Polls Send A Dramatic Message

President Bush kept a wary eye on Pennsylavania and got Election Day 1991's dramatic message even before the polls closed. He's staying home, where the voters are anxious about a sour economy and restless with their government.

For Democrats, Harris Wofford's upset victory in Pennsylvania's Senate race was an encouraging sign in a race that was a laboratory for the campaign style and themes they hope to carry against Bush in 1992.

Wofford campaigned with a message that Richard Thornburgh and the Bush administration had abandoned the middle class and was insensitive to the recession's toll.

"It's clearly the kind of campaign we're looking at against George Bush in the 1992 general election and that's why it's a special sign," Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown said last night.

Is Bush worried? He has to be, given Wofford's surprising strength in Republican neighborhoods of Pennsylvania.

But voters provided cause for alarm for entrenched officeholders in both parties.

Significant turnover in legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia gave evidence of an anti-incumbent mood that could help Democrats against Bush but hurt them at every other level of government. And the day also appeared gave a test to a term-limitation movement anathema to the majority Democrats in Congress.

Republican spokesperson Gary Koops expressed disappointment with Pennsylvania but satisfaction in New Jersey, where voters gave the GOP control of both houses of the legislature. "Pennsylvania is gone, but we're real happy with what we're seeing in the legislative and local races."

Public anxiety over the economy is allowing Democrats their first real hope for upsetting Bush a year from now, and as the Pennsylvania polls were closing the president signaled he was taking the threat seriously. Bush canceled a trip to Asia and Australia later this month to stay here to monitor the economy--and the Democratic Congress.

When the results were in, it was clear Bush's worries were justified.

Wofford started a 44-point underdog to Republican Richard Thornburgh. But he erased the gap with an aggressive campaign against the better-known and better-financed Thornburgh. Wofford promoted himself as a champion of the middle class and health care for all.

Democrats claimed victory even in Wofford's making a race of it, never mind his convincing victory.

"The clear loser was President Bush," was Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's assessment.

Those are the themes Democrats hope will work against Bush in 1992, and as Election Day approached Democrats honed in on Bush's frequent foreign travels, saying the president was jetting off again when Americans needed economic leadership at home.

"Right now that is playing very well with the voters," said Larry Hugick, political director of the Gallop Poll. "With so many people at risk in this economy, or with family members or friends at risk, they're not happy when they see a president continue to travel abroad and focus on foreign affairs."