Election '82: A Tie That Was Really a Win

The G.O.P. kept the Senate, but disaster was a step away

It was almost as if all the campaigning, speechmaking and handshaking had never occurred, and those thousands of cloying or clawing television commercials and bumper stickers had never appeared. After an estimated outlay of some $130 million by Republican and Democratic candidates, the lineup of the Senate had not changed a bit. The breakdown remained 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats. The G.O.P. had feared that it might lose the chamber it had seized in 1980, or at least see its margin over the...

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