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November 03, 2010
Despite losing a significant number of seats -- in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, so far -- Democrats will retain control of the U.S. Senate.
However, more interesting is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has apparently won re-election despite a very competitive race against Sharron Angle (R).
November 02, 2010
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), writing in the
Wall Street Journal: "Congratulations to all the tea party-backed candidates who overcame a determined, partisan opposition to win their elections. The next campaign begins today. Because you must now overcome determined party insiders if this nation is going to be spared from fiscal disaster."
"Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you here in the first place. The establishment is much more likely to try to buy off your votes than to buy into your limited-government philosophy. Consider what former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott told the
Washington Post earlier this year: 'As soon as they get here, we need to
co-opt them.'"
Marc Ambinder: "In 2008, a New Orleans funeral procession cling-clanged through Studio 47 here at CBS. The Republican Party was dead. It would take at least several cycles before it returned... Such hubris. So we should be wary of hubristic projections tonight. Clearly, a dead party can revivify in two years provided the energy in the electorate is there."
A few interesting observations:
If Dan Maes (R) doesn't get 10% in Colorado's race for governor, the Republican party will lose major party status which could have implications for the 2012 presidential race if the GOP candidate is listed way down the ballot.
Marco Rubio (R) could possibly win more than 50% of the vote in Florida's three-way U.S. Senate race,
Nikki Haley (R) won an unexpectedly close race for South Carolina governor which will fuel criticisms that national Democrats didn't take the race more seriously.
Early indications suggest it was a good year for pollsters generally.
Trying to buy your way into political office didn't work very well for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California and Linda McMahon in Connecticut.
For comparison,
Michael Crowley looks back at how former President Bill Clinton reacted to Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994.
"Clinton struck a hard note of conciliation, admitting that Democrats had not done enough to change the culture of Washington (sound familiar?) and urged Republicans to 'join me in the center of the public debate where the best ideas for the next generation of American progress must come.' But he also warned against 'jeopardizing this economic recovery by taking us back to the policies that failed us before.' (Sound familiar?)"
With nearly everyone projecting Democrats to lose control of the House but retain control of the Senate, there are several key contests -- "silver-lining races," according to
First Read -- that Democrats are still watching closely. They are:
- Florida Gov (Sink vs. Scott)
- Ohio Gov (Strickland vs. Kasich)
- Colorado Senate (Bennet vs. Buck)
- Nevada Senate (Reid vs. Angle)
NBC News projects that Republicans will gain a majority in the House, 236 seats to 199 seats with a margin of error of 13 seats.
That's a projected net pick up of 46 to 72 seats for Republicans.
The bottom line: It's been a very good night (so far) for pollsters and forecasters.
Check our
Election Aggregator for the very latest results, reactions and buzz.
Key races so far: Manchin wins WV-Sen, Blumenthal wins CT-Sen, Paul wins KY-Sen, Rubio wins FL-Sen, Ayotte wins NH-Sen, Coats wins IN-Sen, Portman wins OH-Sen
"I see a looming giant on the horizon for 2012... you better try to get an interview with him because if he runs, it is not only a three way race, he's going to blow the whole two party system apart."
-- Ralph Nader, in an interview on the Fox Business Network, on New York City Michael Bloomberg possibly running as an independent candidate for president.
Here are the leaked exit polls for key U.S. Senate races as reported by the
Drudge Report and
Huffington Post:
Blumenthal (D-CT) +8
Rubio (R-FL) +21
Blunt (R-MO) +10
Boxer (D-CA) +8
Kirk (R-IL) +6
Paul (R-KY) +11
NV--EVEN
Bennet (D-CO) +2
Toomey (R-PA) +4
Murray (D-WA) +6
Manchin (D-WV) +7
Johnson (R-WI) +5
Extreme caution is advised in attempting to interpret these results.
Interestingly, Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) campaign is confident they have a lead among those who voted early so a tie among today's voters would be good news for him. Based on the exit polls, pollster
Frank Luntz thinks Reid will win.
In his forthcoming memoir,
Decision Points, former President George W. Bush writes that he considered dumping Vice President Dick Cheney from his 2004 reelection ticket to dispel the myths about Cheney's power in the White House and "demonstrate that I was in charge," the
New York Times reports.
"The idea came from Mr. Cheney, who offered to drop out of the race one day during a private lunch between the two men in mid-2003. 'I did consider the offer,' Mr. Bush writes, and spent several weeks exploring the possibility of replacing Mr. Cheney with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, before opting against the switch."
An
AP analysis of exit polling shows voters around the country "are intensely worried about the economy and dissatisfied with the way the federal government is working... Nearly all voters are worried about the future direction of the economy, and about 4 in 10 say they are worse off financially than they were two years ago."
"Voters are expressing dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama and
the Congress, and they don't have a favorable view of either the
Democratic or Republican parties."
Jim Geraghty: "I am told that one Democratic strategist, helping a television network
with Election Night analysis, just declared that the Democrats were
experiencing something on par with mass murder. The GOP counterpart
looked at the same numbers and concluded the Democrats are, so far, not
getting the urban turnout they need; suburban and rural areas are seeing
big turnouts."
Nate Silver: "Whatever these polls say, you should mostly ignore them; early exit
polls are not intended to be taken at face value and can even be rather
misleading."
CBS News reports President Obama's approval rating is 45% in early exit polling, with 54% disapproving.
There are many ways to watch an election but you should absolutely include
Political Wire's
Election Aggregator as one of your key sources of information.
It's the best place to see what top political reporters and operatives are hearing. I've also invited four guys who have been very helpful to
Political Wire over the last few months -- Harry Enten, Matt Danzer, Aaron Buchner and Puneet Kollipara -- to contribute their insights as well.
Thanks for making
Political Wire part of your Election Night.
To pass the time for the next couple of hours, I highly recommend the new
NBC News Election Briefing Book which also includes a handy viewers guide for watching the results tonight.
Reminder: Networks will no longer be counting the vote as a percentage of precincts. Instead, it will be listed as
percentage of expected vote.
Here's something that may be useful tomorrow morning: A
database that indicates 21 states have automatic recount laws if a race is within a close vote margin.
Charlie Cook emails to say there's too much focus on poll closing times for tonight's results, times when no election results are actually available. Instead, the focus should be on the times at which meaningful levels of results are in.
He sends over a
useful table showing the states in chronological order by when 50% of the 2008 vote had been counted, along with some key races worth following.
Exit polls are being conducted in
26 states today but the results will be quarantined until at least 5:30 pm ET.
Anything you might hear before then is based on uninformed speculation. Of course, much of what you hear after that time might be as well.
"You know they're trying to screw the president, right?"
-- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), quoted by the
Morning Call, encouraging two men in a Philadelphia food court to vote.
The Hill reports Google has released a list of the most-searched candidates this cycle: California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) tops the list, followed by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (R).
Meanwhile, a
Pew Research study found Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell received more media coverage than any other 2010 candidate.
Check
Political Wire all day for election updates -- and make sure you're following us on
Twitter and
Facebook.
Thanks for much for reading!
Discover: "All voters are likely to vote for candidates who appear more competent. However, male candidates that appear more approachable and female candidates who appear more attractive are more likely to win votes. In particular, men are more likely to vote for attractive female candidates whereas women are more likely to vote for approachable male candidates."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may not be very popular, but a
National Journal analysis shows that neither are the House Democrats who tried to distance themselves from her.
Cases in point: "Democrats who voted against health care reform are more than twice as likely to be in a tough race as those who supported it: 22 of the 34 Democrats who voted against health care reform are in trouble, according to Cook, compared to 55 of the 219 who supported the bill."
"Similarly, Democrats who opposed the House climate-change bill are nearly three times as likely to be fighting for their jobs as are those who supported it: 29 of the 43 Democrats who opposed the bill to tax carbon emissions are vulnerable, while only 48 of the 210 who supported it are."
"What I'm proudest of in this campaign is that our message today is indistinguishable from the one we launched 21 months ago when we were 35 points down in the polls."
-- Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R), quoted by the
Palm Beach Post.
Nick Baumann: "Forget the Senate and House. That's short-term thinking. The real prize in Tuesday's midterm elections is the power to draw congressional seats and determine the country's balance of power for the next decade."
"If either party can achieve what politicos call the 'trifecta' -- control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature -- in a given state, it will be able to draw congressional districts within that state unencumbered by any need to compromise with the other party. That's the kind of power that creates electoral maps like the one former GOP Majority Leader Tom Delay helped bring to Texas in 2003 -- a map that pushed four of the state's Democrats out of their seats."
Daily Beast: "The publication of Bush's memoir
Decision Points, which hits stores November 9, is the key moment in what you might call the Bush Rehabilitation Project. Bush himself has long disdained grand, Nixonian plans to rescue his reputation. But his friends and former staff have spent the last two years using columns and cable microphones to do just that. And the release of the memoir -- coming so close on the heels of Barack Obama's repudiation -- has led some Bushies to conclude that America is finally giving the Bush era a second look."
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