2006 United States elections
The 2006 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 7, 2006, in the middle of Republican President George W. Bush's second term. In a political revolution that broke twelve years of Republican rule, the Democratic Party was swept into majorities in Congress, the governorships, and state legislatures across the country. This marked the first and only time either party achieved such a feat since the 1994 elections. These elections were widely categorized as a Democratic wave.
Election day
November 7
George W. Bush (Republican)
Democratic gain
33 of 100 seats
Democratic +5
Democratic gain
Democratic +8.0%
Democratic +31
38 (36 states, 2 territories)
Democratic +6
In the Senate, Democrats won a net gain of six seats to secure a narrow majority in that chamber. Democrats also gained 31 seats in the House of Representatives, and following the election, Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House. In the gubernatorial elections, Democrats achieved a net gain of six seats. Nationwide, Republicans failed to win any congressional or gubernatorial seat that was held by a Democrat before the election. This was also the first time since 1994 where a party did not lose a single incumbent in a gubernatorial or congressional election.
Reasons for the Democratic Party's victory included the decline of the public image of George W. Bush, dissatisfaction of his administration's handling of both Hurricane Katrina and the War in Iraq, the beginning of the collapse of the United States housing bubble, Bush's legislative defeat regarding Social Security Privatization and immigration reform, the Republican-controlled Congress's unprecedented and unpopular involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, and a series of scandals in 2006 involving Republican politicians.[1]
Background[edit]
In March 2003, President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq, a state which the Bush administration claimed was linked to the September 11 attacks in 2001, and claimed was producing weapons of mass destruction. In May, just two months after the initial invasion, Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. In the following months, insurgents began resisting the American occupation. Additionally, religious tensions between majority Shiite and minority Sunni Muslims, tensions which had been suppressed under the grip of Saddam's regime, resulted in violence.
By the end of 2003, despite the war's initial popularity, the post-war occupation was losing support from the American public. A November 2003 Gallup poll showed that Bush's job approval rating had fallen to 50% from a high of 71% at the outset of the war.[2]
The next year, Bush won reelection over Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry with less than 51% of the popular vote and 286 electoral votes (only 16 votes ahead of the 270 votes needed), marking the smallest winning margin for an incumbent president since Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 election. However, it was the first time since 1988 that a winner garnered a popular majority.
Terrorism and the war in Iraq dominated the election, with domestic issues taking a secondary role. Bush began his second term with a continuation of the occupation and a push to overhaul Social Security with his privatization plan. Both policies proved unpopular, and violence in Iraq continued to increase. Compounding the unpopularity of the war was the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found. August 2005 was the last time any major public opinion poll recorded majority approval of Bush's job.[3] Negative perceptions of Bush, following the slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina, further weighed on his popularity.
Simultaneously, the popularity of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress was also on the decline. A series of notable congressional scandals also took place in Washington, D.C., including the ongoing Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, as well as the Mark Foley scandal and the Cunningham scandal, both in October 2006. Throughout 2006, sectarian violence persisted in Baghdad and other areas of Iraq; many[4][5] claimed that the conflict was evolving into a civil war.
President Bush's job approval rarely rose above 40%. Perceptions of Congress and Republicans in general, remained highly negative. Additionally, the Congress had a smaller than average list of major accomplishments (considering that the Party in charge of both the House and Senate also had control of the White House) and was not in session for a larger than average number of days. This allowed Democrats and others to characterize it as a "Do-Nothing" Congress and blame the Republican leadership for the lack of progress.
Summary of results[edit]
The Democratic Party won a majority of the state governorships[6] and the U.S. House and Senate seats, each for the first time since 1994, an election-year commonly known as the "Republican Revolution." For the first time since the creation of the Republican Party in 1854, no Republican captured any House, Senate, or gubernatorial seat previously held by a Democrat.[7]
Democrats took a 233–202 advantage in the House of Representatives, and achieved a 49–49 tie in the United States Senate. The Senate figure is sometimes quoted in the media as 51–49, which includes two members who ran as independent candidates: Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, who promised to caucus with the Democrats.[8] The final Senate result was decided when Democrat Jim Webb was declared the winner in Virginia against incumbent George Allen, as reported by the Associated Press.[9] On November 9, 2006, Allen and fellow Republican incumbent Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana both conceded defeat, ceding effective control of the Senate to the Democrats.[10][11]
The election made Nancy Pelosi (D-California) the first-ever female, first-ever Italian-American, and first-ever Californian Speaker of the House[12] and Harry Reid (D-Nevada) the first Mormon Senate Majority Leader.[13] Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) became the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress[14] and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) became the first Buddhists in a United States governing body.[15] Although seven states banned recognition of same-sex marriage, Arizona became the first state to reject such a ballot initiative.[16] South Dakota rejected a ban on abortion under almost any circumstances, intended to overturn federal constitutional abortion-rights nationwide by setting up a strong test case that proponents hoped would lead to the overruling of Roe v. Wade.[17] This result would eventually happen in 2022, with a Mississippi state law that imposed a 15-week ban on abortion leading to the case Dobbs v. Jackson, which then led to Roe's overturning.
Some of the Republican House and Senate seats lost by the Republicans belonged to members of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Representatives Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, John Hostettler of Indiana, Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, and J. D. Hayworth of Arizona all won previously Democratic seats in 1994 elections and were defeated in 2006. Representative Sue Kelly of New York, also first elected in 1994, was defeated as well. The Democrats also won back the Kansas 2nd and Ohio 18th, both of which they had lost in 1994.
In the 2006 elections, the Democratic Party also claimed a majority of state governorships, gaining control of Republican-held governorships in New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Arkansas, Maryland, and Ohio, giving the party a 28–22 advantage in governorships.
Various scandals, including the Mark Foley congressional page scandal, the Jack Abramoff scandal, and various allegations of marital infidelity and abuse, doomed certain candidates, especially incumbents in PA-10 and NY-20, which hosted one of the most negative campaigns in the country. Virginia Senator George Allen, a potential Republican 2008 Presidential candidate, saw his chances for reelection disappear when he was caught on video using a racial slur to describe a young Indian-American who worked for his opponent's campaign.[18]
Local elections[edit]
Numerous other elections for local, city, and county public offices were held.
An unusual local election occurred in South Dakota; Marie Steichen was elected to Jerauld County Commissioner, despite the fact that she died two months before the election. Her name was never replaced on the ballot, and voters who chose her were aware of her death.[26]
In Richmond, California, a city of more than 100,000 residents, the Green Party challenger, City Councilperson Gayle McLaughlin, unseated Democratic incumbent Irma Anderson and became the first Green Party Mayor of a city of that size.[27]
Two candidates in Nevada's branch of the Constitution Party, called the Independent American Party (Nevada), were also elected to office. Jackie Berg was elected Eureka County Clerk with 54.1% of the vote, easily topping Republican and Libertarian opposition. Also, Cel Ochoa will be the new Constable in Searchlight, Nevada by virtue of winning 54.93% of the vote to defeat her Republican rival. Another Nevada Independent Party member, Bill Wilkerson, was elected to the Elko, Nevada, School Board, in a non-partisan race.[28]
In Missoula County, Montana, residents passed a measure to encourage the County Sheriff's Department to make marijuana enforcement a last priority.[29]
In Dallas County, Texas, Democrats regained control in 41 out of 42 contested GOP judgeships, as well as the district attorney's office and the county judge's seat.[30]
Reasons for Democratic win[edit]
Beginning just after George W. Bush's reelection, political analysts point to a number of factors and events that led to the eventual Republican defeat in 2006. It is generally agreed that the single most important issue during the 2006 election was the war in Iraq, and more specifically President Bush's handling of it and the overall public weariness over it.
Public opinion polling conducted during the days just before the election and the weeks just after it showed that the war in Iraq was considered the most important election issue by the largest segment of the public.[31] Exit polling showed that relatively large majorities of voters both fell into the category of disapproving of the war or expressing the desire to withdraw troops in some type of capacity. Both brackets broke extremely heavily for Democrats.[32] The issue of the war seemed to play a large part in the nationalization of the election, a departure from previous midterm elections, which tended to be about local, district-centric issues.[33] The effect of this was a general nationwide advantage for Democrats, who were not seen as being as tied to the war as Republicans, led by George Bush, were.
President Bush himself, seen as the leader and face of the Republican party, was a large factor in the 2006 election. Exit polls showed that a large block of the electorate had voted for Democrats or for third parties specifically because of personal opposition to or dislike for Bush. The size of the segment that said it had voted specifically to support Bush was not as large.[33] Opposition to Bush was based on a number of factors, these not limited to opposition to his Social Security privatization plan, the slow response of his administration to Hurricane Katrina, his perceived inaction in the face of and association with rising gas prices, and as mentioned above, his continued commitment to the war.[34]
Congressional approval, which had been slightly negative since before the 2004 election, began a steady drop beginning in March 2005. Congress's unprecedented and unpopular involvement in the Terri Schiavo controversy is often pointed to as the catalyst for this drop. Congressional scandals, such as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the sentencing of Duke Cunningham to over eight years in prison, the indictment of then House majority leader Tom DeLay, the corruption of William J. Jefferson and Bob Ney, the misconduct of Cynthia McKinney, and the Mark Foley scandal all continued to pull down congressional popularity. In the months leading up to the election, congressional approval ratings flirted with all-time historical lows. Because congress was controlled by Republicans, this high disapproval affected Republicans much more negatively than it did Democrats.
Democrats were successful in portraying the congress as a lazy, greedy, egotistical and inefficient "Do-Nothing Congress.", which they contrasted with their "New Direction for America" campaign. Indeed, the congress had been in session much less than previous ones had[35] (including those under Republican control), and numerous public opinion polls showed that large majorities believed that the congress had accomplished less than normal. This too, took a toll on Republicans (as the leaders of the government).
The listed scandals were all dwarfed by the highly publicised Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September and rapidly metastasized to include the House Republican leadership. Florida Representative Mark Foley, who ironically headed the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, was found to have been making sexually lewd and highly inappropriate contacts online with male congressional pages, and it was soon found that members of the Republican leadership knew in some capacity of Foley's advances, yet took little action. The scandal allowed Democrats to adopt corruption as a campaign issue, and exit polls on election day showed that corruption remained an important issue, one that Democrats held an advantage on.[36] In addition, many (at the time and after the fact) cited the scandal as an event that sealed the fate of the Republican congress.[37][38] After the election, top Republican strategist Karl Rove specifically named the Foley scandal as the cause of the Republicans' loss of congress.[39]
The result was that on election day, many congressional seats had been touched by Republican scandals and were easier to pick up for Democrats than under normal conditions. These include but are not limited to the Montana Senate, Virginia Senate, CA-11, PA-07, PA-10, TX-22, OH-18, FL-16 and NY-20 races.
Almost all of the gains made by Democrats came from large gains among independents, not Republicans. Democrats, Republicans, and independents all accounted for proportions of the electorate similar to what they did in 2004. Democrats and Republicans voted nearly as loyally for their parties in 2006 as they did in 2004, but independents exhibited a large swing towards Democrats. In 2004, independents split 49–46, slightly in favor of Democrats,[40] but in 2006 they voted 57–39 for Democrats, a fifteen-point swing and the largest margin among independents for Democrats since the 1986 elections.[33]
There were scattered reports of problems at polling places across the country as new electronic voting systems were introduced in many states. The problems ranged from voter and election official confusion about how to use new voting machines to apparent political dirty tricks designed to keep certain voters from casting their votes to inclement voter suppressing turnout.
Some reported problems: