NATIONAL SENATE/HOUSE RESULTS THREAD (LATE RESULTS/POSTMORTEM)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Critz and Altmire both made it. PA-7 fell, of course. For some reason PA-6 has yet to be called, despite Gerlach being on 56%.

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Higgins is fine.

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20% counted in NY-13 and there's nowt in it. 10% in NY-4... and McCarthy trails.

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Lincoln Davis lost by like 20pts.

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Dogget is actually a tad below 52% now, but has been called as winner.

Did I mention that Ron Kind is losing?

Kind has now nudged ahead. Teague is a gonner in NM-2.

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Gene Taylor has been defeated.

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Bishop has just barely pulled ahead in GA-02. Only 4% remaining.

drama!

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Can enough votes be found to save Russ Carnahan?

Ah, wow. Just noticed that one.

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Klein is down by nine.

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McMahon is gone. Bishop still ahead by a hair; that race has been weirdly stable all night.

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MN-8 is pretty close, though only a fifth of St Louis is in.

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Elderly incumbents have really struggled, haven't they?

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Elderly incumbents have really struggled, haven't they?

AGE WAVE

You win the thread.

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Yes, it is possible. Probably won't, but possible it be.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

     I am ever so slightly amused by the Democrats pulling out every close race & retaining a majority of U.S. House seats in North Carolina of all places.

NC is the craziest Democrat-drawn gerrymander in the country. The state legislature is GOP now, so that advantage quite possibly wont last long.

I think we can be pretty sure that it won't last beyond the next round of redistricting. Which...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is essentially the Fairfax, VA of the west.

What? Absolute nonsense. CO-7 is working class suburbia. Fairfax, VA...

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Im surprised the Bennet survived.  He has that seat for as long as he wants it after tonight.

Why do people make stupid predictions like that?

People often predict what they wish to be so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So does anyone know when/if Fayette County, PA last voted for a Republican for U.S. Senate?

Possibly 1982; Heinz had huge victory, larger than Ted Kennedy's.  If not then, probably prior to WWII.

Specter carried Fayette in 1998.

Indeed. The map is actually on this site.

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Just spotted this...

TN-4: DesJarlais (R) 57.1, Davis* (D) 38.6
AL-5: Brooks (R) 57.9, Raby (D) 42.1

lolfail

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Talking of suspecting that Bishop might be in trouble, can the predictions thread be unlocked so we can all laugh at ourselves?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the end I think Bishop will pull it out.

Guess that means he's done for.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given the results, no. Manchin might have found it easier to run against her; his lack of electoral experience would have been less of a problem as there are issues on which he could attack her over while distancing himself from the unpopular administration at the same time. If she could have beaten him in the Charleston area - possible - she could have made it considerably closer, but she'd have found it hard to find the extra votes elsewhere.

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Bishop wins, hopefully =)

I've heard etheridge will concede =/. but ellmers will be very vulnerable in 2012

What, after the disgusting Democratic gerrymander is replaced by a disgusting Republican one? Hah.

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Why is Barone held in such high regard?

It's because he used to be the best, or at least close to it. Not a David Butler or anything, but someone who turned out solid, respectable analytical work, and that's always been too rare in the U.S. His decline into intellectual dishonesty has been pretty depressing.

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California just doesn't have enough blue collar Catholic Anglos. They were the group that swung, and swung hard, against the Dems this year.

That's always the group highlighted whenever there's a major swing against the Democrats, but this time round I don't think it was entirely true. While the swing within that group was high, I don't think it was outside the general pattern for whites outside the liberal enclaves; Critz, Altmire, Kucinich and Sutton were all re-elected and had a swing amongst the old ethnic Catholic working class been particularly notable, all would have lost. There were also quite a few other districts heavy on that demographic that would have been 'shockingly' tight had an ethnic-worker swing been the main feature, but weren't; IN-1, NY-27, IL-12, numerous districts in MA and so on. The working class districts the Democrats actually lost tended to be more Protestant than anything else, with a few exceptions. And most of those go when you phase out the white Catholic workers who don't fit into the old ethnic worker substrata (all those Germans in Wisconsin, say). Must stress that I'm certainly not making the opposite case - for a pattern of resilience - either. That would be insane.

What California lacks are large numbers of the people that form the main swing blocks, in general. Including the group you mentioned, obviously. The swing to the Democrats there in 2006 was not exactly notable either. Affluent white liberal professionals, affluent white managerial conservatives, working class minorities, a significant agricultural/etc element, and that's almost everyone in the state covered, if gross generalisation is permitted. And those are the bedrock groups of the two parties these days (Obama's overperformance in the one group being treated as just that).

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Suffice it to say, in mostly Catholic white working to lower middle class to middle, middle class, but not upper middle class, Wayne County (the area does not include the Gross Pointes), the swing to Obama was under 4% in the area I am putting in a new GOP CD in my redistricting map, and the swing against Dingell from 2008 in his portion of Wayne, which includes a somewhat more downscale version of what I put in my GOP CD (it has next to no lower middle class) was17% (and looking at the precincts, I can see a big swing against the Dems there, up and down the line), for a net swing against the Dems of 13% since Bush 2004.  Where else can that be replicated in the North outside perhaps some bits of the Copperhead belt (Southern Ohio (outside Cincy, except to the extent Cincy has migrants for Kentucky), Indiana and Illinois) and the fossil fuel districts?

That doesn't come as a major surprise as the white working class parts of Michigan were disaster areas for the Democrats this year, owing to material discontent. I don't think ethnic/religious background had much to do with it and I don't think you can extrapolate into large national generalisations from it, given the failure to fall of districts that certainly would have done had that group been the swing group of the election.

Though I'm not sure what exactly it is you're measuring. Swing from the 2004 Presidential election, or from Congressional elections in 2004?

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I don't think there really was a defining group, as such. Which is one of the more interesting aspects of the election.