Great stuff (4.00 / 1)

and all the more reason to keep our eyes on State legislatures  for the next three years as well...the GOP redistrictings that led to this situation are reversible with another set of gains for Democrats in state legislative bodies.

Even in states where we do not win absolute majorities or both legislative bodies, it's important to gain ground and have more of a say in the break down 2011-2020 of U.S. Congressional districts in all 50 States.

That's the big long-term prize in American politics.

I think this is extraordinarily important ground for progressives, too.  It's a win win.

a) We push for gains in State legislative bodies
b) If we run progressive or "progressive friendly" candidates for those races we create pressure on dinosaur Democrats already safely in Congress.

Fwiw, I think that the problems in Congress go beyond the marginal seats and Blue or Bush Dogs...I think we also need to have a way to grade Congresspeople on a curve.

There would be some surprising score cards and change in our party if Congresspeople in DC were graded against the relative blueness of their district.

They don't want us to know this stuff, or to pay attention.

I think it's critical that we progressives learn to do field within some of these districts with dinosaur/legacy Democrats who vote more conservatively than their consituents.

There are ways to move these folks...both politically, and out of office if we have to.  If you take a long enough view, there are tremendous opportunities IF we have the skill and organization to work on them.

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by: kid oakland @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 16:03:50 PM CDT

I love the map on page 7 (maps only file) (4.00 / 1)

2006 Party Gains by state -- no red anywhere on the map.

New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

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by: Hopeful in NJ @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 16:18:42 PM CDT

Trends? (0.00 / 0)

Glancing at 1994 on the Wikipedia link, it shows that only 0.9% of the popular vote went to Independents, while your 2006 numbers show a much larger 3.16%. 

In addition to this strong showing by Democrats, could the numbers also show an increase in voting for third parties out of a frustration with both parties?

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by: FreedomDemocrat @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 16:23:28 PM CDT

Analyze it all you want... (0.00 / 0)

...the bottom line is we still ended up with a congress that is sitting on their hands.
  Would like to know how many races were under 1 to 3%
compared to those over 10%.

Clinton in '08. Or give Carter a 2nd term. Vote for Obama!

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by: Joliepoint @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 17:02:56 PM CDT

Results (4.00 / 2)

The Clerk of the House released figures for all 50 states and nationally a couple of weeks ago.  Some of the "independent" votes on that were overstated.  For example, one of the CT Democrats had all his votes listed under a third party "Democrat and Working Party."  That was 150,000 votes right there.

As I have written several times, the results were amazing.  Ten states carried by Bush in 2004 received a Democratic edge in 2006.  They were Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennesse.  We carried Ohio by 210,000 votes in overall House balloting but won just 7 of 18 states.  That included heartbreakers in OH-1, OH-2, and OH-15.  Of course, we also won Michigan easily and got just 6 of 15  seats.

Rove lost the strategic war badly but the 24 hour campaign and the shenannigans won a majority of the local wars and pared 15 or 20 seats from the margin we should have gotten.  I can think of the three seats in New York, three in Ohio, one in PA, one in CT, one in NJ (lost by 2,000 votes due to 3,000 votes cast for the Leave Iraq Now Party), FL-13 (outright stolen), NC-8, CA-4 right off the top of my head and quite a few that at least bordered on competitive.

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by: David Kowalski @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 17:42:19 PM CDT

Leave Iraq Now Party (0.00 / 0)

"lost by 2,000 votes due to 3,000 votes cast for the Leave Iraq Now Party"

Well, that certainly doesn't describe the Democratic position, so I can't fault the voters.

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by: space @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 21:40:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Rahm Emanuel's Bad Judgment (0.00 / 0)

"This means both that our mandate was larger, and that we should have more than 233 seats. Republican gerrymandered maps and poor performance in close elections are the culprit for the latter."

Don't forget to credit the extremely poor resource allocation by DCCC then-head Rahm Emanuel.  He's easily responsible for five to ten of the lost opportunities, by ignoring truly close races with real progressive pickup possibilities.  Those candidates -- Burner, Paccione, Kissell, Brown, and Massa among them -- performed their hearts out.  But the bank they should have shared went to Jennings and Duckworth.

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by: TeddySanFran @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 21:17:46 PM CDT

The Dems did better than that: they won by 56-42%. Here's why. (4.00 / 1)

http://us.share.geoc...

This is the final of three pre-election articles I wrote with Michael Collins (autorank) and Alistair Thompson of SCOOP. The purpose was to quantify the risk of fraud in the 2006 Mid-terms. The analysis forecast that the Democrats would gain control of the House and Senate. It also indicated the House seats and Senate races where fraud was most likely to occur. And extensively documented  voting "anomalies" confirmed that perhaps millions of votes were either uncounted or switched.

The election fraud model projected that the Democrats would win at least 240 House seats, but lose 10-15 to fraud. It correctly forecast that they would gain control of the Senate by winning six GOP-held seats, although they barely won Virginia and Montana. The Democratic Tsunami overcame the fraud in the House and Senate.

There is no longer any doubt that the poll/vote discrepancies were caused by uncounted and switched votes. Evidence of fraud was once again found in the Final National Exit Poll which matched to the recorded vote count with the use of fallacious weightings. The 2006 Final "How Voted in 2004" weights were manipulated just like they were in the 2004 Final "How Voted in 2000".

In 2006, the weights were transformed from 47 Bush/ 45 Kerry at 7pm to 49 Bush/ 43 Kerry at 1pm the next day! This replicated the 41 Bush/39 Gore to impossible 43 Bush/ 37 Gore weight changes in 2004.  The net effect of the change was to cut the Democratic margin in half -from 55-43% to 52-46%! Applying realistic weights to the 7pm NEP (using the 12:22am 2004 NEP) the Democratic margin becomes 56.7-42.1%, exactly matching the 120- Generic poll trend projection! Was it a coincidence or confirmation? You decide.

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by: TruthIsAll @ Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 21:41:23 PM CDT

You're all missing the real story here (0.00 / 0)

IA-1 gave more than 1% of the total vote to the nominee of the Pirate Party.  They don't even have water in Iowa.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Wed Sep 12, 2007 at 09:48:01 AM CDT