Well, now that Ciro Rodriguez’s win in TX-23 is in the books, all 2006 races are now decided (with the exception that Christine Jennings may yet succeed in invalidating the FL-13 result and securing a new election). I figure that now is as good time as any to recap and analyze the results and try to figure what they may mean for 2008 and beyond.
At the outset, the results were a strong win for the Democratic Party at all levels. 2006 marked the first time in over a century that a major party managed not to lose any offices they held going in in the Senate, House or state Governorships. The party gained 6 governorships to reverse a 28-22 Republican edge, including picking up the crucial Ohio governorship. It won 6 Senate seats to win back control of that chamber (assuming Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota is able to serve out his term) by taking 2 of the Big Three races: Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri—as well as surviving late surges by Republican incumbents in Rhode Island and Montana. And, finally, it won an even 30 Republican House seats—31 if Jennings secures and wins a new election in early 2007.
As Chuck Todd noted on Election night, the magnitude of the Democratic "wave" was different in different regions. Generally speaking, the party cleaned up in the northeast, did very well in the Midwest and in select parts of the South, and did well enough to make many races in the West very close, but came up short in most of them. Here’s the regional breakdown of the new Congress and Governorships, with the old holdings in parentheses:
Governorships
Democrats Republicans
Northeast 8 (5) 3 (6)
Midwest 7 (6) 6 (7)
South 6 (5) 7 (8)
West 7 (6) 6 (7)
Totals: 28 (22) 22 (28)
Senate
Democrats Republicans
Northeast 17 (15) 5 (7)
Midwest 17 (15) 9 (11)
South 5 (4) 21 (22)
West 12 (11) 14 (15)
Totals: 51 (45) 49 (55)
House
Democrats Republicans
Northeast 68 (57) 24 (35)
Midwest 51 (42) 52 (59)
South 57 (51) 85 (91)
West 57 (53) 41 (45)
Totals: 233 (203) 202 (232)
From the charts, it is easy to see the dramatic shift in the northeast. The region accounted for 3 of the Dems’ 6 pickups of governorships, 2 of the 6 Senate pickups, and 11 of the 30 House pickups. In all three cases, it was the party’s best region (there were also 2 Senate pickups in the midwest). Even more impressive is the fact that the GOP didn’t have much there to begin with. In 2006, the Republicans lost 50% of their governorships in the region, 28% of their Senate seats (2 of the 3 that were up), and 31% of their House seats. In the House, the Dem edge in the northeast is now larger than the Republican majority in the south.
It should also be noted that the Democratic Senate majority is dependent on the fact that they now enjoy nearly a 2-1 edge in the Midwest, a region where the parties are evenly matched otherwise. This includes 4-4 parity in the generally Republican Great Plains states.
Finally, as kos has mentioned, the Republicans are looking more and more like a regional party, at least at the federal level. The South accounts for 43% of their Senate seats and 42% of their House seats.
Overall, the Senate and governorship results were fairly predictable. The consensus going in was that the party winning two of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri would control the Senate. With Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill’s wins (plus Jon Tester’s nailbiter win in Montana, where Conrad Burns made a heckuva comeback), the Dems grabbed a 51-49 majority. There were no real surprises.
In the governor races, the Dems had comfortable leads in five open Republican governorships: MA, NY, OH, AR, and CO. They won all of them easily. The real fight was over GOP-held governorships in MD, MN, ID, NV, and AK, and Dem-held seats in WI, IA, and OR. The Dems held their own but only picked up Maryland. Coming up short against Pawlenty of Minnesota was probably the biggest disappointment; the almost-win in Rhode Island was the biggest pleasant surprise. All in all, no surprises in the results.
House results
In the House races, it is easier to see trends because there are more of them and they are less likely to turn on individual factors than statewide races. As noted above, the Democrats won 30 GOP-held seats (with a possibility of a 31st with legal or Congressional intervention). They defeated 22 GOP incumbents and won 8 open seats. Comparing the results to the list of competitive races going in yields some observations.
The consensus of analysts immediately prior to the election was that there were 11 seats the Dems were likely to win, 23 more that were close enough that they could not comfortably make a call, 19 others that the analysts thought would be close but that the Republicans would hold, and 36 others that were seen as potential longshot upsets.
The Democrats ended up winning all 11 of the seats they were expected to, won only 10 of the 23 "tossups," but also won 7 of the 19 close ones the GOP was expected to hold (small upsets), and won 2 of the longshot races (big upsets). The top ten biggest upset wins (pleasant surprises) were:
The ten biggest disappointments were:
Some macro observations based on the micro data:
1. The GOP argument that the Dems won a bunch of naturally GOP seats with conservative candidates is crap.
In looking at the universe of Democratic pickups, one is struck by how much they line up with a list of GOP-held districts with the highest generic Democratic performance. The voters in these districts simply decided that they were Democrats so they were going to vote Democratic for Congress, no matter how long their GOP incumbent had been there or how much they liked him personally. Or else, they are swing districts that swung to the Dems where they had swung Repub in recent years. The best example of this is one of the two big upsets: Dave Loebsack’s defeat of longtime GOP Rep. Jim Leach in Iowa’s most Democratic district. Leach, in my view, is the symbol of 2006, just as Dan Glickman (D-KS) was the symbol of 1994.
In all, 23 of the 30 Dem pickups can be said to have come in Dem-leaning or swing districts. Only 7 of the pickups came in naturally GOP districts. 6 of the 7 pickups had special circumstances: Chris Carney’s defeat of Don Sherwood in PA-10, Heath Shuler’s defeat of Charles Taylor in NC-11, and the open seat pickups by Nick Lampson (TX-22) and Zack Space (OH-18) were direct results of scandals directly touching the outgoing GOP representatives. The other two were Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill’s wins in southern Indiana, which has always defied national trends by supporting Dems in Congressional and local races while going strongly Republican at the top of the ticket. Plus, the GOP was really hurting in Indiana, making those two districts distinctly less hostile territory. Only Nancy Boyda’s upset of Jim Ryun doesn’t fit the mold. I suspect that it was a combination that Ryun didn’t take Boyda’s challenge seriously and was basically asleep at the switch, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ popularity.
It is no coincidence that that list contains the much-ballyhooed "conservative Democrats" who were allegedly the key to the victory. I don’t want to take anything away from Shuler, Lampson, Ellsworth, or Hill; it is likely that a more liberal Dem would have lost those districts despite the problems with their opponents. But, the bulk of the wins were by mainstream Democrats winning swing and Dem-leaning districts. Indeed, the party picked off 10 districts that Kerry won in 2004, more than half of the total number (18) of GOP-held Kerry districts. 14 others were close enough to qualify as swing districts. The candidates who won these seats were by and large mainstream, progressive/liberal Dems.
This is very good news looking to the future; it is far easier to hold seats when your representatives and your party are in line with their districts. Ask Jim Leach.
2. The northeast is now at least as Democratic as the South is Republican
This was largely covered above, but 2006 was a bloodbath for northeast GOPers. They lost a third of their seats in one night, including three they did not see coming: Jeb Bradley in NH-01, Sue Kelly in NY-19, and Melissa Hart in PA-04. In addition, most Republicans I know didn’t really think that John Sweeney (NY-20), Charles Bass (NH-02), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-08), or Nancy Johnson (CT-05) was going to lose.
Ultimately, the GOP has one seat left in New England: the embattled Chris Shays. They hold 6 of New York’s 29 seats, of which three of their wins were by 5 points or less and a fourth seat (NY-03) is strongly trending away from them. They still have 6 of New Jersey’s 13 seats and 8 of Pennsylvania’s 19, as well as Delaware’s lone seat. Many of those are similarly trending Dem. Finally, the GOP has two fairly secure seats in Maryland.
In the South, the Dems actually made gains for the first time in 20 years (I think). They won 6 GOP seats, two each in Florida and Texas, and one each in North Carolina and Kentucky, with a possibility for a third Florida seat. The wins ensured that the Dems now have more non-minority Representatives from the South than the GOP has total Reps. in the northeast, 34-24.
3. This was not the year of the Democratic woman
The thing that jumped out at me most of all in looking at the wins and the tough losses was how poorly our female House candidates did. Of the 30 pickups, only 4 were accomplished by female candidates: Carol Shea-Porter in NH-01, Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20, Nancy Boyda in KS-02, and Gabrielle Giffords in AZ-08. In the 13 "tossup" races we lost, we ran women in 9 of them; in the 10 we won, only one of our candidates (Gillibrand) was female. Looking at the 53 total races in GOP-held seats that looked most competitive, we ran female candidates in 17 and male candidates in 36. The Democratic women were 3-14 (Shea-Porter’s race was not included in this list); the Democratic men were 25-11 (Loebsack’s race was not included).
Female GOPers did better; only four of the 22 defeated incumbents were women (Johnson, Hart, Northup, and Kelly). In every competitive race involving two female candidates, the GOPer won: (OH-02, OH-15, NM-01, MN-06, and CO-04).
Why was this? Well, Todd speculated that the focus on the war put female candidates at a disadvantage. That may be partially correct, but does not account for the fact that GOP women did all right, even against male Dems (See Thelma Drake (VA-02) and Barbara Cubin (WY-AL) for two examples). I have a more sinister theory after seeing some of the ad campaigns for IL-06, IL-08, and OH-15:
A major theme of GOP ads was either selecting really bad pictures or doing things to the pictures of Dem candidates to make their appearance look bad in the attack ads. I am afraid that this tactic works disproportionately better with women simply because we, as a society, have a double standard under which women are judged far more for their appearance. Thus, cockeyed pictures of Tammy Duckworth (deliberately making her look more Asian in a heavily white district to boot) and Mary Jo Kilroy may well have made the difference. In support of this theory is the fact that only one of the four female Dem winners, Gillibrand, had to face a high-dollar nasty campaign; the GOP conceded Giffords her seat and both Boyda and Shea-Porter were not taken seriously enough to attack. Anyway, food for thought.
4. In a wave year, money isn’t everything
I had an argument with Jay Cost of realclearpolitics.com earlier this year in which he posited that the Democrats would not win a majority (or win, at best, a narrow one) because they did not have enough candidates who had met certain historical benchmarks for fundraising and cash on hand. I posited that wave year dynamic reduced the relevance of these benchmarks to the point where they were near meaningless. Ultimately, I believe I was right.
Democrats like Shea-Porter, Loebsack, Boyda, Walz, Rodriguez, Hall, and McNerney won despite not meeting these benchmarks (or even coming close); meanwhile Lois Murphy, Farrell, Kilroy, Duckworth, Madrid, Wetterling, and Burner went down despite impressive fundraising numbers. In a normal year, the pickups come only with well-funded candidates. Not so in a wave—especially one with a regional realignment component like this one.
Of course, the unprecedented support for our candidates from the Democratic Party committees and independent liberal/progressive groups also played a key role and significantly augmented the candidates’ own fundraising totals. An argument can be made that money was still important, but the candidates’ own fundraising totals don’t tell the whole story.
5. The Republicans still had an advantage in coordinated turnout (at least on the House side), although the Dems’ operation was much better than in 2002 or 2004
One odd statistic is that in a year in which the Democrats picked up 30 House seats, the GOP won the majority of races decided by 5 points or less. As noted above, they won 13 of the 23 consensus "tossup" races—all races in which both parties fought tooth and nail for the seats. These are races that came down to the ground game, and they provided the only real silver lining of the cycle for Republicans—their ground game saved their losses from hitting the 35-40 range I expected.
Still, the number of near misses in places like Wyoming, Ohio 02, and New York 25, 26, and 29, demonstrate both that the "50-state strategy" is working and that the Dems’ ground game was catching up. Connecticut 02, the closest race in the country, was a good example. Dem Joe Courtney and GOP Rep. Rob Simmons were evenly matched throughout the campaign, which pitted Courtney’s party affiliation against Simmons’ local service. Both parties poured money and bodies into the district. Courtney won a squeaker.
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