Voters Unhappy but Few Incumbents Seem in Peril : Politics: Only 25 seats in Congress are deemed at risk. The ‘ins’ have big war chests and a surplus of ballots.

Will the voters revolt?

That’s the question dominating the fall congressional campaign as it turns into its volatile final three weeks.

Over the last month, voters in states as diverse as Louisiana and Massachusetts have sent out piercing signals of unhappiness with politicians. Particularly since the collapse of the budget agreement between the Administration and congressional leaders earlier this month, pollsters have picked up signs of increasing danger for incumbents in both parties.

“Some core of the electorate is going to say, ‘Anybody’s who in, I’m voting out,’ ” Republican pollster Bill McInturff said, “and that number is picking up.”

But many analysts say that the number of incumbents actually threatened by that trend, although larger than in the last three elections, remains modest in both historical and absolute terms. Even in the kind of electoral heavy weather now developing, the advantages of incumbency and the lack of credible opponents are likely to shelter the vast majority of officeholders from the storm.

“There is some danger to incumbents,” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said, “but in most congressional districts, and in many Senate races, there is not a viable vehicle to express that anger at Washington.”

That pattern is most apparent in the House. Although many GOP strategists worry that the party may be hurt by the perception it has tried to protect the rich in the budget talks, most analysts are still predicting a relatively traditional off-year election, with the Democrats--as the party out of the White House--making modest gains, mostly in open seats.

Experts in both parties say that 12 to 15 Democratic incumbents and six to 10 Republicans are sweating out close races. That means more incumbents will probably be defeated in 1990 than in either of the last two congressional contests, which each saw only six House members ousted. But, it will take a dramatic surge by challengers to approach the turnover commonly seen through the 1950s and 1960s, when as many as 40 incumbents were turned out in off-year elections.

“There’s a lot of competition compared to 1988, but not compared to anything else,” said Mark Gersh, Washington director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a liberal political group. “Most races are still under-opposed.”

With voters worried about the nation’s direction--a private Republican poll last week found that fewer Americans consider the country to be on the right track today than at the same time in the recession year of 1982--the vote percentages of many incumbents could drop from 1988. But most incumbents have votes to give: Over 88% of House Members won with more than 60% of the vote in 1988.

Money and recruiting remain the principal reasons most members of Congress are enjoying calm passage through this fall’s turbulent waters.

As Common Cause pointed out in a study released earlier this month, most representatives have built “a wall of political money that makes them nearly invincible.” According to the study, three-fourths of the 405 incumbents seeking reelection face either no opposition or challengers who have raised less than $25,000; 86 others have raised more than twice as much as their opponents. In only 23 races have challengers raised even half as much money as the incumbents they hope to unseat.

Given those financial odds, many potential challengers decided to wait for 1992, when the number of open seats may be swelled by redistricting and retirement. Retirements are expected to rise because 1992 is the last year in which departing incumbents may convert their campaign surpluses to personal use.

Those calculations, which seemed impeccable earlier this year, now add up to lost opportunities for both parties. With more intensive recruiting, Gersh estimates, as many as 20 additional House races could have been competitive. On the other hand, if the margins of victory for incumbents do slip next month, the parties could recruit enough serious challengers to contest as many as 80 or 100 races in 1992, he predicts.

Senate races present a more complex picture. Anti-incumbent sentiment is boosting the outsider challenges of two businessmen: Republican James Rappaport in Massachusetts and Democrat Harry Lonsdale in Oregon.

But both of those races seem driven more by local circumstance than national trends: In Massachusetts, Democratic Sen. John Kerry is being pelted by rubble from the collapse of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis; and, in Oregon, longtime Republican Sen. Mark O. Hatfield has been hurt by his failure to aggressively respond to Lonsdale’s charges that he favors polluters.

And, even as anger at Washington appears to be cresting, Republicans have essentially written off once-promising Senate challenges in Michigan and Illinois. GOP challenges in Montana, Iowa and Rhode Island are also fading.

Meanwhile, some incumbents, such as Democratic Sen. Carl Levin in Michigan, have nimbly aligned themselves with the anti-Washington feeling.

“Voters are in a punishing mood,” said Republican pollster Alex Gage. “They just don’t know who to punish for what.”

That could change--and quickly. If operatives in both parties agree about anything this year, it is the danger of too much certainty.

Waves of discontent against incumbents--like the one that swept out nine Democratic senators in 1980--usually have broken late in the campaign.

Historically, challengers tend to win two-thirds of the votes of those undecided just before the election, political analyst Charles E. Cook says; this year, they could win over 90% of those undecided votes, he predicts. That’s what happened earlier this month in Louisiana, where state Rep. David Duke made a stunning charge at Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston before finally falling short.

With that precedent uneasily in mind, most observers are expecting several congressional incumbents who now look safe to wake up with a nasty surprise after Election Day. And the morning after could become even more bleary if Congress and the Administration fail to agree on a budget by this Friday.