The 2006 Mid-term elections

The mid-term elections* in 2006 produced results that most commentators regard as spectacular: the House of Representatives, which had been dominated by Republicans since 1994, switched to the Democrats by a sizeable majority; the ranking Democrat in the House, who will become the Speaker (i.e., the President) of the House, is, for the first time, a woman, a Representative from a district in California. The Senate, which also had previously had a substantial Republican majority, now has a very slim, but real, majority of Democrats and Independents who support them. In the immediate aftermath of the election, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld left office. It thus seems quite reasonable to expect significant changes in US policy, notably in Iraq, but probably in other areas as well.

A number of observations can be made about the elections:

Some commentators have noted that the Democratic majority in the House now comes mostly from "blue" states, i.e., states in the northeast and west, rather than including large numbers of Representatives from the South, where Democrats have traditionally been much more conservative than their counterparts in the north and west.
Results in Congressional elections in some states were influenced by a variety of factors. In particular, in some states, initiatives were at stake which mobilized particular groups of voters. For example, in a number of states, just as in 2004, there wre initiatives proposing to ban homosexual marriage. It is widely assumed that the opportunity to vote in favor of "traditional" moral and social values ("family values") tends to encourage religiously and politically conservative voters to go to the polls in larger numbers than if such an opportunity is not offered. Republican strategists, both in 2004 and 2006, thus worked to insure that such initiatives would be on the ballot in states where there was a risk of losing to Democrats, in the belief that conservative voters, once at the polls, would vote not only for the "family values" ban on homosexual marriage, but also for conservative, usually Republican, candidates. Similarly, after the successful use of the strategy by Republicans in 2004, Democrats arranged to have initiatives mandating a raise in the minimum wage on the ballot in various states. This strategy seems to have been successful; in any case, the measures attracted broad support in all the states where it was proposed.

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* The expression "mid-term elections" is used to designate elections in non-Presidential years, i.e., years in the middle of the President's term in office. [back to text].