Egypt's post-Mubarak poll peaceful, high turnout

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptians voted on Monday in the first election since a popular revolt toppled Hosni Mubarak's one-man rule, showing new-found faith in the ballot box that may sweep long-banned Islamists into parliament even as army generals cling to power.

Voters swarmed to the polls in a generally peaceful atmosphere despite the unrest that marred the election run-up, when 42 people were killed in protests demanding an immediate transition from military to civilian rule.

"We want to make a difference, although we are depressed by what the country has come to," said Maha Amin, a 46-year-old pharmacy lecturer, before she voted in an upscale Cairo suburb.

The ruling army council, which has already extended polling to a second day, kept voting stations open an extra two hours until 9 p.m. "to accommodate the high voter turnout."

The Muslim Brotherhood's party and other Islamists expect to do well in the parliamentary election staggered over the next six weeks, but much remains uncertain in Egypt's complex and unfamiliar voting system of party lists and individuals.

Political transformation in Egypt, traditional leader of the Arab world, will reverberate across the Middle East, where a new generation demanding democratic change has already toppled or challenged the leaders of Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Parliament's lower house will be Egypt's first nationally elected body since Mubarak's fall and those credentials alone may enable it to dilute the military's monopoly of power.

A high turnout throughout the election would give it legitimacy. Despite a host of reported electoral violations and lax supervision exploited by some groups, election monitors reported no systematic Mubarak-style campaign to rig the polls.

"We are very happy to be part of the election," said first-time Cairo voter Wafa Zaklama, 55. "What was the point before?"

In the northern city of Alexandria, 34-year-old engineer Walid Atta rejoiced in the occasion. "This is the first real election in 30 years. Egyptians are making history," he said.

ISLAMISTS SCENT POWER

Oppressed under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties have stood aloof from those challenging army rule in Cairo's Tahrir Square and elsewhere, unwilling to let anything obstruct a vote that may bring them closer to power.

In the Nile Delta city of Damietta, some voters said they would punish the Brotherhood for its perceived opportunism.

Nevertheless, the Brotherhood has formidable advantages that include a disciplined organisation, name recognition among a welter of little-known parties and years of opposing Mubarak.

Brotherhood organisers stood near many voting stations with laptops, offering to guide confused voters, printing out a paper identifying the correct polling booth and showing their Freedom and Justice Party candidate's name and symbol on the back.

"At least they are not giving people fruit inside the polling station," said Mouna Zuffakar, of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, noting widespread breaches of a ban on campaigning near polling stations.

Many voters engaged in lively political debate as they waited patiently in long queues.

"Aren't the army officers the ones who protected us during the revolution?" one woman asked loudly at a polling station in Cairo's Nasr City, referring to the army's role in easing Mubarak from power. "What do those slumdogs in Tahrir want?"

One man replied: "Those in Tahrir are young men and women who are the reason why a 61-year-old man like me voted in a parliamentary election for the first time in his life today."

The world is closely watching the election, keen for stability in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, owns the Suez Canal linking Europe and Asia, and which in Mubarak's time was an ally in countering Islamist militants in the region.

Washington and its European allies have urged the generals to step aside swiftly and make way for civilian rule.

The U.S. ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, congratulated Egyptians "on what appeared to be a very large turnout on this very historic occasion." British ambassador James Watt told Reuters the election was "an important milestone in Egypt's democratic transition" that seemed to have gone smoothly so far.

SEGREGATED VOTING

In Alexandria and elsewhere, men and women voted in separate queues, a reminder of the conservative religious fabric of Egypt's mainly Muslim society, where Coptic Christians comprise 10 percent of a population of more than 80 million.

Myriad parties have emerged since the fall of Mubarak, who fixed elections to ensure his now-defunct National Democratic Party dominated parliament. The NDP's headquarters, torched in the popular revolt, still stands like a tombstone by the Nile.

Individual winners are to be announced on Wednesday, but many contests will go to a run-off vote on December 5. List results will not be declared until after the election ends on January 11.

About 17 million Egyptians are eligible to vote in the first two-day phase of three rounds of polling for the lower house.

Egyptians seemed enthused by the novelty of a vote where the outcome was, for a change, not a foregone conclusion.

"It's easy to predict this will be a higher turnout than any recent election in Egypt," said Les Campbell, of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. "We are seeing clear signs of voter excitement and participation."

The army council has promised civilian rule by July after the parliamentary vote and a presidential poll, now expected in June -- much sooner than previously envisaged.

But one of its members said on Sunday the new parliament could not remove a cabinet appointed by the army.

Kamal Ganzouri, named by the army on Friday to form a new government, said he had met the ruling army council on Monday to discuss setting up a "civilian advisory committee" to work with his new cabinet, which he said could be unveiled by Thursday.

Polling day calm was reflected on financial markets battered by this month's unrest. The cost of insuring Egyptian debt edged lower, with five-year credit default swaps slipping 10 basis points to 539. The Egyptian pound, which last week hit its lowest point since January 2005, held steady.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair, Maha El Dahan and Tom Perry in Cairo, Marwa Awad in Alexandria, Shaimaa Fayed in Damietta, Yusri Mohamed in Port Said and Jonathan Wright in Fayoum; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Peter Millership)

As Election Approaches, Obama Sharpens Rhetoric on China

Barack Obama’s first trip through Asia was about avoiding direct confrontation and modeling his new, un-Bush approach to foreign policy: More committed to international cooperation and deliberation, less aggressive in its expression of American power. Now Obama is again meeting with Asian leaders, as he prepares for a challenging re-election campaign. The stakes have changed, and so has the Obama message.

As it now stands, the American people are clearly worried about China, which has been lapping the United States in the global economic race for years. According to Gallup, Americans see China as the most “vitally important” country to the U.S., a dramatic shift from 2007, when Iran, Iraq and North Korea all rated as more influential on U.S. interests. The Pew Research Center has shown, meanwhile, that much of that new attention to China is less than positive. When asked if U.S. policy should be focused on “getting tougher” with China or “building a stronger relationship,: 40% of the country chooses “getting tougher.” That includes 51% of Republicans or Republican leaners, compared to just 32% of Democrats or Democratic leaners.

To respond to this growing anxiety, which Joe Klein writes about in the current newsstand issue of TIME, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has created a hawkish general-election message on China. Here was Romney in the CBS/National Journal debate on Saturday:

They can’t hack into our computer systems and steal from our government. They can’t steal from corporations. They can’t take patents and designs, intellectual property, and– and– and– and duplicate them– and duplicate them and counterfeit them and sell them around the world. And they also can’t manipulate their currency in such a way as to make their prices well below what they otherwise would be. We have to have China understand that like everybody else on the world stage, they have to play by the rules.

Romney went on to say that China was running over the policies of Barack Obama, and that he would declare China to be a currency manipulator as president. As Klein points out, this approach echoes Bill Clinton’s tough-on-China rhetoric from the 1992 campaign. It also demands a response from Obama, who will no doubt be hammered on China if Romney wins the Republican nomination.

And so, on his current trip to meet with Asian leaders, Obama is laying out a more aggressive posture. He confronted Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to reports from U.S. officials, by saying the Chinese were not changing its currency policy quickly enough. The guardian of Obama’s foreign policy message, meanwhile, has been broadcasting a more aggressive tone. In a press conference Sunday in Hawaii, Obama offered a tougher line on China, while being careful with his language:

Sometimes, American companies are wary about bringing [concerns about Chinese trade practices] up because they don’t want to be punished in terms of their ability to do business in China.  But I don’t have that same concern, so I bring it up. And in terms of enforcement, the other thing that we’ve been doing is actually trying to enforce the trade laws that are in place.  We’ve brought a number of cases — one that the U.S. press may be familiar with are the cases involving U.S. tires, where we brought very aggressive actions against China and won.  And as a consequence, U.S. producers are in a better position, and that means more U.S. jobs. So I think we can benefit from trade with China.  And I want certainly to continue cultivating a constructive relationship with the Chinese government, but we’re going to continue to be firm in insisting that they operate by the same rules that everybody else operates under.  We don’t want them taking advantage of the United States or U.S. businesses.

You can’t exactly put that on a bumper sticker, but it is a signal that Obama is not ready to cede the issue of China next year. It is too soon to tell if it will be enough to blunt the coming Republican offensive.

The Capture of Gaddafi's Son: The Reformer Who Refused to Reform

Up until the moment Libya descended into catastrophic violence last February, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was under strong pressure by close associates to break ranks with his father's regime. They believed that he, more than anyone else, might have been able to save his country from a disastrous eight-month war, one of Saif's former top aides told TIME in an interview. Now, Saif's final role will instead be as a reviled defendant on trial, rather than a political hero, and he could face life imprisonment or execution.

Libyan forces finally cornered the fugitive Saif al-Islam on Saturday near the Libyan Sahara town of Sabha, about 400 miles (650 kms) south of Tripoli. Gaddafi's 39-year-old son — his father's closest advisor and likely successor — had been on the run for more than four weeks, after apparently fleeing on Oct. 20 as rebels closed in on Muammar Gaddafi in his home town of Sirte. As rebels set upon his father and killed him that day, Saif is believed to have slipped past rebel checkpoints and escaped into Libya's vast desert.(See pictures of Libyans celebrating their newfound liberation.)

Tripoli erupted in wild rejoicing on Saturday afternoon as news broke of Saif's capture. As people fired guns in the air, it was unclear who — Libya's armed militias or the country's nascent government — would decide whether Saif would be handed over for trial by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, or jailed and tried in Libya itself. Saif's capture was announced by Bashir Thaelba, a leader of Libya's Zintan brigade, who said he was being held in that town, west of Tripoli. "We are going to treat him well as a war prisoner," he was quoted saying on Saturday.

But Youssef Sawani believes that Saif might have avoided that fate altogether — and in the process changed the course of Libyan history — if only the dictator's heir had listened to him and others who begged him back in February to join the rebels before it was too late. "My recommendation to him before the revolt was to dissociate himself completely from the regime," says Sawani, the former executive director of the Gaddafi Foundation, Saif's hugely powerful political organization. "He could have broken away."(Watch TIME's exclusive interview with Saif.)

Sawani says that on Feb. 6, days before Libya's revolt erupted in eastern Libya, he went to Saif's home and pleaded with him to switch sides. "I suggested to Saif that if he was completely frustrated he should quit, become a dissident and leave the country, and lay the responsibility on the shoulders of the regime."

At the time, Sawani argues, many Libyans would still have accepted Saif at the person best able to stop Libya's descent into all-out violence, and the single best hope to persuade his father to retire in exile. "Libyans were banking on Saif," he says. "He was widely accepted by intellectuals, activists, and the liberal opposition in the diaspora." Sawani's view is disputed in other interviews, including the former rebel Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, who had previously worked for Saif's National Economic Development Board, and who told TIME last month, "Saif deceived us all. The real Saif was much uglier than his father."

Sawani, who has a political-science doctorate from the University of Canterbury, had been hired by Saif in 2007 to oversee sweeping political reforms in Libya — changes which Saif has long claimed were blocked by Gaddafi's hard-liners. In interviews, Saif told me in Feb. 2010 and in March this year that his strong efforts to bring democracy to Libya had been stymied by Gaddafi's regime.(See a who's who of the Gaddafi children.)

If it was true that Saif's reform efforts had been stonewalled by Gaddafi's hard-liners, there was a moment in which Saif could well have abandoned his father and carved a new political future, according to Sawani. By early February, Saif was frantic about the Arab Spring spreading to Libya; Egypt's revolution next door had forced President Hosni Mubarak from power on Feb. 11. While demonstrations erupted in Benghazi and surrounding towns, Saif vacillated for days about what to do. Ultimately, says Sawani, Saif could not grasp that the protests would crush his father's 42-year rule. Indeed, in March — days before NATO's bombing campaign began, Saif told me he believed Gaddafi would quickly end the revolt and reestablish control, even if NATO intervened.

Saif's problem, says Sawani, is that he felt unable to betray his family. Sawani visited Saif at home on Feb. 16, one day before Libya's revolution began, and told him he was resigning as his director. Saif was upset, he says. "It was a time he needed more help and assistance."

Without his reformist aides, Saif's options quickly diminished. On Feb. 20 he sealed his fate, appearing on television vowing to crush the rebellion with extreme violence. Sawani says a close friend of Saif met him shortly before his speech, and agreed with Saif that the younger Gaddafi would appear on TV to reassure Libyans that the regime would "advance their demands." Sawani says he was in touch with rebels in Benghazi that night who had sat glued to the television, hoping that Saif might break away. Instead, Sawani says, "he came out and said the opposite. Everyone was shocked."

What happens next to Saif could be subject to a contentious international battle. Saif is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, for allegedly ordering the killing of unarmed protesters in eastern Libya in February, before the rebels took up weapons. Also indicted is Muammar Gaddafi's former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senoussi, who remains at large. As a U.N. member state, Libya's new leaders are legally expected to transfer Saif to the Dutch capital for trial, but many Libyans are now saying they want to see Saif — by far the most powerful figure from Gaddafi's era left alive — tried at home. That would allow millions of Libyans to feel they are receiving redress for their suffering under Gaddafi's ruthless dictatorship.

So, the Supercommittee Fails. What Happens Next?

Every morning that it’s in session, the Senate opens with a prayer from Chaplain Barry C. Black. Black usually asks God to look out for the chamber and to guide its members. He rarely ventures into the politics or policy specifics of the moment. But on Thursday morning, Black offered up an unusual supplication. “Eradicate false ambition as you make them content to serve you where they are and as they are. In a special way, guide the supercommittee in its challenging work,” he said. Boy, do they need the help.

As the window of opportunity to do something big has passed – the Congressional Budget Office really needed to see language for a big bill by Thursday evening in order to score it by the Monday deadline – lawmakers spent more time figuring out how to blame one another than what to do next. But, it’s now worth asking: If they can’t find $1.2 trillion in savings, what happens next?

(PHOTOS: The Life an Times of John Boehner)

The ultimate consequence would be something called sequestration – a n across the board cut of $1.2 trillion split between entitlements, non-defense discretionary spending, and the Pentagon, which would take place in January 2013. That date was purposefully set a ways into the future to give lawmakers some time to figure out a way around it in case the committee should fail. So, what are the Plans B, C, D, E and F? Here’s a look at the possibilities:

B)  The supercommittee punts. Its members agree to a small number of cuts and revenue increases up front, but then instructs the relevant committees in each chamber to spend the next year figuring out how to come up with the rest of the savings. This is looking less and less likely as these instructions are fairly complicated and nobody seems to be able to agree on the language – language that would have to garner support in both chambers once out of committee. Also, there’s a big question if House Republicans, particularly the freshmen, would accept a two-vote process.

C) The committee agrees to a smaller package of bipartisan cuts and revenue increases – say $400 billion in deficit reduction. This would at least alleviate some of the pain of the sequestration — instead of lopping off $600 billion from the Pentagon budget, it’d only be $400 billion, a lot but in the grand scheme of things more manageable. I’m not sure it would inspire much market confidence, but something’s better than nothing, I suppose.

(MORE: Why Boehner Wants a Grand Bargain–and Why He Probably Won’t Get One)

D)  This package was meant to be the vehicle for a lot of remaining congressional business for the year, from an Alternative Minimum Tax patch to a fix on Medicare fees paid to doctors to unemployment insurance and President Obama’s payroll tax breaks. Since the committee’s product is privileged – meaning filibuster-proof — the committee could pass a bill wrapping up other leftover legislative business. Democrats would like to see some of Obama’s jobs agenda folded into this, and Republicans are interested in the AMT fix and doctor’s fees. All of it would be offset using savings counted from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there are problems with this scenario: Many Republicans call these war savings gimmicky — akin to counting money never spent — and have thus far not been willing to accept its use. Only passing these extras would also do nothing for deficit reduction.

E)  Negotiators fail to reach an agreement on even a small package and both sides introduce their own bills, which are scored and voted on by the committee in turn. Neither succeeds in breaking the deadlock, and at some point in 2012, lawmakers find a way to avoid the sequestration either by enacting tax reform or repealing the sequestration or some combination.

F) Negotiators fail to reach an agreement on even a small package. On Monday night, after U.S. markets close and after both sides hold outraged press conferences blaming each other for failure, supercommittee members slink out of town, joining their colleagues for Thanksgiving break. (Both chambers were set to adjourn this week for Thanksgiving vacation.) The committee hopes no one, especially Wall Street and the ratings agencies, notices. Some time in 2012, lawmakers find a way to avoid the sequestration either by enacting tax reform or repealing the sequestration or some combination.

Sadly, I think F is currently the most likely.

Why John Boehner Wants Another Grand Bargain (And Why He Probably Won’t Get One)

During House Speaker John Boehner’s first stint in the leadership in the mid 1990s, just about the only adornment on the walls of his tiny Capitol Hill office was a portrait of Nicholas Longworth, the last Speaker from Ohio. Longworth, who reached across the aisle to form a close working bond with House Minority Leader John Nance Garner, has long been Boehner’s idol. In fact, Boehner’s first moves as Speaker to re-empower the committees and the structures of the House mirrored similar steps taken by Longworth when he won the gavel in 1925. Unfortunately for Boehner, that is where the similarities ended.

While Boehner made a career of working with the likes of former Massachusetts Senator Teddy Kennedy, brokering big pieces of legislation like No Child Left Behind and the 2005 pension reform bill, he is at odds with a Republican conference more interested in burning bridges than building them. Twice this summer Boehner tried for a grand bargain on deficit reduction and twice the deal collapsed, in part because there just wasn’t support from within his own conference for the increased tax revenue that Democrats demanded.

Fast forward three months, and Boehner is in much the same place. While he is tempted to engage with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to broker a supercommittee deal, he is also faced with a Republican conference not wild about what’s on the table. Boehner has backed a plan put forth by Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican and former head of the anti-tax group Club for Growth, that is also supported by all six Republicans on the supercommittee. That proposal would increase tax revenues by $300 billion while lowering the top taxable income bracket from 35% to 28%. “I think the offer that the Republicans put on the table is a fair offer,” Boehner told reporters on Tuesday.

But even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Boehner’s No. 2, has repeatedly refused to endorse the plan. Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, got 100 of his GOP colleagues to sign a letter opposing any new revenue. And while Rep. Jeb Hensarling, one of Boehner’s representatives on the supercommittee, delivered a well-received pitch for the Toomey plan in a Tuesday GOP conference meeting, most members who came up to congratulate him afterwards declined to support it. “Most responses were, “Hell no,”’ said one aide who witnessed the scene.

Earlier on Tuesday, Boehner met with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid asked Boehner about recent comments by Grover Norquist, head of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, that the Toomey plan was nothing but a negotiating position and Republicans would never actually vote for increased tax revenue. Reid wanted a gut-check on where Boehner stood. While the Speaker last week dismissed Norquist as “some random person,” he left the meeting with Reid non-committal. He was equally non-committal when asked by GOP members about that meeting, shrugging and saying he couldn’t always read the Majority Leader.

Boehner’s office is quick to point out that the Toomey plan is the only one out there right now that has support. After more than a week, Democrats have yet to give a counter offer. “I’ve offered $1,000 to any reporter who can find a Democratic plan that can get more than one vote in the Senate,” says Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman. “That money’s still in my pocket… The Speaker is doing everything possible to make sure that the Joint Select Committee reaches its goal.”

Still, it’s clear that supercommittee members have taken negotiations as far as they can. While Boehner, like other congressional leaders, has stayed involved through staff and his representatives in the room, it’s clear that if a deal is to be had it will have to come from the leaders personally hashing things out – something Boehner hasn’t seemed to want to do, just yet.

Not getting a deal could be embarrassing for Boehner and his conference, potentially inciting further disgust with Congress from a public already at its limit with the institution and its entrenched interests. From a political standpoint, doing something – even something half-baked – would be better than doing nothing. Not only are there political consequences if the committee deadlocks, but markets would likely react badly, and a deadlock would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts at the Pentagon and in entitlement spending, two especially bitter pills to swallow. Boehner’s problem is that his partner in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has little incentive to help him. Neither do House Democrats. And with Boehner’s freshman having trouble fundraising and congressional Democrats nearly doubling their Republican counterparts’ haul last month, doing what’s politically smart has never had such an appeal to the GOP rank-and-file.

Boehner’s negotiating style has always been to use the last minute urgency before a deadline to extract the best possible deal for him and his members. He could be playing this game again, but the best possible deal in this case might not be enough for his conservative members. Democrats rejected Toomey’s proposal as too expensive – lowering the tax rates would decrease revenues by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade, a gaping hole $300 billion in new tax revenue does little to plug. And if the Toomey plan would have trouble garnering a majority of Republicans, something to the left of Toomey’s plan would surely fail. Which means that while Boehner may be tempted to try and broker a deal here, more likely he won’t be able to, which would be the death knell for the supercommittee’s chances of success.

High Stakes in Ohio, Mississippi and Virginia as Voters Head to the Polls

The narrative arc you’re likely to hear on this Tuesday in early November is that today begins the yearlong countdown to the 2012 presidential contest. But Tuesday’s slate of off-year elections and ballot measures is laden with its own share of drama. From Maine to Washington, voters in seven states will head to the polls to decide controversial ballot propositions on issues ranging from abortion to collective bargaining, in addition to a smattering of important local races. Here’s a look at the battlegrounds where the most is at stake:

In the wake of Wisconsin’s successful drive to curb collective bargaining for public-employee unions, rookie Republican Governor Scott Walker became a celebrated champion in conservative circles. John Kasich, Walker’s counterpart in the Buckeye State, seems set to suffer a different fate. Big Labor, a perennial Democratic pillar, appears on the brink of a blowout win in its push to repeal a 2011 law rolling back collective-bargaining rights for Ohio public employees.

Tuesday’s ballot measure, known as Issue 2, is a referendum on Senate Bill 5, Kasich’s signature legislation. Stalled by a successful petition drive, the bill hasn’t taken effect, and recent polls suggest it won’t. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Ohioans poised to reject SB5 by a 25-point margin, and a survey released Sunday by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling also suggests labor unions are on track for a decisive win after raising more than $30 million in support of the law’s repeal.

Governor Kasich and his supporters say the law, which would prohibit strikes and force public employees to fork over more money to pay for their benefits, is a modest way for teachers, firefighters and cops to do their part in helping to close the state’s budget shortfall. But a collaborative push by labor-allied groups — and the avalanche of cash — has helped turn public opinion against the legislation. Repeal would be a sharp rebuke to Kasich, whose approval ratings are mired near the bottom of the roster of sitting governors. “A big part of it is voters wanting to send a message to John Kasich,” says Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling’s director. “Rejecting Senate Bill 5 is almost a proxy for the fact that they wish they could do the governor’s race differently.”

While it’s not surprising that nearly all Democrats want to throw out the law, a majority of independent voters and 30% of Republicans do as well. That’s a testament not just to the robust campaign waged by the labor unions fighting the law, but also the political hazards of casting teachers, cops and firefighters — staples of the state’s middle class — as budget-busting bogeymen.

For Ohio conservatives, there’s a bright spot, however: polls suggest that Issue 3, a Tea Party-propelled constitutional amendment that would prohibit government from requiring citizens to purchase healthcare, looks poised to pass.

Mississippi:

While the battle in Columbus is the latest in the ongoing fight over public-employee benefits, the one brewing in Mississippi could usher in an unprecedented victory for the anti-abortion movement. Mississippi voters on Tuesday will decide Initiative 26, a constitutional amendment that would declare human life to begin “at the moment of fertilization.” The amendment would ban abortions even in pregnancies conceived through rape or incest, which would be the most stringent such standard in the country. No state has defined an embryo is a person; similar ballot initiatives have twice failed in Colorado. But the “Personhood amendment” has a solid shot at passage in this staunchly conservative state. A Public Policy Polling survey released Sunday revealed a virtual toss-up, with 45% backing the proposition and 44% opposing it.

The philosophy undergirding the amendment — a belief that abortion is morally wrong, even when performed under extenuating circumstance — alarms even many voters opposed to the practice, says PPP’s Jensen. “The absolutely-no-exceptions nature of the proposal is too much for some people,” he says, noting that nearly 30% of Mississippi Republicans reject the amendment. “Lots of pro-life voters still think some exceptions make sense.” Legal experts, meanwhile, say the amendment’s Achilles Heel is its ambiguity, which a pair of law professors catalogued in a New York Times op-ed. The use of the term fertilization sparked fears that forms of birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research could be banned along with abortion — something proponents deny, though they say the amendment would outlaw the use of the morning-after pill. The measure could also open the floodgates to a raft of legal challenges at all levels of the system. Some prominent Republicans, like the state’s popular outgoing Governor Haley Barbour, have expressed reservations about the proposal’s language. (In the end, Barbour said, he cast an absentee ballot in support of the initiative.)

Despite these concerns, the deciding factor in the amendment’s fate could be turnout, Jensen says. Mississippians are also trekking to the polls on Tuesday to pick a new governor — and the race is shaping up as an easy win for the Republican candidate, lieutenant governor Phil Bryant. Bryant’s Democratic opponent, Johnny DuPree, is African-American, as is 37% of the state. “The higher the black turnout is, especially with a black gubernatorial candidate on the top of the ticket, the more likely [the Personhood amendment] is to be defeated,” Jensen says.

Virginia:

There are no high-profile ballot initiatives there, but President Obama may be keeping an eye on a bellwether battle taking place on the fringes of the Beltway. In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia since Lyndon Johnson — a victory delivered by the party’s redoubts in the D.C. suburbs, a reliable counterweight in an otherwise conservative state. But experts predict that Democratic seats in Northern Virginia are among those poised to flip in the state Senate races on Tuesday. ”The odds are strongly in favor of the Republicans taking control of the Senate,” Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at Virginia’s George Mason University, tells Reuters. That would give the GOP control of each branch of government in Richmond, where they already boast a majority in the House of Delegates and where state’s conservative governor, Bob McDonnell, remains popular.

That result would augur trouble next November for the President. As elsewhere, Virginia’s independents have gravitated toward Republicans amid the ongoing economic turmoil of the past three years, a fact reflected in Obama’s own approval ratings, which sat in the 40s in two October polls. The President trails Mitt Romney in the commonwealth by an average of 3.5 points in an amalgam of polls from the past two months, according to RealClearPolitics — even as Obama has lavished attention on the state, crisscrossing it last month in a bus tour designed to sell his jobs plan. Fending off a Republican onslaught in Virginia will be a heavy lift. If Republicans capture the state Senate, it would be a poor omen for Obama’s prospects of a repeat victory in the state next fall.