If nothing else, the 2002 election may be remembered for the way that unexpected circumstances prompted the return to public life of two veteran lawmakers, Minnesota’s Walter Mondale and New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg.

But it still isn’t clear if the overall result will follow a traditional pattern for midterm elections or signal its demise. For 40 years after World War II, the party in the White House lost a modest number of House and Senate seats in its first midterm election and a larger number in its second one, six years after gaining the presidency.

That pattern held for almost every midterm election.

But the Clinton years produced a strikingly different pattern. In Bill Clinton’s first midterm in 1994, Democrats suffered a major electoral disaster, losing 54 seats in the House, nine in the Senate and control of both houses of Congress.

In 1998, amid the unsuccessful Republican effort to convict Clinton, the party in the White House gained House seats for only the third time in the 20th century; it also maintained its strength in the Senate.

Tuesday’s election seems unlikely to restore the traditional pattern, since there are very few House seats for the GOP to lose. Next week’s outcome may look like another midterm election 40 years ago and for somewhat the same reason.

That was the 1962 election, two years after John F. Kennedy regained the White House for the Democrats after Dwight Eisenhower’s eight-year presidency. That November, Democrats lost but a single House seat and picked up three in the Senate.

One factor may have been Kennedy’s success in resolving the Cuban missile crisis. But the House outcome probably was a result of what happened two years earlier when Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon. In that election, the Democrats lost 21 House seats from the inflated majority they achieved during the 1958 recession. As a result, there were far fewer vulnerable Democratic House members who won on Kennedy’s coattails. Besides, Democrats did a good job protecting incumbents in the reapportionment after the 1960 census.

The opposite pattern occurred 20 years later, when Ronald Reagan won the White House. Unlike Kennedy, Reagan had coattails, which helped the GOP to add 34 House seats and dream of winning a majority in 1982.

But the country fell into a recession, and the GOP lost 27 seats, including many of those won in 1980.

Like Kennedy in 1960 and unlike Reagan George W. Bush in 2000 won narrowly without coattails. The GOP lost both House and Senate seats, leaving relatively few vulnerable seats.

But there are three other reasons this election may not hurt the party in the White House.

First, the continuing population flow from the East and Midwest to the South and West means that areas tending to vote Republican gained seats after the 2000 census at the expense of those that usually vote Democratic.

Second, in state after state, the two major parties protected incumbents from both parties, reducing the number of seats with true competition and the number in which Democrats could realistically hope to unseat Republicans.

Third, the continuing high popularity of Bush should ensure a decent Republican turnout.

Still, voter concern about the economy could trigger a late surge by Democratic candidates and produce a result closer to the traditional pattern, especially since it would take only small gains to produce a major impact.

Republicans need to pick up just one seat to win the Senate, and Democrats need just six to regain a majority in the House.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.