An Almost-Sure Winner: The Ranks of House Service Veterans Regardless of what happens in the presidential election on Tuesday, more veterans are likely to be elected to the House of Representatives, according to a new analysis by George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. The report by the school's Center for Second Service concludes that, barring a major surprise on Tuesday, there will be a net gain of as many as eight veterans in the House. The Senate, however, seems almost certain to have fewer veterans. A gain of even just one veteran in the House would reverse a 40-year trend in which the number has dropped in every election except one since 1971, said Seth Lynn, a Marine Corps veteran who is the center's director. There are 92 veterans in the House and 26 in the Senate, the lowest number in a century or more, Mr. Lynn said. Mr. Lynn said the analysis was drawn from the number of veterans nominated by the two major parties and then determining through various sources, including The New York Times, whether they were running in closely contested, heavily Democratic or heavily Republican districts. The researchers found that 189 veterans were running from the two parties, about the same as in every other Congressional election since 2002. A larger number are Republicans: 120, compared with 69 Democrats. In 2006, the two parties nominated roughly equal numbers of veterans in House races. Unless there is a tidal wave of support for Democrats running in heavily Republican districts, which is not predicted by polls, 92 to 100 veterans are expected to win, with a strong likelihood that the number will be more than 92, he said. "I'm fairly confident we'll see more veterans in the House after the election than we do now," Mr. Lynn said. One reason for the anticipated increase, Mr. Lynn said, is that the Republicans nominated many veterans to run in safe districts. That was less often the case in past elections, and was less often the case this year among Democrats. Mr. Lynn found that only 15 percent of the Democratic veterans who were challenging incumbents this year were running in what he considered winnable districts. That was half the percentage of Republican challengers running in such races. The center is a new venture created by the university and Mr. Lynn, the founder of a nonprofit group called Veterans Campaign, to train veterans to become involved in politics through lectures, courses and fellowships.