Congressional Elections Have Little to Do with National Politics.

[MineralMan]

10. Our congressmembers certainly have national issues

to deal with, and those do affect their election. My only point here is that those elections are all local and voting is limited to that particular congressional district.

In any local election, there is the potential for a strong candidate of the party that is not the usual one in power to win, based on local name identification and other things. And a strong candidate with broad acceptance within the district is what is needed to switch a district's normal party voting. A strong candidate helps bring out the voters who otherwise wouldn't bother.

The time, however, for selecting candidates to run in districts is rapidly running out, so candidates need to be in place already, pretty much. There's still time to file in many jurisdictions, though.