The Questions That Defined the Election

Sunday, November 12, 2006

By the summer, it was obvious that this year's political winds were not blowing favorably for Republicans. But it was far from inevitable that Democrats would command a majority simultaneously in the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years. In July, the political staff of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com came up with a list of eight questions that would frame the campaign. Some of these involved long-term ideological and geographic trends, and others focused on issues specific to 2006. Over the past four months, individual articles -- which remain online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/bellwether -- looked at races where the bellwether questions were most vividly on display.

On Tuesday, the voters weighed in with their answers to the questions The Post posed in the 2006 Bellwether Project.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

In 2002, President Bush was the weapon many Republican House and Senate candidates successfully used against their Democratic opponents. This time, Bush was featured prominently in close campaigns -- but almost exclusively in the ads of Democratic candidates using the president as a weapon against Republicans.

The president was still a prodigious fundraiser, but few Republican candidates would appear with him. In exit polls, nearly 60 percent of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with Bush.

In some cases, anti-Bush sentiments took out unlikely victims. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) did not vote for Bush in 2004 but lost to Sheldon Whitehouse (D). For 24 years, Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R) had a reputation as a moderate within the House GOP caucus, but she lost Connecticut's 5th District to challenger Chris Murphy (D). Five-term Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.) kept Bush at a distance, but she still lost the state's 3rd District seat to Democrat John Yarmuth.

MONEY MATTERS

Perhaps the most confounding question for the GOP all year was why the economy wasn't lifting Republican candidates' fortunes.

By most measures, the economy was doing well, with low unemployment and a high stock market. Gasoline prices, which had caused Republicans such distress, had dropped considerably by Election Day.

Even so, the economy appeared only to be a top-tier issue in locales where there were signs of economic anxiety. In three Midwestern battlegrounds where it was prominently debated -- Iowa's 1st District, Wisconsin's 8th and Indiana's 2nd -- Republican candidates lost. Exit polls show that Americans are split over whether the economy is in good shape.

Republicans, meanwhile, had scant success in holding Democrats accountable on the issue. Michigan has a 7.1 percent unemployment rate, and Republican challenger Michael Bouchard slammed Sen. Deborah Stabenow (D) over job losses. She won handily, as did Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D).

TUNE IN, TURN ON

In 2004, Republicans tended to benefit from ballot proposals against same-sex marriage that revved the conservative base. This year, Democrats hoped to turn out their own partisans with initiatives to raise the minimum wage and promote stem cell research. The strategy did not hurt, but it's not clear how much it helped.

In Ohio, Sherrod Brown (D) defeated Sen. Mike DeWine (R) by nearly the same margin that voters approved a minimum wage initiative. In Missouri, State Auditor Claire McCaskill (D) eked out a victory over Sen. James M. Talent (R), and a stem cell initiative, which she supported and he opposed, received a bare majority. Marriage measures passed in eight states, but they appear to have had limited influence on congressional contests.

THE ABRAMOFF ECHO

By the fall, it seemed that many voters were shrugging off the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and ethics was fading as an important election issue. That changed in September when the Mark Foley page scandal erupted, including allegations that the House GOP leadership had averted its gaze from Foley's advances toward young males. In exit polls, 74 percent of voters said corruption was very or extremely important in their decision.

In Florida's 16th District, Tim Mahoney (D) defeated Joe Negron (R), Foley's replacement after he resigned. Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), caught in his own scandal after his mistress accused him of choking her, lost to Chris Carney in the 10th District. Meanwhile, in Montana, Republican Sen. Conrad Burns's ties to Abramoff helped doom him as challenger Jon Tester (D) won. And Joy Padgett -- the replacement to Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), who was indicted and resigned in the Abramoff scandal -- was defeated by Zack Space (D).

BORDER PATROL

Many Republicans thought for much of the year that they knew the key to winning close elections: anti-illegal-immigration appeals aimed at consolidating the conservative base and attracting independents upset about border security. But in virtually every competitive race, that strategy failed.

An immigration firebrand, Randy Graf, defeated a more moderate candidate in the Republican primary for Arizona's 8th District, and then was swiftly toppled by the Democratic candidate, Gabrielle Giffords. Arizona's 5th District voters unseated immigration hard-liner Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R) in favor of challenger Harry Mitchell (D).

Farther from the border, Ed Perlmutter (D) soundly defeated conservative Rick O'Donnell (R) in Colorado's 7th District.

ANXIOUS SUBURBS

All year long, polls had registered voters' rising disaffection with the Iraq war and their doubts that it was contributing to U.S. security.

But Republican strategists thought the issue could be framed publicly to limit damage to the GOP or turn the war to an advantage. But no positioning could offset the reality that October was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in a year. Two-thirds of voters said the war was very or extremely important to them. They favored Democrats decisively.

Even so, where the war was the prominent issue, antiwar candidates -- even those with strong military credentials -- didn't always win. In Pennsylvania, Patrick Murphy (D), who served in Iraq, defeated Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R), just as retired Vice Adm. Joe Sestak (D) beat Rep. Curt Weldon (R). Yet in Illinois, Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in Iraq, was defeated by Peter Roskam (R).

In Connecticut, Rep. Christopher Shays (R) prevailed over Democrat Diane Farrell.

TOUGH TERRAIN

In 1994, when the Republicans won control of Congress, they did so in large part by evicting Democrats from seats in the South, where the electorate had grown steadily more conservative. This year, the opposite phenomenon took place in the Northeast, where many once-safe Republicans representing Democratic-leaning districts discovered that the GOP label was radioactive.

Democrats picked up at least 10 House seats in the region, cutting by nearly a third the number of GOP-controlled seats. Exit polls showed that the president and the GOP were more unpopular in the Northeast than anywhere else in the country.

In New York's 24th District, Michael Arcuri (D) easily defeated Ray Meier (R). In Pennsylvania's 4th District, Rep. Melissa Hart (R) fell to Jason Altmire (D). The GOP senator to lose by the greatest margin on Tuesday was Rick Santorum, the third-ranking member of the Senate GOP leadership, who represented Pennsylvania for two terms.

RED-STATE REVIVAL

For much of a generation, Democrats seemed to be becoming politically extinct in the South; they were described by Republicans as out of touch with traditional values. This year, Democrats recruited candidates conservative on many social issues who were successful in some parts of the upper South. Former Redskins quarterback Heath Shuler (D), for example, unseated Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.).

Yet the experiment in reversing political trends was tenuous. Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) failed by a substantial margin to become the South's first black senator since Reconstruction against Bob Corker (R). And Reps. Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) and Thelma Drake (R-Va.) beat back tough challenges.

James Webb, a former Republican, won as a Democrat in Virginia, but only by a tiny margin as Sen. George Allen (R) suffered from self-inflicted wounds. And Claire McCaskill (D) won in Missouri, but largely on strong turnout in traditionally Democratic urban areas.

-- Zachary A. Goldfarb