Picking up the baton from the Sleepless in Clerkenwell blogger, Oliver Burkeman, now we try to figure out what it all means. A few things caught my eye as I digested the exit polls and the shifts. What caught your eye? What fascinating election morning factoid did you find interesting or indicative of the whole process?
Of course, the exit polls are always telling, not that they really predict who will win, but they do show why people voted the way they did:
Terrorism is still important to voters, but the Republicans lost their advantage.
60% of voters said that national issues were more important than local issues in this election, and scandals and corruption were the most important issues, with Iraq being prominent but not the overriding factor.
Middle class, suburban and independent voters came back to the Democratic party.
I'm listening to one of the NPR stations that used to have a home on my dial, WDET out of Detroit. NPR's Cokie Roberts pointed out that not only were the Democrats swept back into power, but moderate Republicans like Jim Leach in the House and Lincoln Chaffee in the Senate, were defeated. I also found Lincoln Chaffee's concession speech telling. He said that in voting him out there was one less senator who could talk to the other side.
Flicking around my iTunes dial, I also listened to WAMU out of Washington with their all-night election coverage. They interviewed someone from the National Association of State Legislatures ho said that nine state legislatures had switched to Democratic control. They could, and that's not a certainty, push for redistricting. Usually, it's only done once every 10 years, but Democrats could apply pressure to redraw district maps, just like Tom Delay did in Texas. At one time, members of the Texas legislature actually left Texas for New Mexico to try to prevent the redistricting from going through. But it was part of the drip-drip scandal around Delay. Delay's seat went to a Democrat.
In 2004, I met the Texas Democratic leaders, in the run-up to the last elections. The state party was thrilled about a piece of software that automatically ran the numbers to provide them with district boundaries that gave them the best chance of winning. (They also had a donor and press database they called Demzilla.)
There is nothing to indicate that Democrats will do that. But they could. Will they do it as payback to Delay? Maybe.
Those were just a few interesting things I picked out. What did you take away from the elections this year? Add your comments below.
