Obama's Short Coattails

DEMOCRATS' DOWNBALLOT GAINS WEREN'T AS GREAT AS SOME HAD HOPED. IT MAY TAKE A WHILE TO FIGURE OUT WHY.

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008
by Charlie Cook
National Journal

It's fascinating that an election as historic and momentous as Tuesday's, one that resulted in the election of the first African-American, indeed the first minority, president in history, is also one of the most complicated and nuanced in memory.

Although Sen. Barack Obama won an enormously impressive, 349-plus-electoral-vote victory, Democrats on the other end of the ballot picked up five state legislative chambers (the New York Senate, the Delaware House, the Ohio House, the Wisconsin Assembly, and the Nevada Senate), but lost four others (the Tennessee House and Senate, and the Montana and Oklahoma Senates), with the Alaska Senate going from GOP control to a 10-10 tie. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures' Tim Storey, the authority on such things, Democrats gained approximately 100 state legislative seats, about half of the normal turnover. In fairness to Democrats, it was hard to build on their impressive pickup of legislative seats in 2006.

But given the strength of the top of the ticket nationally, one might have thought that the victory would have been more vertically integrated. Notice where the gains were: New York, Delaware, Ohio, and Wisconsin; the losses: Tennessee, Montana, and Oklahoma. Storey points out that Democrats will now hold every state legislature in the Northeast (north of Virginia) except the Pennsylvania Senate.

Although there are still several undecided congressional races, Democrats will pick up at least 17, probably a bit over 20, seats in the House and at least five in the Senate. This is impressive by any measure, though in recent weeks Democrats had hoped for even higher numbers.

(More here.)