Cool Congressional Election Map

I find it consistently amazing that the GOP does so poorly in Congressional seats in OR (all the while able to handle a tougher task of maintaining legislative control, though it's split in the Senate now). We hold that gigantic eastern (OR-2) seat (the most GOP in the state), but keep coming up short in the Portland suburb 1st (Wu), and South OR (5th) with Hooley (all 3 should be ours). DeFazio's staying power is amazing, and that seat should also be ours, but he wields his incumbency in a seat out of step with his views like an iron-fist (quite representative of what I mentioned in a previous post of our problem with winning seats in the '80s -- there were TONS of DeFazio types in the '70s and '80s. If we couldn't dislodge them then, we weren't ever going to win a majority).

As for Hill in IN, I think with the right candidate, he might be quite vulnerable (I don't believe he was even targeted this year, and apparently did worse than Julia Carson, who we did target at the end). If the seats in IN were drawn properly, the only seat the Dems should hold are IN-1 (Lake County; Gary), we should get all the rest.

Stupak's should be ours (though not overwhelmingly so), but was made more Dem this time, I believe.

I'm not sure what more Reagan could've done. It's not as easy as that. Some of the reasons we lost seats in '82 were #1, the economy hadn't yet recovered, and #2, gerrymandering. [I'm not blaming Reagan for the losses in 1982.] We hardly had enough legislatures to protect and build on our gains won in 1980 (the latter would take years to accomplish). Not having that was a serious problem. Another was that the Dems had a far better class of candidates that held so very many GOP seats (almost like they bred them in a lab) along with a good supply from the grassroots. Many of the best and brightest we should've recruited didn't want to run (who wanted to serve in a perpetual minority ?) [Did Reagan beg good candidates to run? Did Reagan try to get a good NRCC Chair in place?]. Being out of power so long, we literally forgot what it would take to keep and maintain control. The Dems had practiced it to a fine art. I might suggest reading Barone's Almanac of American Politics (1980s editions) to see what sort of a disadvantage we were at in those days. [I read a book in college about issues like poor candidate recruitment and fundraising in those cycles. I don't think the GOP capitalized on what advantages they had in 1984. I think Reagan was happy having blue dogs support his agenda and I don't think he ever made a priority of inspiring Republican candidates across the country to run and win. Reagan could have ended that culture of the minority. He could have had the GOP leadership into the Oval Office in 1983 and said "Let's really try to make some history in the congressional races in 1984. If I win big, we can have a very special night on Election Night." He could have found a Karl Rove/Tom Davis election mastermind and said "Make this happen. You have my full support."] I think Reagan would've liked a GOP House to work with, but then had they been in place, he would've not had much to run against (it may have helped that he had the Dem party as foils). It's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but that's it in a nutshell. [I don't recall Reagan really running against Congress in 1984. He ran on his record of Morning in America. That election was all about how proud Americans were to be Americans because of Reagan.]

The only one I can see taking Stupak's seat for the GOP is Scott Shakleton(A yooper).

It's still very democrat on the local level, and even more so now when Grand Traverse County was moved to another spot, and Alpena, part of Bay, Arenac, Iosco, and Alcona(I think) were added - all dem leaning areas or swing at best.

Alpena(57 - Granholm), Iron(54), Gogebic(58), Bay(53 for whole county, North part is in district), and Marquette(58) are the toughest spots, and there is no gimmee areas up there outside Otsego(59 Posthumus), Antrim(59) and Emmet(61) county(more money there). Cheboygan is usually good(56 this time). The rest are very ERRATIC and usually are within 3 pts either way.

Stupak's seat is more dem now. The best chance we had was in 2000. For some reason, they really like the guy up there.

If he retires or take a job, then it could be up for grabs, but the GOP candidate MUST be a YOOPER to have as shot. They vote for their own.

What about our prospects in Washington state? We did very well there in 1994, but all but one of our seats seem to have been cleaned out.

[I'm not blaming Reagan for the losses in 1982.]

OK...

[Did Reagan beg good candidates to run? Did Reagan try to get a good NRCC Chair in place?].

I'm sure we got a fair number of candidates to run (I'd have to look at them race by race, though), the problem was that the odds were still stacked against us at that point.

[I read a book in college about issues like poor candidate recruitment and fundraising in those cycles. I don't think the GOP capitalized on what advantages they had in 1984. I think Reagan was happy having blue dogs support his agenda and I don't think he ever made a priority of inspiring Republican candidates across the country to run and win. Reagan could have ended that culture of the minority. He could have had the GOP leadership into the Oval Office in 1983 and said "Let's really try to make some history in the congressional races in 1984. If I win big, we can have a very special night on Election Night." He could have found a Karl Rove/Tom Davis election mastermind and said "Make this happen. You have my full support."]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I just don't believe that was in the cards at that time -- he DID inspire, but it took awhile for it to finally be realized. It took the "inspiration" of Goldwater to aid in ridding the domination of the Eastern Establishment liberals, but that took awhile. The leadership of the party in 1984 (my former Senator Howard Baker in the Senate, Bob Michel in the House) weren't the right people to be forcefully building up and aiming for a majority, or a long-lasting one in the case of Baker. For Reagan to have achieved that sort of victory that Bush achieved in the past election, you would've had to have seen a wholescale purge of leaders that would've done more damage than good. The fact that it only took 6 short years after Reagan left office is remarkable in itself. I would add, though, that I believe we were on course to a majority in the Nixon years, probably by 1976 or 1978, were it not for the Watergate disaster, which set the party back to little better than after the disastrous 1958 midterms (and all the gains made here in the South were utterly wiped out. Here in TN, the period from 1974-80 was practically a dark age for the GOP after all the smashing gains we made from 1962-72). It took 20 years to repair the damage that Watergate did, and that has to be added into the equation as well.

[I don't recall Reagan really running against Congress in 1984. He ran on his record of Morning in America. That election was all about how proud Americans were to be Americans because of Reagan.]

Hey, I was a "yoot" for Mondull in '84. Blame my liberal teachers for brainwashing me as to how eee-vil Ronnie was. Well, I was only 10. :-)

I thought Stupak was vulnerable to Chuck Yob in '00, especially after he started to go soft on the 2nd Amendment. What saved his bacon was his son... when Bartholomew, Jr. "B.J." committed suicide after taking that anti-zit medication, Accutane, I knew Stupak wasn't going to be turned out, no way, no how. If his boy were still alive, Congressman Yob would've just won his 2nd term.

Did you know Stupak isn't technically a YOOPER ? He was born in Wisconsin, so that makes him a YOOPER poser or a Baja YOOPER (I think I just coined a new phrase !).

"What about our prospects in Washington state? We did very well there in 1994, but all but one of our seats seem to have been cleaned out."

Well, as you know, those seats were drawn after 1990 by a seeming non-partisan committee. It was a disaster for us in the '92 election, going from a 5-3 Dem to GOP ratio to a 8-1 ratio (holding only Rod Chandler's seat, the man who SHOULD'VE won the Senate seat instead of Patty Murray). The 2 other Republicans retired and we had only the lone freshman, Jennifer Dunn. It wasn't that the seats were drawn for the Dems, just that they won all of the close races. We, of course, seized 6 from them in '94 (knocking off Maria Cantwell (1st); Jolene Unsoeld (3rd); Jay Inslee (4th); Tom Foley (5th); Mike Kreidler (9th) and Al Swift's(2nd) open seat) by winning all of the close races (essentially every seat possible that we could win). Naturally, there was going to be a winnowing out of some of those. It started with Randy Tate in the 9th (who was probably too conservative for the seat) in '96; then the disaster of '98, losing Rick White's (1st) seat (ironically because he wasn't Conservative enough), Linda Smith's (3rd) open seat when she ran for the Senate, and then in 2000 losing the open seat of Jack Metcalf's 2nd. The current occupants of all 9 seats (with the exception, perhaps, of Inslee in the 1st and Larsen in the 2nd) have converted their seats into "solid" wins for their respective parties. Needless to say, though, the Dems are (at 6-3) overrepresentative of the state. If the state were to have 10 seats, it should probably be a 5-5 split. I don't frankly see us winning anything more than we have now until retirements occur (and that, probably only in the 1st and 2nd, less likely in the 4th and 9th, and we can forget about Norman Dicks' and Baghdad Jim McDermott's seats, Dicks's is solid liberal, and McDermott's as radical leftist as San Francisco's). Well, that's my take, I wish I had a more optimistic outlook for WA state.

Excellent map! Been looking for something like that. Thanks!

kewl

i wonder howlong these stay active
and where does it say the year

Holy necromancy, Batman!

some of yuze guys are schmarter than me and figuring out how this works. Rabid, how did you even know i posted dat one/?

You were the only poster on the thread in the last 6 years. I like electoral maps, voting demographic graphics, and the such, but I knew it was old when I saw Torie’s name - doesn’t post so much anymore.

The website appears to be still good though - as far as Missouri goes.

i guess something alerted you to the fact that i posted there

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/pings is the page I go to. I saw the topic “Cool Congressional Election Map” and clicked on it.