"I don't care if I vote for Happy the Clown, just so it's not who's there now."

AP

Middle-class voters who deserted the Democratic Party a dozen years ago are now giving the party its best chance to reclaim the House since the GOP swept Democrats from power in 1994.

Motivated by anger at President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, 56 percent of likely voters said they would vote on Nov. 7 to send a Democrat to the House and 37 percent said they would vote Republican. Voters in the latest Associated Press-AOL News poll rated Iraq and the economy as their top issues.

"I don't care if I vote for Happy the Clown, just so it's not who's there now," said Mary Nyilas, 51, an independent voter from Cologne, N.J., who said she would do everything she could to "vote against the powers that put us in this situation" in Iraq.