So far, the inquiries have been discreet, as nobody wants to be seen bailing on a re-election campaign before it's over. But if today's prognostications hold true and Democrats pick up Senate and House seats, those discreet job inquiries will become decidedly more overt.

When a congressman or senator loses a race, employees lose their jobs. A single congressman might have more than a dozen men and women working under him, from aides to legislative experts to legal counsel to media relations people, while senators might have 30 staffers or more.

And if Democrats add to their ranks as expected, thanks to election wins and Republican retirements, it means hundreds of Capitol Hill employees, as well as some administration appointees, will be out of a job.

"I think the deluge [of resumes] will come on Wednesday," said Pat Toomey, president of Club For Growth, a GOP political action committee.

The big lobbying firms that might seem like a natural fit for displaced staffers probably won't be hiring either, because if Democrats are represented in greater numbers in Washington, "you have fewer lobbying firms interested in loading up on Republicans," he said.

Even the retiring GOP lawmakers themselves may be frozen out of the cushiest spots, especially if Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidency today.

"It's going to be tough if Obama wins," said Stephen Wayne, government professor at Georgetown University.

It's the opposite of what happened during President Bush's first term -- a Republican president and Republican majorities in the House and Senate, combined with political pressure applied by the "K Street Project," meant that most open lobbying jobs went to Republicans.

In 2003, for example, only 30 percent of open lobbying positions went to Democrats, according to a trade journal that tracks the lobbying industry.

Some displaced staffers might hope to slide over to conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, but there's no guarantee that those groups will be in a hiring mood, given the economy.

"We certainly are expecting a flood of resumes," said Karlyn Bowman of AEI.

"It's hard to say if we'll take anyone. ... It's going to be incredibly difficult for people [to find a job] in an economic downturn."

You'd have to go back to 1950 and 1952, she said, to find two straight congressional elections in which one party -- in those years, it was the Republicans -- made such substantial gains.

It's shaping up to be the second straight bloodletting for Republicans. Much of the damage already was done in 2006, when Democrats gained 31 House seats and five Senate seats, essentially assuming majority control in both chambers. When a new party takes the majority, it gets to appoint two-thirds of the staff on the various House and Senate committees, meaning a lot of Republican hires were replaced by Democrats following the election.

There's also a natural purge, affecting both Democrats and Republicans, that takes place after an election, as congressional campaigns shed the consultants they'd hired for the race.

If they can't land lobbying or think-tank jobs, where will they go? Younger aides might go back to school for business or law degrees. "In economic downturns, we have much higher graduate enrollment," said Mr. Wayne, the Georgetown professor.

And some will return home, because all they were hoping for was a taste of the nation's capital. Most don't move to Washington expecting a 30-year career.

"Capitol Hill is a place that a lot of people pass through," said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Churn is the very nature of the beast. "You're not talking about something like the layoffs at the Ford assembly line."