Washington: The US midterm election campaign entered its final full week with both Republicans and Democrats claiming they will hold control of Congress when the votes are counted.

“Every week things get better and better,” a buoyant Senator Charles Schumer told Fox News Sunday after national polls showed wide support for his Democrats.

But top Republican legislator John Boehner, the House majority leader, predicted success for his party, which controls both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“All these big national polls that show the trends don’t mean anything, because what we have are 435 individual races all around the country, local candidates running on local issues,” Boehner told ABC television Sunday.

“And so what we’re going to do is continue to work hard right up until election day and mobilize every vote that we can,” said Boehner.

‘Huge wins’ for Democrats

Pollster John Zogby had predicted huge wins for the Democrats, but noted that with more than a week before the polls, 20 percent of voters were still undecided.

“If the election were held today, the Democrats would pick up 25 to 30 seats in the House of Representatives and at least 4 seats in the US Senate,” opined pollster John Zogby.

The Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats to regain control of the House they lost to the Republicans in 1994, and 6 seats to retake the Senate, out of a total of 435 House seats up for grabs and 33 in the Senate.

Also being contested in the polls are 36 governorships and scores of local elective offices.

Schumer said the vote was going to turn on the troubled presidency of George W. Bush.

Referendum on Bush

“This election more and more is becoming a referendum on George Bush, his failed policies both overseas and here at home, and the rubberstamp Congress,” he said.

Newsweek magazine’s poll released Saturday indicated that campaign themes once considered strong points for Republicans, like national security and counterterrorism, may be failing them.

By a margin of 45 percent to 33 percent, Americans now trust Democrats rather than Republicans to handle the bloody conflict in Iraq, the Newsweek poll found.

And on their ability to conduct the war on terror, Republicans and Democrats were in an effective statistical tie, 40 percent versus 39 percent.

Prominent conservative ideo­logue and former legislator Dick Armey bitterly wrote in The Washington Post Sunday that Republicans “stand on the precipice of an electoral rout” because they “became ena­mored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy.”

‘Democratic wave’ Stuart Rothenberg, head of an independent political research firm, predicted “a Democratic wave” on November 7 based on the poll numbers.

With his party in trouble, Bush hit the campaign trail himself on Saturday, trying to score political points with the federal tax cuts he has implemented.

“Next time you’re having dinner at home, look around the table and multiply the number of children you have by $500,” Bush said at a rally in Sellers­burg, Indiana.

“That’s how much more you will be sending to Washington in taxes if Democrats take control of the Congress.”

But with the US struggling in Iraq, Bush’s job approval rating stood at a paltry 37 percent, according to most polls, a fact that was likely to shorten his coattails.