Washington ? Midterm political contests are often like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each peculiar in its own way. But this year’s elections take this political law one step further. They are peculiar in their peculiarity.

That is because this year’s contests are being conducted in a very unusual context. The nation is at war, and yet the public remains focused on domestic issues. The nation is projecting confidence abroad there’s a subtle hint of swagger as President Bush promises action against terrorists and regimes that sponsor, foster or tolerate them but is uneasy at home.

In public, the president and his advisers speak of a new war against Iraq, but in private, Pentagon aides worry that military action against Saddam Hussein might not work, might be too expensive, might stretch the military too thin, might involve armaments that have been depleted in Afghanistan, might involve too many risks and might not be necessary.

With terror alerts at home and U.S. forces engaged abroad, the spring primaries have received less attention than usual. But with the first phase all but complete, it is nonetheless possible to discern some themes. Though a political system where power hangs on a single vote, as it does in the Senate, has an inherent instability, most of the themes from the political contests thus far scream stability:

Advantage: Incumbents. This rule, of course, often applies to congressional races; a Congressional Quarterly study showed that in the 7,921 congressional elections of the past four decades, incumbents seeking re-election prevailed in 93.3 percent of the contests. In the last midterm congressional races, four years ago, the incumbents won in more than 98 percent of the contests. But that doesn’t always happen. Compare the 16 lawmakers who lost in the last two congressional cycles with the 81 who lost in the 1992 and 1994 elections.

This year will almost certainly produce little upheaval. There was enormous enmity in the political system (and on the airwaves) in 1992 and 1994. There’s a lot of distemper right now, to be sure; Congress hasn’t exactly been overachieving this year, and the debate over who lost the World Trade Center isn’t achieving (and here is a word that is used only on Capitol Hill, the place least likely on Earth to experience it) comity. But there is little sense of rebellion in the country right now, and little strife in the early primaries.

Accent: Experience. In the last decade, all manner of outsiders have won high political office. One, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, was a surgeon. He’d be a leading candidate on the GOP ticket in 2004 if Dick Cheney doesn’t want a second term. Another outsider, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, was a trial lawyer. He’s a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination two years from now.

The 2004 election is likely to produce no such phenom. Indeed, in their effort to win back the House, the Democrats leaned toward tested commodities whenever possible. One of the more appealing new Democrats is Dario Herrera, who is running in a new House district in Nevada’s Las Vegas suburbs. He’s a Clark County commissioner. Another is Jack Conway, who is taking on Rep. Anne M. Northrup in a redrawn district in Louisville, Ky. He’s a former deputy state cabinet secretary with ties to the Democratic governor, Paul Patton. They may have new ideas, but they’re not new faces.

Emphasis: Domestic. Everyone acknowledges that this is wartime, but the public is interested in issues more suited to peacetime. A poll taken for National Public Radio this spring showed that 69 percent of the public believes domestic issues like taxes, education, health care and retirement are more important to voters than international issues such as the war on terrorism and conflicts in places like the Middle East. This is showing up in the early contests of 2002, where there is no example of a candidate profiting because of a military record or war wounds and no example of a candidate who has taken a position on terrorism or war that is even slightly out of the mainstream. Nor is there much talk of a war in Iraq, even in districts, such as those in North Carolina and Georgia, where there are many military bases.

Character: Local. These elections are more like contests for the state legislature than plebiscites. In the giant 2nd district of Maine, the biggest congressional district east of the Mississippi, the Republicans have four candidates seeking to succeed Democratic Rep. John Baldacci, who is running for governor, while the Democrats have six. It may take as few as 12,000 votes to win each party’s nomination; a thousand votes might be the margin of victory. In a district that big, with no major population center, victory will come down to personality, turnout, weather or caprice.

No major theme, no terrorist threat, no accounting scandal will have much to do with it. The battle for control of Congress comes down to contests like these in places like these. This year, all politics truly is local and all politics is peculiar.