seat loss they suffered in 2006, or even to maintain the ground they currently hold, is compromised by a big disparity between them and the Democrats in their relative number of open seats, which tend to be more difficult to defend than those in which incumbents are running. The Republicans currently are defending 25 seats of members who voluntarily left them open to retire or pursue other offices, to just six for the Democrats.

And on top of all this, the most recent money reports showed that the financially strapped Republican minority has little cash on hand to use as “venture capital” to promote its candidates’ takeover bids in Democratic-held districts. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House campaign unit, had just $5.1 million cash on hand as of the end of February, compared to $38 million reported by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This hardly means that the Republicans will get shut out again in this year’s national House campaign as they did in 2006, when the Democrats pulled the rare feat of taking over 30 Republican seats while losing none of their own. But those CQ ratings show the Republicans running highly-to-moderately competitive bids for 36 Democratic seats — and Democrats staging serious challenges for 49 Republican seats. And that’s not an enviable position for a Republican Party that starts out the campaign in a hole.