PRESIDENT Clinton and his party received an early election year fillip yesterday as the Democrats won a vacant Senate seat in Oregon, breaking a three decade Republican monopoly in the state and rekindling hopes of recapturing least partial control of Congress in November.
A narrow victory by Mr Ron Wyden, a liberal Congressman, came in the first US election conducted entirely by post. It was held to find a successor to Mr Bob Packwood, who resigned in disgrace from the Senate last summer on charges of sexual harassment.
Mr Wyden defeated his Republican opponent, the conservative businessman, Mr Gordon Smith, by a margin of 17,000 votes, or 1 per cent of the total ballot.
Despite the closeness of the White House and Democratic strategists were exultant yesterday, hailing it as further proof of the unpopularity of the Republican controlled Congress and another sign that Mr Clinton will win a second term.
The result clips the Republican majority in the Senate to 53-47. More heartening still for Democrats, Mr Wyden pitched his campaign on the very issues Mr Clinton will highlight this autumn - the protection of education, the environment and free medical services for the poor and elderly and a "safe, legal and rare" approach to abortion.
Oregon, moreover, continues the trend visible at the off year elections of November 1995, when the heavily favoured Republicans failed to seize control of state legislatures in Virginia and Maine and the governorship of Kentucky. The Wyden win is another pointer that the American public feels that Mr Newt Gingrich's conservative cohorts have gone too far.
The poll also seems to vindicate postal voting, permitted in the three week period before election day. Despite predictions that public interest would plummet, turnout in fact topped 60 per cent, compared with 41 per cent in the 1994 Congressional elections, and exceptionally high for a by election. Oregon saved $1 million on the exercise.
Meanwhile a record 14 senators have announced they will not seek re election, nine of them Democrats and five Republicans.