It has been said that this is the year that incumbents will lose seats in Congress on a large scale, but at least in the primaries, it turns out that only SEVEN incumbents have lost, which means more than 98 percent of all incumbents have won renomination!
Of course, Election Day in November could see a massive wave of incumbents losing to their challengers, but at least so far, that is NOT the trend!
Three Senators–Robert Bennett of Utah, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,–have lost renomination, but Murkowski is running a write in campaign and is seen as running evenly with the person who defeated her in the primary–Joe Miller–, and has a good chance of being only the second person to win a Senate seat by write in votes, after Strom Thurmond of South Carolina in 1954!
Four Congressmen have lost–Parker Griffith of Alabama, Bob Inglis of South Carolina, Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan! This is about average in any congressional election year, occurring every even year. And this round, the losers are three Democrats and four Republicans!
So standard thoughts may just be such, and not be the action of the electorate in November! Again, we shall see, very soon!