Tag: 2006 Elections

This is the sixth in a series of diaries depicting the Democratic victory in this year’s midterm elections.

Already covered have been New England, NY, NJ, MD, and DE, PA, and Ohio.

Today’s diary will focus on my Indiana, my home state, and will be a bit larger than usual for that reason.  As always first up are the seat control maps.

2004

2006

Of the  1,641,726 votes cast in the 2006 US House races in Indiana, 798,322 votes (48.5%) were cast for Democratic candidates, while  821,661 votes (50%) were cast for Republicans.  Statwide this represents a 7.3% shift to Democrats from the 2004 US House vote. Democrats went from holding 2 seats (22.2%) with 41.3% of the vote in 2004, to holding 5 seats (55.5%) with 48.5% of the vote in 2006. Compared this to Ohio where Democrats took 52.4% of the vote yet won only 38.9% of the state’s congressional seats.  The key difference is who controlled state government in 2001.  

In Indiana Democrats drew the maps, while in Ohio Republicans where the ones who drew the lines. The sad truth is if Democrats hadn’t been packed into the IN-08 in anticipation of creating a super safe seat for a prominent Democrat who never ran, we probably could have taken another seat by drawing districts that packed Republicans into super Republican seats in the Indianapolis suburbs.

Voter Turnout by County, Indiana 2006 General

This map shows deviation from the statewide turnout at 37%
The darkest shade of red indicates a turnout of 10% or more below the state average, medium red 10%-5%, pink less than 5% below, light blue less than 5% above, medium blue less than 10% above, dark blue more than 10% over the state average.

As the map shows turnout was strongest in the IN-08 and IN-02 where Democrats defeated Repubican incumbents, and weakest in Lake County, a Democractic stronghold, and Marion county where Julia Carson was faced blowback from revealing her opponent’s police record for domestic abuse and voting machine problems that led to some precincts not opening for several hours.  Given the nature of the economy in Indianapolis, voters were most likely disnefranchised because they were unable to vote before their 8-9 AM start time at work.  This may have contributed to the extremely narrow defeat (7 votes, pending recount) of incumbent Democratic State Representative Ed Mahern to an up start Republican challenger in HD-97 on Indianapolis’s south side.  Especially ironic is that Mahern is the man who was in charge of drawing the Congressional and state House maps in 2001.  He did a good job, and even more so the nameless staffer who made our victory in 2006 possible with good maps.

Looking at our 3 victories in Indiana we see that for Congressional races, the Hoosier state is a swing state.

In the IN-02, Democrat Joe Donelly defeated Republican incument Chris Chocola by 15,213 votes (7.9%), a 9.4 % improvement over the share of the vote Donelly took in 2004.

In the IN-08, Democrat Brad Ellsworth, former Vanderbugh county (Evansville) sherriff, blew away Republican incument John Hostetler winning by 45,593 votes (21.4%), a 16.1% improvement over the share the 2004 Democratic candidate took.  The next time Hostettler gets the bright idea to take a gun onto a plane, I suppose he’ll get a gloved hand up his ass like the rest of us would if we were that fucking arrogant.

In the IN-09, Baron Hill is the once again Democratic representative, taking back his seat from Republican incumbent Mike Sodrel with a 9,734 vote margin (4.4%), a 1% improvement over his performance in 2004.  You can thank the Libertarian party for this one.  If not for the 9954 votes taken by the Libertarian candidate, Hill would almost certainly have lost.  This is why we need to focus less on pretending that Democrats are Libertarians, and recognize them for what they are.  Useful idiots.  I’m all for supporting Libertarian candidates running against Republican incumbents, because when the hard truth is revealed and Republican voters realize their candidates are arrogant and incompetent the Libertarians will be there to give them a way to vote without giving the Republican a vote.  Useful idiots, enough said.

The following map shows Democratic 2006 gains over their 2004 Democratic performance in the district (in % terms), improvements of less than 5% will be displayed in light blue, under 10% in the darker blue, and over 10% in the darkest blue.  Republican gains will be shown in the same manner, with the light red signifying a gain of less than 5% and so on.

Looking more closely at the margin of victory in 2006 races,      Democratic defends and pickup opportunities emerge, the following map displays the margin of victory in 2006 races.  The deepest blue represents and Democratic margin of victory over 10%, the medium color represent more than 5%, while the lightest blue indicates that the Democratic candidate won by less than 5%.  Corresponding measures of Republican victory margins display progressively darker shades of red at the same intervals.

What emerges is a map to guide our 2008 strategy. 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.

IN-09     50.0    45.5   4.4       Baron Hill

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.

IN-03     45.7    54.3    8.6      Dr. Tom Hayhurst    

Before I close for the day, I’d like to give you a peek into some deeper measures that take alot of time and effort to calculate.  First, I’d like to dispel a Kossack myth.  

Presidential Vote≠Party Vote

This has to be the single worst myth I see circulating here, and it’s incredibly destructive because it fuels a mentality that we can’t compete in districts that voted for President Bush.  Ignoring that many indepedent voters who go for local Democrats are turned off when the Democratic party gives them the scion of an elite East Coast family that doesn’t know to carry his own fucking bird out of the forest but does windsurf.

Beyond that there’s a deeper phenomena at work here.  The Presidential race is the single most salient race in the the US, most voters have at least some clue to the positions of the candidate and th principal determinant of vote choice is the person and not the party.  Because voters are given lots of free inforation about the candidates that they can’t help but come into contact with they know who they are voting for (or against).  Downticket most voters have no friggin clue what the the state auditor does, let alone what the relevant positions are.  The have no idea who they are voting for, they use the party id to decide.  This is why this is the most relevant measure of base partisanship, and why the Cook Report PVI is deeply flawed.  This tells us how voters will vote if they know nothing about the candidates other than their names, which many voters do well into October.

I’ve constructed a measure of base partisanship using 2006 Indiana election data at the county level.  The measure, 3DMEAN, is the mean of the Democratic % in the Auditor, Secretary of State, and Treasurer races.  The state as a whole has a base Democratic parisanship of 47%.  To keep things simple I’ve used the same color coding I used on the margin maps. The darkest shade of red indicates a Democratic base partisanship of less than 40%, medium red 40-45%, pink 45-50%, light blue 50-55%, medium blue 55-60%, dark blue more than 60%.

Top 5 Democratic Counties

CTY          County Seat    3DMEAN

Lake         Crown Point           67%
Vermillion   Newport        67%
Perry        Tell City      66%
Sullivan     Sullivan       63%
Scott        Scottsburg     61%

Bottom 5 Democratic Counties

CTY          County Seat    3DMEAN

Boone        Lebanon        28%
Hamilton     Noblesvilee    28%
Kosciusko    Warsaw         30%
Hancock      Greenfield     32%
Montgomery   Crawfordsville 34%

From this two major phenomena emerge.  Much to the suprise of non-Hoosier, the Democratic credentials of rural Southern Indiana emerge, while the ring of death that surrounds Indianapolis and consumed Fort Wayne attacs the idea that Democrats can compete in the suburbs but not in rural America.  Another big suprise for many people is just how much Democratic strength there is in the IN-06 where two light blue counties (Madison/Anderson and Delaware/Muncie represent around half the registered voters in the district.  And unlike the deep red in other areas, the other counties of the IN-06 lean GOP by less than 5%.  However, Democratic candidates have consisently underperformed here as a result of low name recognition and low funding.

Below is a map detailing the deviation between Congressional vote percentages and the 3DMEAN, showing the degree to which the Democratic Congressional candidate under or overperformed the county base Democratic partisanship.  Dark red is -10% or more, medium red -5% to-10%, light red 0 to -5%, light blue to +5%, medium blue +5 to +10%, and dark blue +10% or more.

Democrats overperformed in most of the districts we won as well as the IN-03, and IN-04, while they underperformed in the IN-05, IN-06, and IN-09.  Underperformance in the IN-05, and IN-06 can be discounted by noting that Democratic challenegers were extremely poorly funded in these areas.  In the IN-06 Barry Welsh was outspent more than 20 to 1 by Mike Pence.  What is truly disspointing is the piss poor performance of Baron Hill in the IN-09 where he underperformed in almost all of the counties.  2006 was an anti-incumbent wave in Indiana, and it nearly cost Julia Carson and Baron Hill their elections.  Hill represented his district for 6 years before being defeated in 2004.  Hill’s problem is that even after spending more than a million dollars he can’t get Democrats to vote for him. For this reason it’s entirely plausible than Hill will need to be kept alive by the party in 2008.

On a happier note, I want to point out that in contrast to being a surge that we can’t match in 2008, the divergence between Democratic partisanship and performance measures in the IN-06, and the close election this year in the IN-03 show that we have room to grow.  During the early 1990s both areas were represented by Democrats Phil Sharp, and Jill Long, respectively.  What we’ve done is 2006 in Indiana is take us back to the place we were in 2000, if we keep pressing we can go back to where we were in 1992.

And finally the running totals for the series.

Tier 0

CT-02, NY-19, NH-1, IN-09

Tier 1

CT-04, NJ-07, NY-25, NY-26, NY-29, OH-2, OH-15, PA-06,

Tier 2

OH-01, PA-15, IN-03

States Covered

CT, IN, MA, MD,ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH,PA, RI, VT

We, the grassroots, asked for a full slate of races for the 2006 cycle. In their enthusiasm a bunch of candidates jumped into races all over the US without the preparation that normally would precede such an effort.

Right now the average Congressional Race costs around $800,000 and our people raised, most of them….the real Grassrooters, a tiny fraction of that amount.

They fought hard. In some cases they came close even on the tiniest of budgets. Most of the candidates that came into the War….and that’s what a campaign is…a War…lost. Remember we only picked up 28 seats with a couple still in contest.

A bunch of these candidates ended their campaigns in debt. Some of them more serious than others. Since I had one candidate in the race I know his numbers and they aren’t pretty. I know two more than are more modest.

But the point is that these people came into the Field because we asked them to do just that…they came to the War and fought for our ideals and theirs.

Now I suggest we need to help them with their campaign debt. Many intend to make a run next time and it’s really hard to get your feet on the ground when you are still making payments on your previous campaign.

We can’t rely on PAC’s or Move On or anyone but ourselves.

I propose that the candidates with debt let me know that reality and then we can build an ActBlue page for the entire list. Like the Peace Team, a person could make a donation to the entire list which is divided evenly or directly to one or more individually.

But I think we owe it to these brave souls to at least try to help them retire this debt.

I would value communication from candidates at this address and thoughts from all on the idea.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

A couple days ago, I posted about a new blog I am starting with the help of others. It’s called Progressive Wave, and our stated goal is clear: we will be blogging about, in the form of primarily citizen journalism with some traditional blogging (hard to make it down to Washington, D.C., for example), our new representatives and senators in Congress. As of right now, we have people who will be blogging for us in the following districts and states: AZ-08, PA-07, PA-08, CA-11, KY-03, NY-19, NY-20, and VA-Sen. We have had others express interest in IA-01 and CT-02 as well, but I do not have concrete commitments for them. Even if your district (or one you’d be interested in) is already covered, please feel free to blog for us – the more we can spread the load around within a district, the better it works out for all of us.

Below, you’ll find a general description of what Progressive Wave is all about. I hope you can help us out. Thanks!

It’s great to see citizen journalism in action. A project here at Daily Kos is picking up steam – where we ‘adopt’ a congressional committee and keep tabs on their progress. It’s a great idea, and by all means one that we should encourage; after all, a democracy thrives when its citizens participate actively within it.

Before the election I was thinking of taking a similar principle and applying it to our newly-elected Congresspersons and Senators in the U.S. Congress. Many of our newly-elected representatives come from extremely close races (such as Patrick Murphy in PA-08 or Joe Courtney in CT-02), or they are in areas that will make it a challenge for them to be re-elected every time they are up (Nick Lampson in TX-22 or Nancy Boyda in KS-02). While the Netroots-endorsed list has only included challengers, it’s inevitable that we will have to begin defending our incumbents, beginning in 2008.

And that’s where we come in.

The project I’ve been working on is entitled The Progressive Wave. Our slogan is ‘Not left, not right, but forward’. In the end, progressives of any stripe are about progress, and that is what our new representatives have a chance to do in Washington. In a sense, I view TPW as a step forward for the blogosphere as well. One of the things I learned about blogging firsthand about the CT-Sen race and the PA-08 race is that citizen journalism is incredibly useful tool for informing the blogosphere at large about the actual circumstances on the ground as it pertains to a race. No longer do we have to rely on traditional media sources for our information, but we can get an unfiltered view of what is occurring directly from the source.

What do I hope to accomplish with TPW? One thing I hope is that we can keep track of all our newly-elected representatives in their travails – whether it be those who held safe seats for us, such as Amy Klobachar in MN-Sen, or those who won by squeakers, such as Jon Tester in MT-Sen. We’ll be keeping a birds-eye view of the legislation they support, critiquing the speeches they give, and also acting as a sort of ‘accountability’ check on Democratic politicians. We don’t want to see those who represent the best and brightest of our future to become disappointments (a junior senator from Illinois comes to mind, at least for me). By informally tracking what they do – as well as attending events when they are in-state and writing about it – you have the power to keep the rest of us up to date. And come campaign time, we will be a veritable source of firsthand information from the ground about the race. Especially for House races, which occur every 2 years, it is paramount that we can report back what is occurring within the district.

What does it require from any of you? Not much, aside from a little of your time. I am aiming to have as many bloggers as possible join the project; we have somewhere around 35-40 House districts that need to be covered, as well as 8 senators (PA, RI, MT, MN, MD, OH, MO, VA) that will also need to be written about. After that, how much participation you’d like to put in is completely up to you. Personally, as I was quite involved in the PA-08 race, I will be attempting to speak with Congressman Murphy occasionally about the latest from Washington. I also hope to speak to some of his staff from the campaign about the field operation and the communications department. I consider this to be an ‘open-source’ blogging project in that there is no set or defined style one has to go about covering their representatives. You make the blog in your image.

That being said, we still need a lot of bloggers. I currently have a few people lined up so far for the following: NY-19, NY-20, AZ-05, AZ-08, VA-Sen, and CA-11. That being said, you can definitely blog those, along with any others you may be interested in. The only requirement of sorts is that it would be preferable that you live in-district, or if not, live within a reasonable distance such that you are not blogging about an area which you are unfamiliar with. If you are interested, please join our group over at DFALink. Our current working comments section can be found here. If you are unable to blog about the races, I’d appreciate any sort of technical support, particularly in the area of graphic design.

Ultimately, this is a project that, at its core, is about local politics. But in the age of the blogosphere, being connected to the Internet is incredibly important. The Progressive Wave is all about supporting our politicians who will move us forward in D.C., but it’s also about taking the blogosphere to the next level – citizen journalism. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

(From the diaries. I like maps. – promoted by James L.)

This is the second in a series of diaries graphically depicting the Democratic victory in this year’s midterm elections. The first diary in this series covering New England may be seen here.

Today we will be looking at Democratic gains in New York, both in the city and upstate.  First, the money shot, maps detailing simple change in district control, because no seats changes hand in the NYC area the city inset will only be displayed after the fold under the 2006 results.

2004

2006

NYC

Of 3,561,072 votes cast in 2006 US House races in New York,  2,285,020 (64.2%) were cast for Democrats, while 1,266,295 (35.2%) were cast for Republicans.

Democrats took the open seat in the NY-24 (Utica), with Arcuri (D) defeating Meier (R) by 16,469 votes, 53.8% D to 45.2% R.

Democrats defeated Republican incumbents in the NY-19 and NY-20. In the NY-19 (Orange/Putnam County), Democrat John Hall beat Republican incumbent Sue Hall by 13,642 votes votes, 51.2% D to 48.8% R. In the NY-20 (Upper Hudson valley) Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand defeated Republican incumbent John Sweeney by 13,642 votes, 53.1% D to 46.9% R.

The following map shows Democratic gains over their 2004 Democratic performance in the district (in % terms), improvements of less than 5% will be displayed in light blue, under 10% in the darker blue, and over 10% in the darkest blue. Republican gains will be shown in the same manner, with the light red signifying a gain of less than 5% and so on. Races that were contested in neither year will be displayed in gray.

The single greatest Democratic gain in a race contested by Republicans in 2004 was in the NY-27 (South Buffalo) where Democratic incumbent Brian Higgins surged by 25.9% over his 2004 performance.  Democratic candidates in the NY-19, NY-20, and NY-24 all improved upon 2004 Democratic performance by more than 10%. Candidates in the NY-1, NY-3, NY-20, NY-22, and NY-29 all improved upon 2004 Democratic performance by over 5%.  Again, the races coded in the light blue showed less than 5% improvement over 2004.  The only red spot was in the NY-18 where Democratic incumbent Nita Lowey saw her vote share drop from 81.3% in 2004 to a mere 70.3% this year. This is the only kind of victory Republicans could muster in the Empire state.

Looking more closely at the margin of victory in 2006 races & the scale of Democratic victory in this midterm, and pickup opportunities emerge, the following map displays the margin of victory in 2006 races. The deepest blue represents and Democratic margin of victory over 10%, the medium color represent more than 5%, while the lightest blue indicates that the Democratic candidate won by less than 5%. Corresponding measures of Republican victory margins display progressively darker shades of red at the same intervals.

What emerges is a map to guide our 2008 strategy. Beginning with this edition of the series I will be producing a tier system for 2008 races based upon the results of the 2006 returns.  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%.

Tier 0

Race      D%      R%     Margin    2006 D Cand.

NY-19     51.2    48.8   6.1       John Hall

Tier 1

Race      D%      R%     Margin    2006 D Cand.

NY-25     49.1    50.9   1.9       Dan Maffei

NY-29     48.5    51.5   3.1       Eric Massa

NY-26     48.1    51.9   3.7       Jack Davis

Tier 2

Race      D%      R%     Margin    2006 D Cand.

No races meet the criteria for this tier.

While our one defend NY-19 is near NYC in Orange/Putnam counties, the 3 2008 Dem Pickup opportunties are in Western New York with the NY-25 in the Rochester/Syracuse area the NY-26 is between Rochester and Buffalo, and the NY-29 is immediately to the south of that. Jack Davis self funded his campaign run on a pro-fair trade message, while Massa and Maffei were relative newcomers to politics.  (New Yorkers please correct me if I got this wrong.)

Building upon the Tier 0 race in the NH-01 and the Tier 1 race in the CT-04, this means that my running total shows two Tier 0 races to defend in 2008 and four Tier 1 pickup opportunities.  I strongly believe that if we want to win we need to maintain our infrastructure in these close races. If our 2006 candidates want to run in 2008, absent a compelling reason to challenge them in the primary.  And if we know who the 2008 candidate is going to be we need a continuing netroots effort to give these candidates a running start on 2008. In the form of seed money, the netroots can press forward on our 2006 Democratic gains defining the battlefield for 2008.  We must not allow the Republicans to define the battlefield for the next cycle, and only by providing minimial funding to allow the candidate to retain a single staffer to fundraise and keep the infrastructure intact can we make this work.

This is a logical continuation of the 50 State Strategy, by keeping the infrasructure intact there’s no need to start all over in 2008, and that will allow campaigns to be more efficient in their use of funds. If we can avoid the first spending the first $25,000-$50,000 needed to reconstitute the campaign infrastructure in each cycle we will be able press further into Republican held districts.  Our goal must  be to contain the  Republicans to their base in the Deep South, no Copperhead must go unchallenged.

Somewhat obscured by the hoopla of the Democrats picking up 6 seats in the Senate and 29+ seats (at this point) in the House of Representatives is the deep blue surge by Democrats in state legislatures around the country. Using data from a number of sources including the DLCC, Wikipedia, and various news outlets, I’ve managed to construct a detailed breakdown of Democratic and Republican gains in state legislatures this past Tuesday. This chart isn’t 100% accurate–some races have yet to be called–so if you have a correction or an update, please let me know so I can amend these totals accordingly. Additionally, the situation in Montana is a bit tenuous. While the Republicans did manage to make enough gains in the state Senate (including, I might add, an easy pick-up of Jon Tester’s open seat) to pull even in the body, one Republican Senator, Sam Kitzenberg, is considering defecting to the Democratic Party or becoming an independent depending on the outcome of a House race recount. Kitzenberg, an admirer of Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, says he wants to ensure that the Governor has a “foothold somewhere, either in the Senate or the House”. So look for Montana’s totals to change accordingly once the dust is settled.

By my initial count, Democrats netted 268 pick-ups in state Houses and 60 pick-ups in state Senates. Republican pick-ups? A lowly eight in state House races and eight in state Senate races. Democrats won enough seats to take control of the following chambers: the Indiana House, the New Hampshire House and Senate, the Iowa House and Senate, the Minnesota House, the Michigan House, the Wisconsin Senate, and the Oregon House. See below for the full carnage:

State	Senate	Margin	House	Margin
Alabama	R+2	23D-12R	N/C	62D-43R
Alaska	D+1	11R-9D	D+3	23R-17D
Arizona	N/C	18R-12D	D+7	32R-28D
Arkansas	N/C	27D-8R	D+3	75D-25R
California	N/C	24D-15R-1?	N/C	42D-32R
Colorado	D+2	20D-15R	D+4	39D-26R
Connecticut	D+1	25D-11R	D+6	105D-46R
Delaware	N/C	13D-8R	D+3	22R-18D
Florida	N/C	26R-14D	D+7	78R-42D
Georgia	N/C	34R-22D	R+2	105R-74D-1?
Hawaii	N/C	20D-5R	D+2	43D-8R
Idaho	N/C	28R-7D	D+6	51R-19D
Illinois	D+5	37D-22R	?	65D-49R-4?
Indiana	N/C	33R-17D	D+3	51D-49R
Iowa	D+4	29D-21R	D+5	54D-45R
Kansas	N/C	30R-10D	D+6	77R-48D
Kentucky	N/C	21R-16D	D+5	61D-39R
Louisiana	N/C	24D-15R	D+1	63D-41R
Maine	R+1	18D-17R	D+15	89D-60R
Maryland	D+1	34D-13R	D+10	108D-33R
Massachusetts	D+1	35D-5R	D+4	141D-18R-1?
Michigan	D+1	19R-17D-2?	D+6	58D-52R
Minnesota	D+6	44D-23R	D+20	86D-48R
Mississippi	N/C	27D-23R-2?	N/C	75D-46R-1?
Missouri	D+2	21R-13D	D+5	91R-71D
Montana	R+2	25D-25R	?	49D-50R-1?
Nevada	D+1	11R-10D	D+1	27D-15R
New Hampshire	D+6	14D-10R	D+84	234D-156R
New Jersey	N/C	22D-18R	N/C	49D-31R
New Mexico	N/C	24D-18R	N/C	42D-28R
New York	N/C	34R-27D-1?	N/C	105D-45R
North Carolina	D+2	31D-19R	D+5	68D-52R
North Dakota	D+6	26R-21D	D+6	61R-33D
Ohio	D+1	21R-12D	D+7	53R-46D
Oklahoma	R+2	24D-24R	D+1	56R-45D
Oregon	N/C	17D-11R	D+4	31D-29R
Pennsylvania	N/C	29R-21D	D+7	101D-101R-1?
Rhode Island	N/C	33D-5R	D+1	61D-14R
South Carolina	N/C	26R-20D	N/C	72R-50D-2?
South Dakota	D+5	20R-15D	D+1	50R-20D
Tennessee	D+1	17R-16D	N/C	53D-46R
Texas	R+1	20R-11D	D+5	81R-69D
Utah	N/C	21R-8D	N/C	56R-19D
Vermont	D+2	23D-7R	D+10	93D-49R
Virginia	N/C	23R-17D	N/C	57R-40D
Washington	D+6	32-17R	D+7	62D-36R
West Virginia	D+2	23D-11R	D+4	72D-28R
Wisconsin	D+4	18D-15R	D+7	53R-46D
Wyoming	N/C	23R-7D	D+3	43R-17D
Net	D+52		D+260

A pretty amazing breakdown, isn’t it? Take Minnesota, for example. Over the past two election cycles, the DFL has managed to reverse an 81-53 Republican majority in the state House into a lopsided 86-48 Democratic majority. Similarly, the Democratic tidal wave in New Hampshire is nothing short of historical and breathtaking, with Democrats controlling both bodies of the state legislature for the first time since the late 1800s, if I’m not mistaken!

Why is this important? Aside from some legislatures controlling congressional redistricting powers, and aside from the political capital to deliver on Democratic priorities on the state and local level, Democratic gains in state legislatures are crucial for building the “farm team” for higher offices. Just take some of the gains made in Congress this cycle, and look at their political resumes. Chris Murphy? State Senator. Jon Tester? State Senator. Charlie Wilson? State Senator. Ed Perlmutter? State Senator. Joe Courtney (fingers-crossed)? State Representative. The list goes on.

Much of the credit for the blue surge should be given to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, whose partnership with Actblue.com helped activate online fundraising for candidates in state legislative races across the country. They helped such candidates raise around $250,000 online–in a very abbreviated time frame. With Actblue.com now operational in time for the full 2008 cycle, the power of online fundraising for state legislative candidates has just started to be tapped.

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of diaries examining the results of the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm election.  Particular attention will be given to the margin of victory to locate GOP targets and Democratic defends for 2008.

Today we will be looking at the Democratic takeover of New England

2004

2006

More after the flip.

Perhaps more striking than Democrats taking 6 House seats from Republican incubments in New England is just how close (6645 votes) Democrats came to a shutout taking the CT-04 from moderate Republican Christ Shays.  In Massachusetts Republicans didn’t even bother to run candidate in 6 of 10 House races, and elsewhere relatively few races were close.  Below I have created a shaded map to indicate vote margin, both Red and Blue are divided into 3 shades.  The lightest shade of red or blue indicates that the races was decided by less than 5%, the medium shade is less than 10%, and the darkest shade indicates the victory was over 10%.

Looking through races contested in both 2004 and 2006 (and excluding VT-AL due it being held by Independent Bernie Sanders in 2004) a clearer picture of the wave that swept Democrats into seats previously held by Republicans can be seen.

The single largest vote gain (in % terms) by a Democrat between 2004 and 2006 was in the CT-05 where the Democratic vote share surged 34% from 38.2% in 2004 to 56.2% in 2006.  In the CT-02 the Democratic candidate still hold a narrow lead, however the race has not yet been called.  In the CT-04, Chris Shays had a near (career) death experience, winning his race by a mere 3.2%.  As the lone remaining Republican in New England he should be a target for Democratic defection, with active efforts to woo him.  And if he won’t make the change, then he needs to end up like Lincoln Chaffee.

In New Hampshire Democratic candidate eked out narrow victories.  In the NH-01, the margin of victory was 3.1%  a 29.9% gain over the 36.6% showing of the Democratic candidate in 2004.  In the NH-02, Paul Hodes’s margin of victory was 6.1%, a 26.2% improvement over that 2004 showing at 38.2% for the Democratic candidate.

Looking forward to 2008, the CT-04, the sole remaining Republican seat in New England should be a pickup target if Shays doesn’t have the sense to do what’s right.  Democratic victories in the CT-05, NH-01, NH-02, and VT-AL will have to be defended because they all are likely Republican pickup targets with 2006 victory margins under 10 points.  Once the status of the CT-02 has been resolved we’ll know whether this is a seat that we will need to defend or a pickup opportunity.

For all the talk of a Solid South with Republicans dominating, nothing comes close to the level of victory that Democrats have achieved in New England.  New England Republicans at the federal level are on the brink of extinction, if Democratic candidates who took Republican seats concentrate on constituent service to build up an incumbency advantage we will be able to speak of a total realignment in New England.

That’s it for New England.  My next diary will focus on New York.   The ETA for that should be sometime next week.

I’m off to get some badly-needed studying in for the evening.  Please feel free to use this space to discuss the ballot counts and re-counts in tight races: CT-02, FL-13, OH-02, OH-15, NC-08, GA-12, NM-01, WY-AL, and WA-08.  With a million things going on this week, I haven’t been able to find out why the ballot count is going so slowly in WA-08.  Can anyone tell me?

And an NC-08 note: from what I’ve been told, there are 1492 provisional ballots left to be counted.  Kissell is down by 450 votes right now.  By my math, Larry’s going to have to win 2/3rds of those provisionals to squeak this one out.  I’m making an assumption here that provisionals tend to lean Democratic because they’re probably cast by people with ID problems or those who move around a lot (younger, more mobile voters).  But I can’t guarantee that that’s the case here.  For what it’s worth, Larry Kissell issued a statement this morning saying that he was confidant that he would win once these outstanding ballots were counted.

You can also discuss anything else election ’06-related here.

Today is a great day. Democrats have regained majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time since losing control in 1994. However, we would be remiss if we did not analyze everything about this election, both what went right and what went wrong. So, stealing a methodology that has been done over, over and over again, here is my list.

THE GOOD – I am really bummed that some of our best and most exciting candidates lost. Tammy Duckworth, Larry Grant, Scott Kleeb and Gary Trauner would have been terrific members of congress. However, even their losses demonstrated how great Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy was. These races were in Henry Hyde’s district in Illinois, Idaho, Nebraska and Wyoming. Not exactly Democratic strongholds. Yet we lost these seats by a TOTAL of 36,579 votes. An amazing result in its own right.

Since the Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a movie theme, I will continue along those lines. The key phrase from the great baseball film “Field of Dreams” is a great way to describe Dean’s 50-state strategy. “If you build it, they will come.” First of all, if you put credible candidates on the ballot, people will come out and vote for them. Some of them will win, and some of them will lose, but you won’t know unless you get the candidates. We could have easily given up on Hyde’s district but we didn’t. We found a terrific candidate whose integrity and ideas simply forced people to vote for her. She created Democratic voters where there hadn’t been any before.

By finding these candidates you also force the Republicans to spend money. If you build the Democratic Party everywhere, the Republicans will be forced to come and spend their money to protect their position. Every dollar spent in Idaho, Nebraska and Wyoming is a dollar not spent in New Jersey, Missouri, and Florida. The viability of the candidacies of Duckworth, grant, Kleeb, and Trauner forced the Republicans to spend money in Red districts making it easier for Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy to win their blue districts.

THE BAD – I hate to focus on the negative on what is such a great day. However, if we ignore these things we will be worse of for it. Chris Shays is still a Member of Congress. Heather Wilson is still a Member of Congress. Jim Gerlach is still a member of Congress. These are blue seats that we absolutely had to win. There is no reason with the national climate that these three were able to hang on.

It probably shouldn’t, but it worries me that so many of our victories came from 2nd, 3rd, and no-tier races. I am ecstatic that wife-beating John Sweeney was shown the door, but how hard are we going to have to fight to keep NY-20 in the blue column. Florida 16 sent Mark Foley a message, but is Tim Mahoney going to be anything more than a 2 year Congressman? In perhaps the most favorable atmosphere a political party could hope for, we lost more close races than we won. John Doolittle, Marilyn Musgrave, and Jon Porter are all still in Congress. If the Democratic message isn’t resonating with these constituencies in the current atmosphere, we need to take a long hard look at why. We would be remiss if we celebrated the victories of John Hall, Jerry McNerny, Jason Altmire, Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter without analyzing the failings of Diane Farrel, Patricia Madrid, Lois Murphy, Charlie Brown, Angie Paccione, and Tessa Hafen.

THE UGLY – I try to stay as naive as possible and pretend that elections really are about contrasting ideas. When I was working on “The Hill” I really thought that for the most part people on both sides of the Aisle were doing their civic duty. They really believed in the message they were trying to sell to the American people. But this election has disillusioned me of that notion, perhaps for good.

Robo-calls and election shenanigans demonstrate that politics is not about having a conversation with the electorate. It’s not about laying out contrasting visions for America’s future. Politics has become such a win at all costs endeavor that where the message was not resonating with the voters the solution became suppressing the vote. The American people deserve better. If, as the media and the Republicans claimed, the Democrats had no message, than there was no reason for the Republicans to resort to dirty tricks. But it turned out to be the Republicans whose message the people rejected. And as poll after poll suggested this, the Republicans turned their attention away from holding a political discourse to intimidating and lying to voters. They Republicans lost, they lost ugly, and I just hope they didn’t drag down the notion of a national political discourse with them.

POSTSCRIPT – No movie themed post would be complete without the promise of a sequel, and that is what we need to work for. We need a sequel that is even better than the original, which movie fans know is rare. We need a sequel where we fix the problems with our message and/or operation that caused us to lose winnable seats in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and all over the country. We need a sequel that finds more and better candidates than we ran in 2o06. We need a sequel that talks to the American people in such a way that they demand a trilogy.

So go and out and celebrate tonight. We deserve to revel in our success. But we have the responsibility to govern now, and we have the responsibility to do the people’s work so that they keep demanding another sequel.

Cross-posted at Future Majority.

I’ve had time to sift through what data is available from Young Voter Strategies and CIRCLE.  The bottom line is this – youth turnout increased for the third straight year, and millenials chose Democrats over Republicans by 22 percentage points (60%-38%) – more than double any other age demographic.

Democratic Preference by Age Demographic

In Montana, where Jon Tester beat out Conrad Burns, I’m hearing that young voters made up 17% of the electorate and that their swing towards Democrats may have been the deciding factor in Tester’s election.

If this is a wave election, that wave is being fueled by young voters and their growing allegiance to progressive politics.  

Here’s what we know so far based on exit polls, preliminary precinct reporting, and census data from March 2006:

(Some of this information I received via email and conference call from people at CIRCLE and YVS, and isn’t yet available online.  So sorry if this is a little light on links.  In the coming days I will post more updates as new data becomes available.)

TURNOUT

• At least 10 million 18-29 year olds voted yesterday(pdf). This is 2 million more than voted in 2002, and 1.4 million  more than 1994.  As more data comes in, this number is expected to rise.
• Our turnout rate was 24%.  This is an increase of 4% from 2002(pdf).  As more data comes in, this number, too, may rise.  
• Our share of the electorate increased from 11% to 13% (pdf).  Millenials are increasing their turnout rate faster than any other demographic, and rising turnout across the board in 2006 makes this number all the more impressive.

Most importantly:

• In 36 “youth dense precincts” in Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin – which were targeted by the student PIRGS – turnout was 6x the national average.

Conclusion: Young voters are increasingly engaged and are becoming a force in electoral politics.  If you ask us to vote we will, and our growing numbers could be the difference in elections across the country.  If this trend continues, young voters may hand us the presidency in 2008.  

PARTISANSHIP

• Young voters chose democrats over republicans by 22% points (60% to 38%).  This is more than double every other demographic.
• A pre-election poll indicates that young voters were highly dissatisfied with Bush, but they generally had more positive feelings about their conrgressperson.

Conclusion: Young voters are a huge asset for progressives, but, just like in 2004 when we cast our ballots against Bush (but not for Kerry), this was a vote for change.  A vote against Bush, not for the Democrats.

TACTICS
In 2004, youth groups sent a drum beat of messages to the media – peer to peer, face to face contact was the way to reach young voters.  That strategy has come to fruition this year.

• When CIRCLE reports on the effectiveness of GOTV tactics, it will report that boots on the ground, face to face contact was the most effective way to reach youth in 2004.
• Social Networking and Text Messaging – the media darlings of this cycle – will be shown to have played only a small part in getting out the vote.  

Conclusion:  It takes a cycle or two for folks to learn how to use new strategies.  What limited data we get on text messaging and social networking will get put to good use tweaking our strategies.  Look for these tools to either live up to the hype or die in 2008.

SUMMARY
Research shows that if you can get a young person to vote for your party 3 major elections in a row – you’ll have 75% of those voters for life.  Right now we’ve seen two elections where Millenials are turning out and making significant contributions to the progressive movement.   We’re turning out in bigger and bigger numbers, and as more of us turn 18, we’re becoming a larger share of the electorate.  

If you ask us to participate we will.  Now its up to the democratic party, and all the instruments of progressive politics, to reach out to our generation and help bring as many of us into the movement as possible.  This means more money put into young voter programs, more training, more internships – genuine investments in building the infrastructure to engage and train Millenial voters.  

This is the future progressive majority  in action, let’s secure it for generations to come.

What a wild ride.  And for a “wave”, we saw some pretty weird results–seats flipping that we didn’t think possible, while also some seats that many of us thought would flip to the Democrats in a wave year staying Republican.  What were the highlights of last night’s results for you?  Obviously there are still some outstanding races; CNN is refusing to call 11 10 (they just called PA-08 for Pat Murphy!) House seats just yet, and there will likely be recounts in many key races, but we did see a lot to cheer about–and a few disappointments, too.  I’ll run down some of mine.

Best:
• Watching John Hall (D), the upset shocker in NY-19, sing part of his victory speech!  John Hall’s victory should be inspiring to us all.
• The Democratic landslide in New Hampshire: not only did Paul Hodes knock off Charlie Bass, but Carol Shea-Porter carried the day in NH-01.  Go through all the major prognosticators–no one was expecting this one to flip, or even be close, including me.  Her victory was simply the biggest surprise of the night.  And to top it off, New Hampshire’s House and Senate just flipped to the Democrats.  The AP reports that this is the first time since 1922 that the NH State House has been controlled by the Democrats.
• Netroots victories: Paul Hodes, Jon Tester, Jim Webb (at least, it seems), Joe Sestak, Jerry McNerney, Patrick Murphy, and Tim Walz all won their districts.  The Burner-Reichert battle is still up in the air, Larry Kissell is down by under 500 votes with some ballots apparently still being counted (it’s unclear how many, and if it will be enough), Eric Massa barely lost (although he is not conceding yet), Linda Stender came within 1% of winning, Larry Grant got 45% to Bill Sali’s 50% in a district that gave around 69% of its vote to Bush in 2004, Dan Seals came within 6% in IL-10, and Gary Trauner is down by less than 1000 in Wyoming (CNN hasn’t made a call here yet, even though 100% of precincts are reporting).  This outta shut down the braying right-wing media commentaries on the “netroots curse” for good.
• Yarmuth!
• A tip of the hat to the genius at the DCCC who made the call to intervene in PA-04 and KS-02 at the 23rd hour–it apparently paid off with shocking upsets by Democrats Jason Altmire and Nancy Boyda, respectively.
• IA-02!  I still can’t believe that Dave Loebsack pulled off this stunner–this is second only to Carol Shea-Porter’s big win in New Hampshire in terms of shock factor.  Chuck Todd said this one would flip only if the Democrats won more than 40 seats.  Certainly this result disproves the idea of an even wave everywhere.
• MO-Sen: I’ve been so influenced by the culture of electoral defeat in the past 6 years that I purposefully kept my expectations low as far as McCaskill’s chances at knocking off Talent.  This was a very sweet victory for our side, and a very demoralizing loss for the Republicans.
• Oh yeah–one of the sweetest victories for me was seeing Chris Murphy wallop Republican Nancy Johnson in CT-05.  Somehow, in the least Democratic of the three Connecticut House seats contested this year, Johnson’s disgusting politics of fear and smear clearly backfired.  This is one to cherish, and Murphy should be considered a major rising star for Connecticut Democrats.

Worst
• Ohio.  Look, Ohio, I think it’s great that you got yourselves nice new Democratic Governor, and I thank you deeply for sending Sherrod Brown to the Senate.  I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but where the heck was the supposed anti-Republican sentiment in the House races?  I was hoping for big things in the 1st, 2nd, 15th, and heck, even the 12th district, but alas, Zack Space is the only Democratic pick-up in the Buckeye State this year. (Update: Let me make it clear here–I’m not expressing disappointment with the candidates and campaigns who ran tight races in Ohio.  Rather, it’s very clear that Wulsin, Cranley and Kilroy did a good job.  My sentiments were directed to the voters of these districts, who apparently did not want change as badly as I hoped they did.)
• So close, yet so far…  It certainly sucks to see great challengers like Lois Murphy, Diane Farrell, and Patricia Madrid come up just barely short–although NM-01 still has a few ballots to count, so perhaps I shouldn’t speak so soon.  On the bright side, if Joe Courtney’s 170-vote lead holds in CT-02, Chris Shays will be the only incumbent Republican House member left standing in New England.

All in all, it was a great night.  And that night continues into the daytime, as the ballots are still being counted–and are about to be recounted–in close races across the country.