2006 Congress Elections

At 12:13 AM 11/8/2006, you wrote:

Dave,
 Are you up? What do you think?
Missouri is looking like it is going Dem.

Very interesting election Dems won where they ran as “Conservative” and not with the tired old “liberal” baggage.  What will be fascinating to watch will be if these Freshman Congress-critters legislate as they ran or face the very real possibility of being one-termers in 08.  The whole House is back up for grabs then.  With an open Presidential seat and no VP trying to fill the slot there will need to be some serious trigonometry being worked out before these guys get seated in January. For example last night Major Garrett talked about Heath Schuler in NC.  During the campaign he refused to say if he would vote for Pelosi to be speaker but “inside” info was that the Party let him say that to get elected but that come January he will vote for her.  If that ends up being the way these newbies go of campaigning as conservative and vote the same “liberal” way they will get tossed out in 08.

Some of the seats that were won are definite one termers (the Foley and Delay seats for example).

Here was a very interesting chart that Hugh Hewitt has up of how tight these races were and the knife edge that the new Dems have to balance on.
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After reviewing the vote totals there is still plenty for Republicans to take solice in.  This was not the wave year that MSM claimed it would be.Š

Republicans won most close races despite a terrible national environment, a true testament to their GOTV efforts.

Many races the GOP should have lost last night were won or lost narrowly. Last night would have been much uglier, but for the strong voter turn out effort.

Decided by two percentage points or fewer:

23 races, combined margins, 73,753

14 wins, 9 losses

Decided by fewer than 5,000 votes:

19 races, combined margins, 50,544

13 wins, 6 losses

Decided by fewer than 4,000 votes:

15 races, combined margins, 32,452

10 wins, 5 losses

Decided by fewer than 3,000 votes:

9 races, combined margins, 11,368

6 wins, 3 losses

Decided by fewer than 2,000 votes:

7 races, combined margins, 6,392

4 wins, 3 losses

Decided by fewer than 1,000 votes:

4 races, combined margins, 1,886

3 wins, 1 loss

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It was also funny to hear Brit and the boys talking about your Congress race that the anti-illegal immigrant candidate went down in a district that runs along the border.  That is just too simple and I think the crushing margins that the “anti-illegals” props won by – Prop 100 (77%), Prop 102 (74%), Prop 103 (74%), Prop 300 (71%) – will be more instructive.  Especially when you look at the margins they passed by in Pima.

Prop 100        157,857 v. 66,345       70.41%
Prop 102        148,942 v. 72,407       67.29%
Prop 103        147,568 v. 76,541       65.85%
Prop 300        142,638 v. 78,873       64.39%

If Janet and Giffords continue to ignore those kind of numbers Giffords will be a one-termer and Janet can forget about McCain’s seat in 08 too.

I think the only reason that Prop 107 was defeated (48.6 v 51.4) was the “extra” language that it carried (the same problem with the Abortion bill in Montana) that took it too far.  I expect to see that back on the ballot in 08 fine tuned to focus just on Marriage and leaving aside the “Partnerships” language.  The risk I think for those opposed to it is they will draw the wrong conclusions.  In addition to the “extra” language that caused it to be defeated I think it was defeated because the institution is not seen as actually under attack in Arizona.  If it were the vote would easily gone they other way – even with the “extra” language since the swing voters would have been swayed by the “camels nose under the tent” argument.

Here are the percentages by County.

                Yes             No
Apache                          1.34
Cochise         11.49¼br> Coconino                        18.6
Gila            4.53
Graham  37.87
Greenlee        12.72
La Paz  3.68
Maricopa                        2.33
Mohave  14.29
Navajo  11.68
Pima                            14.81
Pinal           3.52
Santa Cruz                      9.52
Yavapai         4.09
Yuma            12.27

Maricopa was very close with the Prop losing by only 2.33%.  Take that “extra” language out of the Prop and it is easy to see that Apache and Maricopa switch sides with Coconino and Pima barely opposing and Santa Cruz being a toss-up.

Also very happy to see that Prop 200 (66%) was defeated as were both of the State Lands Props.  The Minimum age Prop (65%) was disappointing but that is voting what to do with other people’s money.

It will also be interesting to see what new voter registrations were coming out of the ASU Campus and if a Dem GOTV effort among nominally “out-of-state” students was the reason for JD losing to Mitchell (46.2 v 50.5 a difference of 5,955 votes) as Liddy was postulating last week.