Free Republic

I like to think people in the United States still believe in liberty, and I’ve cited some polling data in support of American Exceptionalism. And it seems like that philosophical belief in individualism and limited government sometimes has an impact in the polling booth. According to a recent study, Obamacare was poison for Democrats in 2010.Here’s an excerpt from a report in The Hill.Voting for President Obama’s healthcare reform law cost Democratic incumbents 5.8 percentage points of support at the polls in 2010, according to a new study in the journal American Politics Research. The study helps explain why Democrats lost 66 House seats, significantly...

Democratic support for President Obama’s controversial health care overhaul may have single-handedly caused the party’s historic “shellacking” in the 2010 mid-term elections, a new study finds. The study was conducted by a group of political science professors and published this week by American Politics Research. It found that, had it not been for the health care law, House Democrats likely would have held at least 25 seats and maintained their majority.

Jeff Lord at the American Spectator recently sat down with a real troublemaker for an interview. 2010 U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell sat down with Jeff and the first copy of her new book “Troublemaker” for a chat. I’ll let you read most of Jeff’s piece over at the American Spectator but I thought that the following excerpt aptly described O’Donnell’s campaign. THE REAL POINT HERE, as more and more Americans get with every passing day, is that this is precisely the game played with non-Establishment politicians right from the get-go. A viewing of the 1939 classic film Mr. Smith...

Having spent most of their lives as elected politicians, the GOP old guard keeps trying to stay in control. However the newbies may be getting restless and instead of feeling challenges by Democrats, it is the Republicans who may be their actual foes.

Late last week, a state judge on Long Island in New York certified that Mineola mayor Jack Martins, a Republican, had won the race for state Senate District 7 by a mere 451 votes out of the more than 85,000 cast. With that win, the GOP took control of the New York Senate by a 32-30 majority making it the last state legislative domino to fall in the 2010 election cycle. The New York state Senate was the 20th legislative chamber picked up by Republicans in the 2010 elections. In addition to gaining new majorities in 20 chambers, Republicans won...

In the days after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Kevin Hollinshead hoped the president would become a leader reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- capable of steering the country out of a massive economic crisis while taking on his sharpest critics. But Hollinshead, a senior at Colorado State University, now feels that the president has ceded too much to his Republican opposition and failed to live up to the ideals of his campaign. "They've decided that he's public enemy No. 1, and they'll do whatever it takes to ruin him," Hollinshead said of Republicans in Congress. "And rather than...

Will the real Rick Santorum please stand up? BEFORE the November 2, election, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell in her US Senate race in Delaware (though trying to have it both ways to some extent). Now, AFTER the election, Rick Santroum is now trying to jump on the bandwagon and attack the GOP’s losing candidates. Goal: NOT win elections, NOT learn how to win elections, but simply for personal aggrandizement by Rick Santorum. ________________________________________________ On September 21, 2010, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell as a candidate on Greta Van Sustren’s “On the Record” Rick Santorum Santorum — famous for dumping...

Three years after he led the charge to require consumers to ditch their comfortable old incandescent lights in favor of those twisty CFL bulbs, Rep. Fred Upton now wants to be the man to help undo that law as the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That about-face is not unique among lawmakers looking to atone for stances they've taken over the past decade as they seek to gain top posts in a decidedly more conservative Republican Congress, but his reversal underscores how intent the GOP is on proving it has broken with past practices. "We have...

Democratic Attacks Fell on Deaf Ears This Fall NATHAN L. GONZALES DECEMBER 1, 2010 · 6:30 PM EDT For most of the election cycle, Democratic strategists were optimistic they could hold the House because of their arsenal of opposition research. But Democratic attacks failed to bring down enough Republican challengers to keep the majority. Democrats thought GOP challengers were simply too flawed to be acceptable alternatives to voters who wanted change. But as Republicans learned in 2006 and 2008, the messenger and the audience matter just as much, if not more, than the message when it comes to political attacks....

Results from November's midterm elections have exposed a deepening political divide between cities on the coasts and the less-dense areas in the middle of the country. The Republican Party's big gains in the House came largely from districts that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole. Democrats kept their big majorities in the cities. That's a contrast to the last GOP wave in 1994, when Republicans' share of the vote was consistent inside and outside metropolitan areas, according to a Washington Post analysis. That year, Republicans captured seats in a broader array of places....

  Votes without voters - the notion seems like something from "The Twilight Zone." Yet this outcome, the result of a mysterious computer glitch, may have helped re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, last week by a 50.2%-44.6% margin. Actually, the "mystery" is very likely the doing of a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which nationwide provides votes, money and muscle for the Democratic Party. Critics are charging that voting machines throughout Clark County (Las Vegas), where about three-fourths of the state's population resides, were rigged to place check marks next...

Back to Article Democratic Losses Hit State Farm Teams Hard By Steve Peoples Roll Call Staff Nov. 9, 2010, 11:30 p.m. While the GOP celebrates historic gains in the House, Republicans in state capitals across the country are cheering massive pickups that wiped out key Democratic bench players — a shift that they say may shape elections for years to come. From Minnesota to Montana, Democrats lost state Speakers, Senate Majority Leaders, lieutenant governors and other up-and-comers whose political futures are now uncertain at best. Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in New Hampshire, where the GOP won all...

One of the most striking aspects of the 2010 election is how uneven the wave was. Rather than striking down Democrats across the land, it spared most Democrats on the coasts and in cities. In New England, Republicans will pick up only two congressional districts, no Senate seats, and will actually lose ground in governorships. On the West Coast, the GOP finds itself picking up one or two congressional districts, and will be shut out of governorships and Senate seats. And while the GOP performed well in congressional races nationally, and very well in state legislative races, the Democrats clearly...

The election post-mortems keep rolling in. Politico's Byron Tau's report on the remarkable shift in voting patterns among America's oldest voters goes a long way to explain why last week's contest became such a rout for Republicans. Voters over 65, he writes, favored Republicans by a 21-point margin after breaking narrowly for Democrats in 2006, and in some key races the margin was even more lopsided: In New Hampshire, for instance, seniors backed GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte over her Democratic challenger by 33 points. In the narrow Illinois Senate contest, Republican Mark Kirk won older voters by 22 points....

A majority of American voters have just rejected a decades-long progressive agenda in favor of a shift back toward center-right. Republicans took control of the House for the first time since 2006, capturing 64 additional seats, the largest shift in 78 years, when Democrats gained 97 seats in the Franklin D. Roosevelt-led landslide of 1932. Democrats now have fewer House members than any time since World War II. Republicans gained seven seats in the Senate, even though only 17 Democratic seats were in play. Twenty-three Democratic senators will run in 2012. Republican governors replaced Democrats in 10 states. North Carolina...

\ Each of the 435 congressional districts is rescaled to have the same area. The white districts are too close to call (4 Nov 2010) or do not send voting delegates to the House (Washington DC). A comparison with the 2008 cartogram reveals not only that the Republicans made gains, but also where these occured. The next cartogram shows those districts that have changed parties.

The Republican victories in Tuesday’s midterm election removed 10 Democrats from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). Texas Democrat Rep. Solomon Ortiz, current HASC readiness panel chairman most likely will be the eleventh. The most noticeable Democrat departures are current HASC chairman Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO.), (after 33 years in office) and Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), also lost his seat after 28 years. The leading candidate for HASC chairmanship, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA.) announced his priorities for the 112th Congress as: “…support [for] military personnel and their families; and investing in the necessary capabilities and force structure, “while mandating...

This is the full 8-minute video of "Happy Days Are Here Again" from the Glenn Beck radio show on November 3rd, the day after the election. It is so funny that I'm still watching it!

Congratulations to the GOP, which just trounced both Democrats and liberal journalists alike.There’s only one hitch: Somebody hit the reset button and everything started over again like the movie “Groundhog Day.” The campaign for 2012 has already begun with a vengeance.And vengeance is exactly what the losing side wants. They are angry – from journalists to pundits to the Twitterati. They want revenge, and they want it in its most base forms. The Internet is a great leveler and allows everyone to express an opinion. Unfortunately, the level we’ve all settled at is somewhere deep into the gutter where bloggers...

Two men and a woman who identified themselves as members of the Democratic National Committee were asked to leave an election poll in the City of Hazleton on Tuesday. Eileen Whitaker, the election judge in Ward 8, which has its polling place in Hazleton City Hall, said the men, one of whom identified himself as Edmund F. Brown, were escorted out when they told poll workers they didn't reside or vote in Hazleton. Whitaker said Brown appeared at the poll as it opened at 7 a.m., but became a nuisance. "He was obnoxious, but a nice obnoxious," Whitaker said. "He...

If national elections were held exclusively on college campuses, America truly would become a one-party state. “While conservatives have always had to go up against a much smaller number of liberals, it is the influence of the progressives and their strategic location—in such power centers as the media and academia—that gives them the strategic advantage,” Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid writes. “Now, with their power in the Democratic Party more concentrated than ever, they are relishing a fight they think they can win.” In fact, “A new Young America’s Foundation [YAF] study reveals that the nation’s top ten colleges...

Ok, oil is hovering at $85/barrel, which means like $3.00/gallon where I live. That is unacceptable with ANWR and our shallow and deep waters off our coasts just sitting there. Gas affects everyone, even the folks who take the bus as their fares will rise (or they'll pass the redistribution to us). It's time to start yelling at the White House and Senate from our newly elected Reps. Not later, now...pressure now and don't let them start on their wave of lame duck legislation.

Syracuse, NY -- Republican Ann Marie Buerkle surged ahead of U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei by 659 votes this afternoon in the 25th Congressional District race after Wayne County reported its unofficial results. Buerkle sealed her victory in the western part of the district with a convincing win in Wayne County, trouncing Maffei 15,429 (63 percent) to 9,191 (37 percent), according to returns Wayne County released at about 5:30 p.m. Before Wayne County reported its results -- more than 20 hours after polls closed -- Maffei held on to a slim lead of about 5,600 votes from the other three counties...

If you believe that the cable news landscape is symptomatic of our two-party political system, then you also probably, and predictably, saw a different tone in last nights election results. Fox News presented its coverage with a patina of celebration, while MSNBC’s took a more gloom and doom approach. But there was one important distinction between the two outlets: Fox News offered a far more balanced set of analysts for the election coverage than did MSNBC. Almost all of the results from yesterday’s midterm elections are in, and there is little question that the GOP has good reason to celebrate...

The 2010 election has so far gone as expected: Republicans take the U.S. House, but not the Senate; Republicans make major gains in the Washington legislature but are, so far, short of winning majorities; Republicans Dave Reichert and Jaime Herrera win comfortably; and the races for the 2nd  Congressional District and the U.S. Senate are literally too close to call. Today (Nov. 3) will be Election Day 2 in Washington state, as 23 of 39 counties, including all the large counties, will count a significant number of ballots. In addition, the counties will report how many ballots they have received to...

The midterm elections that returned House control to the GOP after four years was a rebuke to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, their stewardship of the struggling economy, their overhaul of the nation's health care system, and more. Obama made no promises. But he called Boehner and McConnell around midnight to congratulate them, the White House said. Obama spoke more generally of working with Republicans to "find common ground, move the country forward and get things done for the American people." Pelosi, meanwhile, remained defiant to the end. The Californian issued a statement early Wednesday saluting Democratic candidates who...

Governor - General Total 699/751 Malloy (D) 531,567 49% Foley (R) 533,197 49% Marsh (I) 16,686 2%

Most people who voted in Election 2010 on the East Coast think the average Democrat in Congress is more liberal than they are and describe the views of most congressional Democrats as extreme. These results come from a Rasmussen Reports telephone polling of people who have already voted in states in the Eastern Time Zone. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of these voters say the average Democrat in Congress is more liberal than they are. Only 10% say that member of Congress is more conservative, while 27% see his or her views as about the same as theirs. Fifty-five percent (55%) say...

Only about a quarter of voters in Tuesday's House races blamed Obama for the nation's economic troubles. But about half think Obama's policies will hurt the country. About four out of 10 voters said they support the tea party movement, and they overwhelmingly voted Republican.

Sixty-two percent of voters name the economy as their most important issue this year. Health care ranks a distant second, at 19 percent. Illegal immigration and Afghanistan follow at 8 and 7 percent.

The voting is under way, but President Barack Obama is still working to turn out blacks for Democratic candidates. He phoned in to a series of urban-format radio stations on Tuesday, interrrupting music and chat with a pitch for the importance of the midterm vote. He told listeners to KPWR radio in Los Angeles that even though his name isn't on the ballot, his agenda is. He said "across the board" things have improved on his watch — but the question being decided is, "Can we keep that up?"

What we are observing is not so much an election as a kind of plebiscite on the presidency of Barack Obama and the direction in which he has taken the country. November 2 is the moment when the imminent destiny of the United States will begin to be decided. What we are observing is not so much an election as a kind of plebiscite on the presidency of Barack Obama and the direction in which he has taken the country. His name may not be on the ballot, but his name is stamped, as it were, on the forehead of...

Most voters say today’s election is a referendum on President Obama’s agenda and that he should change course if Republicans win control of the House. But most also don’t expect him to make that change. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters believe this election is more a referendum on the president’s agenda than about individual candidates and issues. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree and say the candidates and issues are paramount. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Only 40% of voters think the president should continue to pursue the same agenda if...

NEW BERN, N.C. - Election officials say they are taking steps to deal with issues that have surfaced at polling places. In Craven County, some people complained the voting machines didn't correctly count their votes. Over the weekend, a Federal judge ruled counties like Craven that use touch-screen voting machines must tell voters that the machines are sensitive. Poll workers also need to keep detailed records of complaints about the machines. Erin Burridge works with the Craven County Board of Elections and says "Any mandate that comes down from the state or any directive in regards to election day and...

Authorities in Crow Wing County are investigating possible voter fraud involving people with mental disabilities. An affidavit, filed Monday by Brainerd resident Montgomery Jensen, claims a large group of mentally handicapped people were told whom to vote for by mental health staff members and that staff filled out the ballots themselves without the disabled voters close by. Jensen said he came to the Crow Wing County Auditor's Office in Brainerd at approximately 4:40 p.m. Friday to fill out an absentee ballot, because he wouldn't have time to vote there on Nov. 2.

I've seen a couple vanities asking about online news sources for the upcoming election, so I thought I'd just let everyone know about this: NumbersUSA is presenting ten hours of continuous, live, streaming coverage of the elections, featuring interviews with candidates, especially reformers like Tom Tancredo and Allen West. No liberal spin, a strategy to beat the networks on calling races (including their own post-vote polls), and attention to the sort of races the MSM would rather not talk about (West, Webster, Martinez, Sandoval).

GET OUT THE VOTE FOR THE SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR YOU

For newly empowered congressional Republicans, priority one must be an extension of the Bush tax cuts. There should be enough votes not only from a new Republican majority, but also from some of the decimated and dispirited (and even newly elected) Democrats. If President Obama is smart, he won't veto the bill. If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, everyone who gets a paycheck and has taxes withheld is going to see less money in the "net" column starting January 1. Bloomberg.com has published some calculations. It reports that, according to the Tax Institute at H&R Block, "for a...

Editor’s note: A group of citizen watchdog groups in Minnesota have implemented a program called Election Integrity Watch. Part of the initiative involves wearing buttons to the polls which say “Please ID Me” and presenting photo identification as a silent protest in advocacy of legislation requiring photo identification to vote. In the final days leading up to the election. A handful of state and county election officials banned the buttons, along with any apparel referencing the Tea Party. The groups co-sponsoring Election Integrity Watch filed a lawsuit challenging the ban. The case was heard Monday. The following is addressed to...

Download the app to be ready for anything you see at the polls. Plus: a look at Gallup's final generic voter preference poll. Election Day is almost upon us. The final Gallup generic ballot poll shows that Republicans are poised for a historic win, going into the vote with a whopping and unprecedented 15-point advantage over the Democrats. Gallup’s historical model suggests that a party needs at least a two-point advantage in the national House vote to win a majority of the 435 seats. The Republicans’ current likely voter margin suggests that this scenario is highly probable, making the question...

Republicans head into Election Day today with a significant advantage over Democrats in terms of ballots cast, according to figures released Monday by the Colorado secretary of state's office. Whether that spells success come Election Night, though, is an open question. In numbers up to date through the weekend, Republicans had about a 61,500-ballot advantage over Democrats. Republican voters also had voted at a higher rate — about 5.5 percentage points higher — than Democrats. Unaffiliated voters, who make up the state's largest voting bloc, lagged behind the two major parties but still accounted for about a quarter of the...

The election campaign that never seemed to end finally reaches the finish line today as an estimated 9.5 million voters will cast ballots across California.While polls elsewhere in the country suggest the possibility of a Republican sweep that could grab control of the House from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats and possibly capture the Senate, there's no guarantee that a GOP wave will make it past the Sierra Nevada.In the top-of-the-ticket races, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown and Republicans Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman closed out their efforts Monday by once again barnstorming the state in a final...

...Watch your polling places. Volunteer. ... Check out my latest column at Big Government: Stealing the Election Pamela Geller, Big Government Fifteen Missouri counties have more people registered to vote than they have people who are aged eighteen or older. This is egregious, illegal and contemptuous of the rule of law. And it is just the tip of the iceberg. Voter fraud is rampant. Nevada voting machines are automatically registering votes for Harry Reid, no matter who you vote for. And who are the voting machine technicians? Members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which donated $500,000 to the...

Voter turnout is reportedly higher than normal, shocking polls workers across the Lehigh Valley area who were not expecting much interest in races for key positions like senator in Washington, D.C., and governor in Harrisburg. In Allentown's mostly Democratic 7th Ward, Gus Kruz, the judge of elections, was seeing high interest in voting already a few minutes after polls opened at 7 a.m. Although not a large district, a dozen people had already voted in the 7th Ward by 7:15 a.m. At that point, Kruz couldn't predict if more Democrats would come out than Republicans. The same was true in...

Connecticut voters - post your experiences here

A record number of voters have cast early ballots for a midterm election. The total number of early votes has topped 16 million, according to one preliminary analysis, and is on track to be slightly shy of the historic number of early ballots cast in the 2008 presidential election. "It's going to easily beat any midterm we've had," said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University government professor who has tracked early voting for several election cycles and estimates that 29 percent of midterm votes have been cast in the days and weeks before Election Day. All 50 states have sent...

I just witnessed a poll worker telling a voter that he has to vote democrat on his ballet. This poll worker refuses to give her name. Just called my county board of elections chairman to report. He's on his way to the polling place. Be on the lookout folks.

I went to vote today. extra voting booths, few people (8:00 AM). My district is tiny and rural. The nearest village has 2,200 people. When I left, I noticed a large white SUV marked "Homeland Security" "Federal Protective Services" with G18 plates. This location is about as unlikely a one as I could imagine for any kind of mischief. Even if someone phoned in a threat, isn't a G18 pretty high ranking to send over to a tiny rural firehouse with few people?

The battle over President Obama’s old senate seat in Illinois is excruciatingly close.  Republican Mark Kirk leads Democrat Alexi Giannoulias by a very small margin in most polls and is narrowly favored to win.  But a number of Illinois GOP operatives I spoke with today expressed concerns about an eleventh-hour development in the race: A $1 million cash infusion from the DNC into the state late on Saturday, coinciding with the President’s Hyde Park Rally.  Politico’s Ben Smith reports: With Illinois shaping up as perhaps the tightest Senate race in the country — and one where the Democratic candidate and his...