This is the eight in a series of diaries depicting the Democratic victory in this year’s midterm elections. Other diaries in this series can be seen here.
Already covered have been New England, NY, NJ, MD, and DE, PA, OH, IN, and Michigan.
Today’s diary will focus on Wisconsin. As always first up are the seat control maps.
2004
2006
Of the 1,852,619 votes cast in the 2006 US House races in Wisconsin, 1,001,254 votes (54%) were cast for Democratic candidates, while 836,054 votes (45.1%) were cast for Republicans. Including unopposed races that Democrats had an 8.9% vote total advantage, a 5.1% improvement over 2004.
2006 vote totals for the the race in the WI-06 are not currently available online, so the numbers above don’t include that district.
2006 Vote Margins
The deepest blue indicates a Democratic vote share over 60%, medium blue 55-60%, light blue 50-55%, pink 45-50%, medium red 40-45%, deep red 40% or less.
Democrat Steve Kagen won in the open seat in the WI-08 defeating Republican State Assembly Speaker John Gard by 6,608 votes (2.4%). This represents a 21.4% surge over the 2004 Democratic vote share (29.8%) in this district. Coming in at over $4 Million , Democrat Steve Kagen spent $1.7 Million of his own money outspending Republican John Gard by over $100,000.
All other races in Wisconsin were won by margins of over 10%.
2006 Vote Gains
The deepest blue indicates a Democratic vote gain of over 10%, medium blue 5-10%, light blue 0-5%, pink 0 to-5%, medium red -5 to -10%, deep red -10% or less.
2006 vote totals for the WI-06 where the Republican went unchallenged are unavailble, and the WI-07 is grayed out because there was no 2004 Republican challenger.
The most impressive vote gain was in the WI-08 as was mentioned above. In the WI-02, there was a 0.4% shift towards the Republican, while Democrats made an 8.4% gain in the WI-02, yielding much large Democratic margin of victory than in 2004. In the Milwaukee suburbs, Democrats made 4.8% and 4% gains in the WI-01 and WI-05 respectively. However, the Republican margin of victory in these districts was over 25% in 2006.
In this series I have created a race tier system that is I will explain in the next few sentences. Tier 0 races are those where the Democratic candidate won by a margin of less than 5%, the presumption being that incumbency grants an advantage of 5-10% that with the fundraising advantage that comes with holding office should be sufficient for these candidates to defend their seats without funding from the party. The assumption that incumbency gives a 5-10% advantage drives the classification of the pickup categories. Tier 1 races are those where the incumbent won by less than 5% in 2006, while tier 2 races are those where Republicans won by less than 10%. It’s really quite simple.
Tier 0
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
WI-08 51.2% 48.8% 2.4% Steve Kagen
Tier 1
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
No races meet the criteria for this tier.
Tier 2
Race D% R% Margin 2006 D Cand.
No races meet the criteria for this tier.
And finally the running totals for the series.
Tier 0 (5)
CT-02, NY-19, NH-1, IN-09, WI-08
Tier 1 (9)
CT-04, NJ-07, NY-25, NY-26, NY-29, OH-2, OH-15, PA-06, MI-07
Tier 2 (4)
OH-01, PA-15, IN-03, MI-09
States Covered
CT, IN, MA, MD,ME, MI, NH, NJ, NY, OH,PA, RI, WI, VT
some of the others. All I have to say is that Kagen is toast if Green runs again. Green was the only Republican to upset an incumbent in 1998, and he won by a 55-45 margin. He’s still very popular here, even if it turned on when he ran again Doyle, but even saying that he still won his district.
He was a Bush loyaist, and had to give back over $450,000.
Plus the fact that he sued the state itself to keep that money, tunred off voters.
His pro-Bush voting record is what sunk him.
He’s gone and waiting on his appointment to Tanzania.
The Wisconsin GOp has slit it’s own throat in 2007.
They delayed a budget, and it cost taxpayers.
They played obstructionist and they are not well liked in Wisconsin.
Kagen, like many of the 2006 freshmen are pretty much immune for another term.
The state will try and rid itself of Perti, Senslessbrainer and Ryan.
Since the 2006 election, Wisconsin has given Bush the LOWEST approval of all 50 states. A whopping 19% approval.
Green is not coming back, Kegen will be re-elected and Doyle is Governor until.
2010, as are our two Dem Senators.
With the Brown County GOP Chairman, Don Fleischman, sitting in office for almost a year, AFTER his arrest for felony child sex crimes is not going to help them in the 8th either.
And you have Frank Lasee trying to arm teachers and students in schools!
That went over like a dead baby.
It wouldn’t surprise me, if the Green supporter is actually one of the new and improved ‘Independents’ that suddenly appeared in 2007.
Just like noone eer voted for Nixon, if asked in 1975.
LOL
It’s kinda of fun watching a party implode.