ALL eyes may be on the White House, but another electoral battle is also in the offing in the US on November 6, with the results likely to determine just how much the next president can accomplish.
In congress, the entire 435-member lower US House of Representatives and one-third of the 100-member Senate will also be chosen by voters.
But with most legislators safe in their seats, only a few races could determine control of the body, where the upper chamber now is controlled by Democrats and the lower House by Republicans.
Some 10 races in the Senate and 26 in the larger House are considered toss-ups by the website Real Clear Politics.
The presidential election pitting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney has dominated news coverage, but neither man can govern in a vacuum and will need the support of legislators on the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue to push through their agenda.
"If we don't win a Democratic senate for President Obama, the Republicans will spend the next four years tearing apart his agenda," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee declares on its website, stressing the importance of the congressional races.
However, observers note that despite overall dissatisfaction with the legislative process, major changes in congress appear unlikely at this stage. On the House side, an extremely unlikely gain by Democrats of 25 seats would be needed - far more than has ever been picked up by either party in a presidential election year, analyst Charlie Cook notes.
If Obama wins a second term that would mean the deadlock that has marked the last several years would likely continue, with showdowns over spending, raising the US debt ceiling and other issues.
"If you like gridlock, you're going to see a lot more of it," said University of Virginia analyst Kyle Konkik, who studies the congress.
He notes such a scenario would make it difficult for Obama to pass any major policy initiatives, such as immigration reform or on climate change. Instead, Kondik notes Obama would have to defend what already has been accomplished, particularly given calls by Republicans to repeal his health care reforms.
Conversely, if Romney is elected president and Democrats keep their control of the Senate, the Republican leader would have a difficult time passing any major laws or repealing "Obamacare" as he has vowed to do.
Kondik predicts the Senate will remain under Democratic control, while the House will stay in Republican hands. He predicts slight gains for Democrats in the House, narrowing the Republican majority, and the Senate to keep roughly its current configuration.
Several months ago, it looked possible that Republicans could regain control of the Senate with the retirement of several longtime Democrats, but a gaffe by Missouri candidate Todd Akin may have changed that.
Akin, a Republican senate candidate, caused an uproar in August with remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy. There were widespread calls from his own party for him to drop out of the race, but he stayed in. Until he made those remarks, he looked likely to defeat incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who had been considered highly endangered. Now she is favoured to win.
Other Senate races of national interest include the contest in Massachusetts where Republican Scott Brown unexpectedly seized the seat once held by Democratic scion Ted Kennedy in a 2010 special election. Now Obama's consumer advocate pick, Elizabeth Warren, is mounting a challenge to take back the seat in the left-leaning state.
Still a narrow Republican majority in the Senate remains possible and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect the party's candidates, proclaims on its website that just four seats are needed for it win control.
Cook noted that a year ago he would have forecast Republicans to control the Senate, but now puts the odds at closer to 40 per cent.
"I think on the day after the election at lunch time, I don't think we will be sure who's going to be in a majority in the senate," he said at the Economic Club of Washington this month. "I would give Democrats a little bit of an edge."
He pointed to 10 races in which the candidates are within 3 percentage points of one another in polls, and suggested they may trend in one direction or the other. "It's like dominos," he noted.
Virginia, a key battleground in the presidential election, is also a major prize in the senate. The retirement of Democrat Jim Webb, who was swept into office in an anti-Republican wave in 2006, has left a hotly contested race between former senator George Allen, a Republican, and Tim Kaine, who led the Republican Party until last year.
A strong showing for Obama or Romney on election day could help fellow members of their parties as voters tend to support candidates across the party ticket.
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