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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: November 2006

Lessons Learned From the State of the Art in Local Polling

by , November 29th, 2006 2:19 PM EST

By Thomas Riehle
Majority Watch made history in 2006. Before this, no one has ever set out to track district-by-contested-district the race for control of the U.S. House. It was never done before on such a systematic basis because the cost was prohibitive. Constituent Dynamics (a Seattle-based recorded-voice interviewing firm) and RT Strategies (a bipartisan polling firm in Washington, D.C.) developed a methodology using

  1. Long-time analysts (Charlie Cook, Stuart Rothenberg, Chuck Todd and Congressional Quarterly), the insights from a newer generation of analysts (MyDD.com, Real Clear Politics and others) and evidence of DCCC/NRCC investments in select races to determine which races were in play,
  2. Census data (compiled by Polidata) to model likely voters in each district,
  3. Voter lists (much improved and standardized nationwide since passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002), and
  4. Recorded interviews (taking advantage of rapid developments in recorded calling software, as well as the years of training American consumers have endured as they grow accustomed to a recording asking them to punch 1 for one thing and punch 9 for another).

MW tracked the race in 60 districts. Final MW polls predicted a 49%-46% Democratic victory of 3 percentage points in these 60 districts. The actual vote was 50.2% – 48.5%, a Democratic victory margin of 1.7 points, just 1.3 points lower than MW’s prediction.
The MW performance was all the more remarkable in that all MW polling ended October 26, when MW conducted final polls in 41 races a week and a half before Election Day. MW final polls in the other 19 districts were conducted in early October, and in some cases in August. The difference between MW polling and actual election returns: persuadable and undecided voters who trended toward Republicans in the final 10 days of the campaign, according to national polls conducted after the final MW polling was completed.
MW polling offers a number of broad lessons for the Democratic Party, but before getting to that, consider how MW did on a state-by-state basis.
A few of the insights Majority Watch delivered:
Arizona. In AZ-08, MW generic polling identified this district as favorable for a Democratic take-over in August. MW did not need to go back to get the result right. AZ-01 was trickier: Incumbent Rick Renzi (R) was behind in an early October MW poll in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal and subsequent related disclosures about Jim Kolbe… but MW found Renzi marginally ahead in its final poll, and Renzi won.
California. MW polls showed in CA-04 Republican incumbent John Doolittle ahead by a significant margin in early October, then almost exactly predicted the final result in a late-October follow-up poll. But in CA-11 MW showed Republican Richard Pombo failing to win re-election, at 46 percent (he wound up with 47 percent and lost).
Colorado. In CO-07, three MW tracking polls starting in August showed successful Democratic challenger Ed Perlmutter move from marginally behind to significantly ahead. Final vote, a week and a half after our last survey: Perlmutter won, 55%-42%. In CO-04, MW showed Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave ahead in August, but a late October follow-up showed Democratic challenger Angie Paccione with a statistically insignificant lead. The actual vote favored Musgrave, 46%-43%.
Connecticut: MW polled the races of three Republican incumbents, predicting that Nancy Johnson was in the most trouble, Chris Shays was likely to win re-election, and Rob Simmons would lose a close race. Exactly right.
Illinois. In the race where the DCCC spent more money than anywhere else, IL-06, MW polls in August and twice in October showed a very close race, with Democrat Tammy Duckworth ahead by one, then Republican Peter Roskam ahead by one, then Duckworth ahead by one. Roskam won, 51%-49%. In IL-08, MW polls in August and then twice in October accurately tracked a growing lead for successful Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean. But in IL-10, two October MW polls overstated the vote of the Democratic challenger and understated the vote of the Republican incumbent. Finally, MW polls in mid-October, in the immediate wake of the Foley scandal, demonstrated that in IL-14 and IL-19 neither Speaker Dennis Hastert nor Page Board Chairman John Shimkus were in any trouble as a result of the scandal. Both Republicans were easily re-elected.
Indiana. September MW polls determined that Republican incumbents in IN-02, IN-08 and IN-09 were in serious trouble, and subsequent October MW polling confirmed that. All three lost.
Iowa. MW polls in IA-02 in early October showed incumbent Republican Jim Leach in serious trouble, with a late October follow-up confirming this race as a statistical dead heat. When Leach lost, 49%-51%, on Election Night many political commentators said that was a shocker. Not to those who followed MW! Elsewhere in Iowa, in IA-01 and IA-03, an August MW poll suggested Democratic candidate Bruce Braley was en route to a relatively easy victory, and incumbent Democrat Leonard Boswell was far ahead, and both breezed to victory.
Florida. On October 1 (two days after the resignation of Republican Congressman Mark Foley in FL-16), MW conducted two parallel surveys in his district of 1,000 voters each–one poll that informed respondents that a vote for Foley would be counted as a vote for a still-to-be-determined Republican nominee, and one that simply confronted voters with Foley’s name on the ballot and no other information. In fact, voters were informed at the polling place that a vote for Foley was vote for Republican Joe Negron, and the “informed voter” MW poll predicted that would lead to a narrow 3-point Democratic victory. Successful Democratic candidate Tim Mahoney won 50%-48%, as MW predicted would happen under those ground rules. Before the MW polls were conducted, almost all analysts had jumped to the conclusion that the Democrat would easily romp to victory because Foley’s name was still on the ballot, after his disgraced resignation from Congress. But the closeness of the race was no shocker to MW poll watchers! Elsewhere in Florida, in FL-13, the MW poll in August showed this district to be generically favorable to Republicans, but a very marginal race once the nominees were known (tested in two follow-up MW surveys). MW showed the race to be within the margin of error and as of November 20, a winner had still not been declared. In FL-22, an August MW poll showed incumbent Clay Shaw (R) significantly ahead, but a late October tracking poll put Democratic challenger Ron Klein ahead. Klein won 51%-47%.
Minnesota. In another race that seemed close to a foregone conclusion prior to MW polling, in MN-01, two October MW polls showed incumbent Republican Gil Gutknecht struggling in a close contest, with statistically insignificant leads of between one and three points. Prior to that, only true believers in the Democratic camp believed Gutknecht could lose. A week and a half after the last MW poll, Gutknecht lost 47%-53%. Meanwhile, in MN-06, a generic August MW poll demonstrated that the district favored Republican candidate Michele Bachmann. At the height of the Foley scandal, the Democratic candidate moved into a lead in a MW poll, but the Democrat’s lead disappeared in the final MW October poll. On Election Day, Bachmann won.
New Hampshire. In NH-02, a late October poll showed Democratic challenger Paul Hodes ahead with at least 50 percent of the vote. Hodes won, 53%-46%. If only MW had thought to poll in NH-01 as well! We might have predicted what came to pass on Election Day–namely, the need to move all meetings of the New England House Republican Caucus into the offices of Chris Shays for the foreseeable future.
North Carolina. In NC-11, MW polls showed Democratic challenger Heath Shuler winning decisively. The actual vote favored Shuler, 54%-46%. In NC-08, MW polling showed incumbent Republican Robin Hayes in trouble in early October, then showed a statistically insignificant Democratic lead in late October tracking. As of November 20, Hayes leads challenger Larry Kissell by fewer than 400 votes in a race headed for a recount.
Pennsylvania. Two very different, but solidly Republican districts, PA-07 and PA-10, were shown in MW polling to be easy Democratic victories over entrenched Republican incumbents. When the August MW poll showed incumbent Republican Don Sherwood behind his Democratic challenger, few believed the poll’s prediction! In fact, Democrats won both races easily. In PA-04, PA-06 and PA-08, MW polling predicted close races with mixed results. That’s what occurred on Election Night.
…and WI-08: Three MW polls showed a small but steady advantage for Democrat Steve Kagen. The final survey estimated Kagen’s support at 51 percent. Kagen received 51.19 percent of the actual vote.
For a complete rundown on the performance of MW polling, go here. For a rundown on House race polling by another active pollster using recorded-interviewer technology to accomplish large sample-size polls at a fraction of the cost of live interviewers, go here.
What was learned from this exercise?

  1. More research could better inform the conventional wisdom and lead to better targeting decisions. Any organization, whether an official party organization, a 527, or a netroots coalition of private individuals with a budget for research should be evaluating new technologies that could add greater breadth and efficiency to a sound research plan using traditional focus groups, dial sessions, mall intercepts and RDD live-interviewer polling. Recorded-voice interviewing works (and for the latest breakthrough in true Internet representative sample polling, go to http://www.polimetrix.com/news_20061106.html).
  2. The Republican “72-hour plan” doesn’t work everywhere, but where it has been tested three times or where the Republican Party chooses to focus on building it up quickly, it remains formidable. MW obviously did not get them all right, and we try to be cautious before we reach for rationalizations to explain away our clunkers. Our clunkers, however, were so geographically concentrated that we hypothesize our poll predictions may have been defeated by the “72-hour plan.” Other MW polls in New York State and Ohio were very much on target (as were MW polls in every other state), but not in western New York or in the Columbus and Cincinnati areas of Ohio (the most Republican urban areas in the state). With no way to prove it, we can only surmise that in western New York, early warnings caused NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds to bring the best of the RNC’s turnout and grassroots efforts to bear on his district, possibly with positive effects for endangered Republicans in nearby western New York districts. As for Ohio, there is no state (with the possible exception of Florida) where the “72-hour plan” is so battle-tested as Ohio, and that may explain how Deborah Pryce, the number-4-ranking member of the House Republican caucus, came back to win a race she was in danger of losing.
  3. There is nothing wrong with the Democratic Party that a 10-percentage-point increase in Democratic vote from Independents won’t cure. In race after race MW polled in 2006, we found intense partisan loyalty on both sides, among Democratic voters and Republican voters. What changed since 2000 and especially since 2002, is the increasing willingness of Independent voters to support Democratic candidates. In national exit polls, Democrats lost Independents in five of the last six House elections from 1994-2004 (winning them only in 2004) after having won Independents in five of six House elections from 1982-1992 (losing only in 1984). This time, the margin was enormous–Democrats won Independents by 59%-41% nationwide.
  4. The monolithic Republican vote may be cracking, but so far only in the East. With 41,000 interviews conducted a week and a half before Election Day, we were able to find plenty of Republican voters who disapproved of the performance of President Bush. What we found was that the willingness of those disgruntled Republicans to vote Democratic was locally determined, not nationally uniform. In particular, in New York, North Carolina and Florida, majorities of the roughly 20% of Republicans dissatisfied with Bush were ready to vote Democratic in our final polls, while only about one-third of those similarly dissatisfied Republicans in other districts were willing to let national dissatisfactions affect their choices in local politics. Were that same crack-up in the Republican monolith developed in the Midwest, Rocky Mountain States and the West, there might be more Republican incumbents in danger in the 2008 House elections.
  5. The marriage gap may still be retarding Democratic advances in some suburban and small-town/rural districts where the marriage rate is very high. In the pre-election edition, MW polls were pointing at eight districts (Florida 16th, Illinois 6th, Illinois 8th, Minnesota 6th, New Jersey 7th New York 3rd, Washington 8th , and Wisconsin 8th) that were in play, but had marriage rates in excess of 63% which was a concern unless Democrats did better among married people than they have since 1992. Democrats converted only 2 of those Republican seats and held onto the contested Democratically-held seat in the group. In the national exit poll, evidence is that married men and married women both voted Republican in House races this time. In six House election exit polls from 1982-1992, married women supported Democrats, and Democrats even fought to a standstill for the votes of married men in half those elections. Since 1994, Republicans have benefited from a marriage gap in their favor. Married people represent one challenge where Democrats made little progress in 2006.

The purpose of the Majority Watch project of RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics was to determine whether a wave election like 2006 could be accurately tracked through a comprehensive polling project. The capability of new, tested technology in tracking the horse races across all contested House elections is the bigger revelation.

Thomas Riehle is the co-founder of RT Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm in Washington D.C. Majority Watch is a joint project of RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics, a non-partisan automated recorded-voice polling firm in Seattle Washington. Majority Watch is designed to track trends in the fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives by means of polls of 1000 or more likely voters in each contested House race.

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Should Dems Whistle Past Dixie?

by , November 29th, 2006 2:29 AM EST

Thomas Schaller has gotten buckets of buzz (See TDS roundtable) with his book “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South,” the thesis of which is well-encapsulated in the title. The consequences of the strategy he has advocated in his book and articles are far-reaching, and so it seems fair to give his critics’ post-election arguments a hearing. New Donkey Ed Kilgore adds to the fray in his Salon post “Yes, Democrats do need the South!” Rebutting Schaller’s contention that the ’06 election verifies his book’s argument, Kilgore notes:

Since Democrats did in fact gain ground in the South and did not lose a thing, Schaller is at pains to show how meager those gains were in comparison with the gains in other regions. But he largely ignores the constraints of the Southern political landscape this year. In a quirk of the electoral calendar, only five Senate seats were up in the South (accepting Schaller’s definition of “the South” as the 11 states of the old Confederacy), four held by Republicans. Democrats won two, for a net gain of one senator, which is a perfectly proportional contribution to the conquest of the Senate. Similarly, there were six gubernatorial contests in the South, five in seats held by Republicans. Democrats won two for a net gain of one, again a proportional contribution to the national results. (Democrats also won the single Southern governor’s races held in 2004 and in 2005, which means they now control five of the 11 executive offices.)

Kilgore concedes that Democratic candidates for the House did not do quite so well in the South. However, he explains:

There’s no question Democrats underperformed in Southern House races, picking up five net seats (with a sixth and a seventh possible in disputed races in North Carolina and Florida). But it should be remembered that nearly half the region’s House seats are in three super-gerrymandered states, Texas, Florida and Georgia. Schaller emphasizes two near losses by Democratic incumbents in my home state of Georgia. But in fairness, he should acknowledge that both of these districts were re-gerrymandered by the Republican Legislature last year, making Jim Marshall’s district (the 8th) significantly more Republican, and taking John Barrow’s home base out of his district (the 12th) entirely. The close Georgia outcomes also owed a lot to the decision of the national GOP to make Marshall and Barrow two of the three incumbents they spent heavily to defeat, in the end falling short.

In terms of state legislatures, the South doesn’t look all that red either. Schaller has recently noted that the South accounted for a small percentage of Democratic gains in the state legislatures. Kilgore responds:

But the national seat-gain number is distorted by big Democratic pickups in the mammoth New Hampshire House, and Democrats were already stronger in Southern legislatures than in many other parts of the country. As of today, each party controls five Southern state legislatures, with one split (Tennessee). Not too shabby.

Kilgore has more to say about the South’s larger number of electoral votes, compared to the “promised land” of the Mountain West and about recent demographic trends favoring Democrats below the Mason-Dixon line. Kilgore’s concern that Schaller’s argument will morph into an attack on southern culture appears to be less well-founded. And, to be fair, Schaller’s book is subtitled “How Democrats Can Win Without the South,” not “How Democrats Must Win Without the South” (In addition to his TDS Roundtable articles, Schaller has another post-election analysis here and he responds to some of his critics here). But if Kilgore’s rebuttal falls short of making the case for a true “50 state campaign” in ’08, he has made a pretty good case for an all regions campaign.

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Should Dems Whistle Past Dixie?

by , November 28th, 2006 8:09 PM EST

Thomas Schaller has gotten buckets of buzz (see forum at The Democratic Strategist) with his book “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South,” the thesis of which is well-encapsulated in the title. The consequences of the strategy he has advocated in his book and TDS articles are far-reaching, and so it seems fair to give his critics’ post-election arguments a hearing. New Donkey Ed Kilgore adds to the fray in his Salon post “Yes, Democrats do need the South!” Rebutting Schaller’s contention that the ’06 election verifies his book’s argument, Kilgore notes:

Since Democrats did in fact gain ground in the South and did not lose a thing, Schaller is at pains to show how meager those gains were in comparison with the gains in other regions. But he largely ignores the constraints of the Southern political landscape this year. In a quirk of the electoral calendar, only five Senate seats were up in the South (accepting Schaller’s definition of “the South” as the 11 states of the old Confederacy), four held by Republicans. Democrats won two, for a net gain of one senator, which is a perfectly proportional contribution to the conquest of the Senate. Similarly, there were six gubernatorial contests in the South, five in seats held by Republicans. Democrats won two for a net gain of one, again a proportional contribution to the national results. (Democrats also won the single Southern governor’s races held in 2004 and in 2005, which means they now control five of the 11 executive offices.)

Kilgore concedes that Democratic candidates for the House did not do quite so well in the South. However, he explains:

There’s no question Democrats underperformed in Southern House races, picking up five net seats (with a sixth and a seventh possible in disputed races in North Carolina and Florida). But it should be remembered that nearly half the region’s House seats are in three super-gerrymandered states, Texas, Florida and Georgia. Schaller emphasizes two near losses by Democratic incumbents in my home state of Georgia. But in fairness, he should acknowledge that both of these districts were re-gerrymandered by the Republican Legislature last year, making Jim Marshall’s district (the 8th) significantly more Republican, and taking John Barrow’s home base out of his district (the 12th) entirely. The close Georgia outcomes also owed a lot to the decision of the national GOP to make Marshall and Barrow two of the three incumbents they spent heavily to defeat, in the end falling short.

In terms of state legislatures, the South doesn’t look all that red either. Schaller has recently noted that the South accounted for a small percentage of Democratic gains in the state legislatures. Kilgore responds:

But the national seat-gain number is distorted by big Democratic pickups in the mammoth New Hampshire House, and Democrats were already stronger in Southern legislatures than in many other parts of the country. As of today, each party controls five Southern state legislatures, with one split (Tennessee). Not too shabby.

Kilgore has more to say about the South’s larger number of electoral votes, compared to the “promised land” of the Mountain West and about recent demographic trends favoring Democrats below the Mason-Dixon line. Kilgore’s concern that Schaller’s argument will morph into an attack on southern culture appears to be less well-founded. And, to be fair, Schaller’s book is subtitled “How Democrats Can Win Without the South,” not “How Democrats Must Win Without the South” (In addition to his TDS articles, Schaller has another post-election analysis here and he answers some of his post-election critics here). But if Kilgore’s rebuttal falls short of making the case for a true “50 state campaign” in ’08, he has made a pretty good case for an all regions campaign.

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Concerning Dixiephobia

by , November 28th, 2006 2:13 PM EST

Today Salon is featuring a piece I wrote (at their invitation) responding to Tom Schaller’s post-election restatement of his hypothesis that Democrats should not only write off the South, but even campaign against the region in order to solidify a non-Southern majority. I’m not arguing for any particular focus on the South, but do think it’s a mistake to write off whole regions, and a potentially disastrous mistake to attack a Southern culture that pervades so much of our latter-day national culture. Check it out.

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New NewDonkey

by , November 28th, 2006 12:31 PM EST

Since this blog first went up in August of 2004, it has been sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, where I have been Vice President for Policy and/or Policy Director for a good while.I’ve now gone part-time with the DLC and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute and am no longer acting as a spokesman for the DLC. And in an act of real generosity, the DLC is letting me take NewDonkey.com completely independent.I want to emphasize that my new status does not represent some sort of rift with the DLC. After nearly twelve years there, it was just time to do some other stuff as well, while enabling myself to work at home for the most part. Moreover, regular readers of NewDonkey probably won’t notice much of a change in content. Nobody at the DLC tried to censor NewDonkey, though I did occasionally censor myself (e.g., on Iraq) so as to avoid “disarray at the DLC” blog entries among the organization’s many detractors. Now that I’m no longer officially or unofficially speaking for anyone but myself, I’ll say exactly what I think. And that may well continue to include occasional ripostes to those who have lurid and completely inaccurate views of what the DLC is all about.This change in NewDonkey, I guess I should add, has absolutely nothing to do with the recent decision by my former colleague The Bull Moose, to shut down his own, DLC-sponsored blog. He decided to do that because he’s going to be a full-time spokesman for Joe Lieberman. I don’t have that handicap at present, but will shut down NewDonkey if any conflicts of interest develop in my non-DLC work (I am, for example, doing some contractual speechwriting work for a potential Democratic ’08er, and will strictly avoid blogging about the Democratic presidential nominating contest so long as that arrangement exists). In any event, I hope old readers stick with the New NewDonkey. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

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Freshman Districts Vulnerability Ranked

by , November 28th, 2006 1:39 AM EST

OK, it may be a little early to start worrying, since they haven’t even been sworn in yet. But DavidNYC has a nifty chart at Swing State Project ranking each of the districts of incoming House of Reps freshman according to the “partisan voting index” (PVI). The chart provides a useful tool for evaluating which districts may be most vulnerable for Dems to defend in ’08. Hopefully, the DNC, DCCC and Speaker-elect Pelosi will take note and allocate some assistance accordingly. The comments following the article offer some perceptive insights as well.

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Freshman Districts Vulnerability Ranked

by , November 27th, 2006 8:18 PM EST

OK, it may be a little early to start worrying, since they haven’t even been sworn in yet. But DavidNYC has a nifty chart at Swing State Project ranking each of the districts of incoming House of Reps freshman according to the “partisan voting index” (PVI). The chart provides a useful tool for evaluating which districts may be most vulnerable for Dems to defend in ’08. Hopefully, the DNC, DCCC and Speaker-elect Pelosi will take note and allocate some assistance accordingly. The comments following the article offer some perceptive insights as well.

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Economic Populists vs. Rubinites to Shape Dems’ Future

by , November 26th, 2006 5:29 PM EST

Louis Uchtelle’s “Here Come the Economic Populists” in The New York Times Week in Review spotlights the internal struggle within the Democratic Party between “economic populists” and “the Rubinites.” While the marquee conflict between the two groups has been globalism vs. protectionism (or ‘free trade’ vs. ‘fair trade’), there are other major issues at stake, as Uchitelle explains:

As the two groups face off, Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, contends that the populists are pushing much harder than the Rubinites for government-subsidized universal health care. They also favor expanding Social Security to offset the decline in pension coverage in the private sector.

Fortunately, there are common areas of agreement uniting the two factions:

Both would sponsor legislation that reduced college tuition, mainly through tax credits or lower interest rates on student loans. Both would expand the earned-income tax credit to subsidize the working poor. Both would have the government negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare’s prescription drug plan. And despite their relentless criticisms of President Bush’s tax cuts, neither the populists nor the Rubinite regulars would try to roll them back now, risking a veto that the Democrats lack the votes to override.

The economic populists clearly have the momentum as a result of the November 7 election, and their numbers will swell when the freshman are sworn in. But the Rubinites may still have considerable leverage in the Party. The one thing that seems certain is that the era of runaway globalism is coming to a close.

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Glory Glory

by , November 26th, 2006 4:09 PM EST

I won’t do any more posts about college football for a while, but I do have to report I was able to attend the Georgia-Georgia Tech game in Athens yesterday. As you may have heard, Georgia won a thriller, 15-12, over the nationally ranked Jackets (out of respect, I won’t call them Dirt Daubers today), their sixth straight win in the intrastate series. Tech goes on to play in the ACC championship game against (surprise) Wake Forest, while Georgia has salvaged a disappointing season with back-to-back wins over Auburn and Tech, and will probably go to the best of the non-BCS bowls, the Chick-Fil-A (formerly the Peach Bowl).Georgia true Freshman Matthew Stafford showed why he will probably, if he stays healthy, be an all-American QB before he leaves Athens. But perhaps the two biggest stars were on defense: the routinely brilliant LB Tony Taylor, who alertly plucked a Reggie Ball fumble from a pile-up and ran it in for Georgia’s first TD, and defensive back Paul Oliver, who held superstar Tech receiver Calvin Johnson to two receptions for 13 yards, and made an interception to ice the game.It was truly a fun late afternoon and evening in the Classic City, and left me looking forward to next season like a child counting the days until Xmas.NOTE: In my next post, I’ll explain some significant changes in this blog and my own professional life. It’s not as dramatic as The Moose’s sudden blog shutdown and his departure for Liebermanland, and certainly won’t get any attention beyond regular readers, so I’ll make it snappy and return to previously scheduled blogging.

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Dems’ Challenge: Recruit More Women Candidates

by , November 24th, 2006 6:28 PM EST

On one level, 2006 has been a great year for womens’ political empowerment, with Nancy Pelosi set to serve as the first woman Speaker of the House in the new congress. After that, however, women’s gains were modest, according to statistics compiled by the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP). Women added two new U.S. Senators (both Democrats) and one governor. With two congressional races still to be decided, women increased their numbers in the House of Reps by less than one percent.
In terms of statewide elective offices, women actually lost two seats nationwide (from 78 in ’04 to 76 in ’06). Women recorded a small gain in the nation’s state legislatures, picking up 46 seats, for a new nation-wide total of 1,732. If there is any consolation in these figures, it is that Democrats did much better than Republicans, with Dems now holding 68 percent of women’s legislative seats. As CAWP Director Debbie Walsh explains:

What’s most notable for 2007 is the growing party disparity, with more than twice as many Democrats as Republican lawmakers…We’re concerned that, with state legislatures providing a vital pipeline to higher offices, we’ll see fewer Republican women positioned to move up.

When the new elected officials take office, women’s share of political offices in the U.S. will be:

Governors 18%
U.S. Senators 16%
House Members 16.3 % (pending two undecided races)
State Legislators 23%

The Dems’ strong majority of women office-holders notwithstanding, the total figures are still less than impressive. The clear challenge for all national, state and local Democratic organizations is to recruit, train and support more women candidates.

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