I see a lot of “aw shucks” sentiments in the comments, and I’m sure it exists elsewhere in the blogosphere surrounding our perceived underwhelming performance down the ticket last night. And I understand that.
Well, it wasn’t the massive landslide that some thought it could have been, but we still did make some very nice gains. And we still have a few undecided races and runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana to talk about.
Let me put it to you this way. Earlier in the year I came back home from the States to take a job with the Alberta Liberal Party to help them get ready for a March election. Every indicator we had said that we’d be making significant gains — in fact, the pundits were even talking about the possibility of us knocking off the incumbent party. And they were doing so with a straight face. Come election day, what happened? To everyone’s surprise, we lost half our seats and all of our relevance. You don’t get a bigger punch in the stomach than that.
When things like that happen to you, I think you learn to find peace with results like last night’s.
I’m going to be making a “Races to Watch” list for both sides when the homework isn’t so hectic over here.
When you guys throw the bums out, you really throw them out. Which year was it that the Conservatives won two ridings in the whole country?
https://www.voterinfo.sbe.virg…
Wow that’s a nailbiter. I really hope we win that one.
Also despite spending millions of dollars Judy Feder got a lower percentage of the vote then waaaaay underfunded Andrea Miller in VA-04.
i think we’re all just noting that this was not a wave going our way – which seemed like the most logical assumption before yesterday. winning is definitely better than losing all the same.
Some things were disappointing to see last night; Alaska especially. I’m bummed about the Minnesota House races. A little nervous about how close Mike Arcuri got to losing in NY-24, bummed about the loss of Nancy Boyda. Sad we didn’t get NJ-07, OH-15 (it appears anyway) or any of the Cuban seats in Miami. Prop 8 was a heartbreaker.
Still, Glenn Nye was a nice surprise, so was Walt Minnick and Frank Kravotil. I’m thrilled about Kay Hagan, Jim Himes, Steve Driehaus, Bobby Bright (even though he’s going to be another Gene Taylor), Mark Schuerer, Gary Peters, Betsy Markey, Dina Titus (whom I adopted as my candidate for ’08), and Eric Massa (FINALLY!). I’m glad Carol Shea-Porter kept her seat, glad also we didn’t lose Kanjorski (guess Barletta’s anti-immigrant stance didn’t hurt as much as I was concerned it would).
And in the Presidential, hey, we carried Indiana! INDIANA!
I can’t wait to see the Presidential results by Congressional District.
The specter of Karl Rove’s divisive politics still hangs above our nation. With bitter partisan divides comes increased difficulty of eeking out wins in “enemy turf”.
had held a gun to my head and demanded to know how many seats I thought we’d actually seats we’d net in the House this year, I probably would have said 26 or 27, which may seem instinctually low given the tsunami we thought we were facing in the days leading up to the election, but you’ve got to take into account that you’re not going to pick up all your projected Tossups under any circumstances, no matter how optimistic you’re feeling.
In 2006 I was following Chris Bowers’ projections most closely, and after it was over, I noticed that even though he did a great job projecting on the whole, we still wound up picking up only about 75% of his Lean Ds, 50% of his Tossups, and 25% of his Lean Rs. My decision to personally settle on 26-27 was based on treating those ratios as kind of a rule of thumb, and weirdly enough, if you apply them to our own final House ratings this year, we came really close to the same ratio. (I.e. we got either 9 or 10 of our 11 Lean D pickups correct, whiffing only AK-AL. And we got 10, possibly 9 or 11, of our 22 Tossup pickups correct. And we picked up 3 of the 13 Lean Rs (or 2, if VA-05 goes the wrong way).)
Anyway, we’re at 23 as of this moment, and if we can hold MD-01 and VA-05, work some magic in OH-15 or WA-08, and win the December race in LA-04, well, we’re right there at 27. That’s not chicken feed (especially when you add that on top of 30 last time)!
from last night:
Coleman
(Incumbent)
1,211,629
42%
Franken
1,210,921
42%
Barkley
437,410
15%
currently on CNN:
Coleman
(Incumbent)
1,211,629
42%
Franken
1,211,167
42%
Barkley
437,377
15%
Nationally we gained 11 State Senate seats to bring our majority to 1025-891 and added 90 State House seats to bring our majority to 3054-2330.
As far as chambers flipping:
Pickups (5)
Delaware House
Nevada Senate
New York Senate
Ohio House
Wisconsin House
Losses (2)
Montana Senate
Oklahoma Senate
Originally it appeared we lost the Tennessee House, but we did in fact hang on by a seat.
None of the two republican chamber takeovers will have much role in congressional redistricting in 2012, but the NY-Senate, NV-House, OH-House and WI-House all give us big leg up in 2012. We now have total control of redistricting in New York and Wisconsin and if we take the Nevada Governor’s race in 2010 we will control the map in 2012 there. A good night in the states.
Trauner I can see continuing on with entrepreneur business and school board work, Wulsin with her dermatology practice, and such. What about people like Nancy Boyda and Tom Allen?
I’m going to be an optimist today!! There were a few disappointing things here in Indiana last night — Jill Long Thompson’s dismal showing in the governor’s race, we narrowly lost the Attorney General’s race (although at least the Republican isn’t God-awful), and Mike Montagano’s showing in the 3rd district was very disappointing.
But, our three freshman Democrats were easily re-elected. Baron Hill won by 20 points and 60,000 votes, hopefully burying Mike Sodrel forever! We kept our majority in the Indiana House. It was 51-49 before the election. Right now it is 51-47, with two races left to be called/headed for recounts. And Jon Elrod, who ran against Andre Carson in the special election for Congress earlier this year lost his seat in the General Assembly.
And most importantly, Barack Obama carried Indiana!!! I wasn’t sure I’d see the day any Democrat, let alone a black liberal Democrat, would win here. And I’m especially proud of the city of Indianapolis. Four years ago, it voted Democratic for the first time in a generation in a Presidential election — Bill Clinton never carried Marion County, and John Kerry won it by one point. Last night, Obama got 65% of the vote in Indy. Statewide, Obama got 45% of the white vote — in a state that has had a lot of problems and issues with race, both in the past and present.
So that’s what I’ll take away from this election most of all!
It’s not so much as the high expectation people had as oppose to seeing us actually being “pushed back”, that gave me the most frustration.
Assuming recount stays +600 for McCain. Ralph Nader got +1,500 votes. It was a lot of fun trying to keep up with the races with everyone last night but it made work much harder today. On to putting in a DOJ challenge to Bloomy’s 3rd term. I’ll check in to see updated race results here – the knowledge was better here for the most part than the TV broadcasts it seemed like we were 15-30 min ahead of the news at a minimum last night.
here in New Mexico, we won all the U.S. House seats by 10 percent or more, may have won three state Senate seats, had Tom Udall reach 61% in the Senate race.
Oh, and Obama won by a comfortable margin.
It was a good night.
Next Maine Governor. His popularity is high, he was just in over his head against Collins. I say he runs for Governor in 2010 and probably wins.
Ideally Interior, maybe Agriculture.
I’m not sure what the optics of putting a one-term wonder in the cabinet are, but if Bush could pack his cabinet with defeated Republicans in 2000, Obama can afford one.