Senator Jon S. Corzine, the multimillionaire banker who personally financed his own Senate victory four years ago, is under intense and competing pressures.
On Wednesday, as they tallied their Senate victories, the Republicans were jubilant.
He was reelected in 1988 with an astounding 81 percent, in an election that remains - to this day - the most lopsided Senate victory in Maine's history.
The White House and senior Democrats searched for a single Democrat who might give the President's budget package a Senate victory.
Members with moderate to conservative views hold the balance of power, as the President's excruciatingly narrow Senate victory on his budget bill last month makes clear.
Mr. Torricelli is viewed as vulnerable because of a federal investigation into fund-raising for his 1996 Senate victory.
Hagan also dominated most of the eastern portion of the state, which had been the backbone of Helms' past Senate victories.
When the campaign began in earnest a few weeks ago, the focus was on whether the Republican Party would give Mr. Kean the Senate victory he seeks.
Mr. Wirthlin said the economic jitters began even before the Iran affair and may have played a role in the Democratic Senate victories last fall.
And I certainly didn't cotton to Connecticut-transplant Jim Buckley's 1970 Senate victory on the Conservative ballot line.