While the US was riveted and divided by OJ, the GOP used the distraction to takeover Congress.

[onenote]

47. And if there was no OJ trial it would have gone to something else. But not the election

If the OJ trial wasn't going on maybe there would have been more World Cup coverage in some locations; but there wouldn't have been more coverage of the 1994 off-year house, senate, and governors' races.

You are imaginging a world that didn't exist in 1994.

At that time, off year elections were viewed as local matters and covered minimally by the national broadcast networks. Even election night coverage was not "wall to wall" but typically involved local affiliates staying with regularly scheduled programming for a good portion of the night and cutting in with results from time to time. Networks didn't assign field reporters to statewide or congressional elections. Fox News didn't exist. CNN only reached 60 percent of the nations' TV households.

The situation began to change AFTER the 1994 elections in part because the results in 1994 were a big deal, in part because the next off-year election, in 1998, was the first post-impeachment election and there was a lot of interest in how the impeachment effort might impact the election, in part because Fox News had launched in 1996 and was beginning to create competitive pressure on the broadcast networks to provide more political coverage.

But you're dreaming if you think the national networks would have spent appreciably more time covering the off-year elections in 1994 than they did but for OJ. As mentioned, turnout in the 1994 off year elections was HIGHER than in any of the three preceding off-year elections and even higher than in the impeachment-tinged 1998 off year elections.

Again, if you have empirical data to support your thesis, I'd love to see it.