Here are my two columns that ran during election week. You will see that I was off by one Senate race (Virginia) in my predictions.
Scoreing the Midterms (ran 11/10/06)
President Bush's "I am the decider" era came to a close Tuesday evening. Shortly before 11 p.m., each of the major networks projected the Democrats would take over majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
As the night rolled on, it became obvious that the Democrats were poised to make major pickups in both the House and the Senate. Karl Rove's promise that the Republican get-out-the-vote operation would deny the Democrats victory turned out to be completely untrue.
Going into the evening, a Democratic pickup of the 15 seats was necessary to take control of the House for the first time since 1994 was nearly a foregone conclusion. But the Democrats surpassed all expectations, gaining 20 seats in the House, which was enough to comfortably take the House, making House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the first female speaker of the House in America's history.
The Democrats were also expected to pick up seats in the Senate, but in order to gain control of the upper house the Democrats had to pick up six seats without losing any currently held by Democrats. After George Allen's (R-VA) concession last night, the Democrats will go into the 110th Congress with a 51-49 majority. Here's how the Senate races played out:
In New Jersey, Democrat Robert Menendez easily held onto his seat in one of the earliest races to be called on Tuesday evening. This race was not nearly as close as pundits had thought, with Menendez easily winning with 53 percent of the vote.
In Tennessee, Republican Bob Corker beat Democrat Harold Ford Jr. 51 percent to 48 percent. This meant that the Democrats needed to win both of the other two important races, Missouri and Virginia, to take control.
There was, however, another wrinkle that election forecasters did not predict. In Montana, pundits had picked Democratic challenger Jon Tester to easily beat incumbent Republican Conrad Burns. As Tuesday night became Wednesday morning, this race was too close to call.
So in order to take control, the Democrats had to win Montana, Missouri and Virginia - not an easy task.
Democrat Claire McCaskill was projected the winner of the Missouri Senate seat by a 49-48 margin in the early hours of Wednesday morning, leaving just the Montana and Virginia seats up for grabs. The margins in these races were small enough that it soon became clear there would be no winner until the next day.
Early Wednesday afternoon, Tester finally picked up enough votes to be projected as the winner in Montana, beating Burns by a mere 3,000 votes. This gave the Democrats a 50-49 lead in the Senate, with only Virginia left up for grabs. The Democrats needed to win this seat to win the Senate.
Finally, more than 24 hours after the polls closed, The Associated Press said Democrat Jim Webb upset Republican incumbent George Allen in the Virginia race. Allen's concession last night made Webb's victory official.
With the Democrats in control of Congress, President Bush will become a "lame duck." The Democratic Party will be able to control the legislative agenda, and the President will no longer be "the decider."
Benjamin van der Horst is a College sophomore from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.
The Midterm Elections, Through the Crystall Ball (ran 11/7/06)
U.S. senators have great jobs. They make $165,200 per year and get great healthcare, a very generous pension, and also wield enough power to influence national policy.
Perhaps the best perk for incumbent senators, however, is job security. From 1952-1992, 80 percent of senators won reelection. This percentage has been even higher, recently, with more than 90 percent of senators winning reelection since 1996.
Today, however, this high percentage is likely to fall.
Democrats need to gain six senate seats in today’s midterm elections to take control of the Senate. Most election forecasters expect four incumbent Republican senators to lose their races: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Conrad Burns of Montana and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Having four incumbent senators lose is unusual enough, but there are four more races — three of which threaten incumbents — that will determine which party controls the Senate.
The races that threaten incumbents are: New Jersey, where Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez faces Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr.; Missouri, where Republican incumbent Jim Talent faces Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill; Virginia, where Republican incumbent George Allen faces Democratic challenger Jim Webb. In Tennessee, where there is an open seat because of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s decision not to seek re-election, Democrat Harold Ford Jr. faces Republican Bob Corker.
Let’s examine these four races, examine which issues will decide the elections, and predict the winner:
• New Jersey: Menendez has the best chance of holding onto his seat of any of the challenged incumbents. Even still, he faces two major obstacles to re-election: he was appointed to his seat, not elected to it, and he’a also embroiled in corruption allegations.
Pick: Menendez — he’ll be able to squeak out a win because of his party affiliation.
• Missouri: Surprisingly, stem cell research has become this campaign’s key issue, thanks to a controversial stem cell measure on the Missouri ballot.
Pick: McCaskill, after falling short in the 2004 governor’s race, McCaskill should be able to pick up a slim victory due to her support for embryonic stem cell research.
• Virginia: Six months ago Sen. Allen was coasting toward re-election and eyeing a possible 2008 presidential big. Now his Senate race is one of the most competitive in the nation. Jim Webb, a Republican turned Democrat who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, has used his moderate positions on many issues to turn this race into a tossup.
Pick: Allen — the incumbent should be able to hold on.
• Tennessee. This race may match the Virginia one in terms of nastiness. Corker, the former mayor of Chattanooga, faces Ford, who is attempting to become the first black senator from the South since reconstruction. Ford’s race has become a major factor in the race. The Corker campaign ran an ad featuring a Playboy Playmate who says she partied with Ford. Ford responded by saying that while he did attend a Playboy party at the Superbowl, it was a large party with more than 3,000 people. Ford made no apologies, saying, “I like football and I like girls.”
Pick: Corker — Tennessee is still not ready to elect a black senator.
I predict the Democrats will take five seats in the Senate and hold onto their one endangered seat. That would give the Democrats 50 seats, keeping Republican control of the Senate because of the Vice President’s role as casting the tie-breaking vote. This could make things very interesting in the next two years, because the Republicans’ grip on power will significantly weakened, but still intact.
Benjamin van der Horst is a College sophomore from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.
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