For example: were they voting for the Republicans, or against the Democrats? Were they repudiating the whole Obama agenda or just registering a protest against hard times? Are voters more enthusiastic about the tea-party insurgents who set the grass-roots on fire, or the safer hands of the establishment types who wrote the cautious, bet-hedging Pledge to America, the nearest thing the Republicans offered to a manifesto? If the Republicans end up nominating an insurgent for the presidency, they risk alienating the voter in the centre. But if they choose a more conventional candidate they risk extinguishing the fire that lit up the mid-terms. A mistake could give Mr Obama a fair chance of being re-elected in 2012, just as Bill Clinton was two years after the Democrats' clobbering in the disastrous mid-terms of 1994.

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