History, but Not Math, Says Lieberman Loses

History says that Connecticut's Joe Lieberman has little chance to retain his U.S. Senate seat as an independent, but simple math suggests otherwise.

That's because no U.S. senator has ever successfully done what Lieberman is attempting - winning re-election after losing the support of his own party. However, the basic arithmetic of this specific race says his chances are quite good.

The keys to Lieberman making history are two-fold:

* Keeping most of the Democrats who voted for him in his losing primary effort in his column come November - and exit polling data shows he may well be able to do just that.

* Hope the Republicans don't replace their currently weak candidate with a stronger one.

Lieberman, a three-term incumbent and the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee, lost the party nomination last week to Ned Lamont, a previously unknown anti-war activist.

Lieberman, ignoring the pleas of party elders, is running as an independent in November.

He faces formidable obstacles. Lamont inherits the Democratic organizational structure, field operation and support from most, but not all, Democratic office holders.

And history says Lieberman can't win.

Ken Rudin, National Public Radio's political editor, did the research and found that 24 Senate incumbents have been defeated in party primaries in the last half-century. Only Republican Jacob Javits of New York then opted to run as an independent. Like Lieberman, Javits was a well-regarded moderate, but he lost badly in November.

However, history has its limitations since comparisons are by their nature inexact.

Little more than 280,000 people voted in the Democratic primary that Lamont won. That is about 15 percent of the state's registered voters - as a group, presumably those are the most likely to agree with Lamont's anti-war, anti-George W. Bush themed campaign.

That leaves an additional 85 percent of the electorate who can vote in November. However, turnout being what it is, many of those Democrats who did not vote in the primary, plus a large number of independents and Republicans, are unlikely to vote in November either.

But still, the pool of November voters will be at least four or five times larger than the group that voted in last week's primary.

Lamont, despite all the sound and fury, only won the group most likely to go his way - Democratic primary voters -- by 4 percentage points, or 10,000 votes.

It is important to remember that more than 20,000 independents switched their registration to Democratic in the weeks before the primary in order to vote in it. The betting is that the vast majority of them were anti-war folks backing Lamont.

Therefore, the most likely independents for Ned are already included in the primary Lamont vote. The remaining independent pool is more likely to like Lieberman than might ordinarily be the case.

Lieberman needs to keep most of those who voted for him in the primary in his camp, and a CBS News primary exit poll is reason for optimism. Three-in-four Lieberman primary voters said they would support him in a November three-way race with Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger. Another 16 percent said they were not sure.

Meanwhile, Schlesinger is the key. Earlier polls have him running in the very low double digits in a three-way. That's because Lieberman's support of the president's war policy and general philosophy also make him attractive to GOP voters.

And the White House has reportedly told Lieberman it will do what it can to help - which presumably means ensuring no other Republican replaces Schlesinger on the ballot.

In that case, it isn't hard to see how Lieberman could outpoll Lamont by more than 10,000 votes among the 800,000-1,000,000 who will vote in November but didn't take part in the primary.

Think of Connecticut's much-ballyhooed Senate race as a face-off between history and math.

Those who ignore the lessons of history may be doomed to repeat them, but analysts who can't add and subtract generally have much more serious problems.