August 6th, 2009
Republicans Pick Up Delaware State Senate Seat
Posted by Sean Trende | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
There's been some back-and-forth in the blogosphere about a Senate seat that Republicans picked up in Delaware. Republicans picked up a seat that the Democrats had held for forty years. They did so by a thirty-point margin, and they did so against a political dynasty candidate who outraised and outspent the Republican.

On the other hand, as Dave at the Hedgehog Report demonstrates, the district did go for McCain/Palin by nine points, indicating that it isn't as blue as initial reports would indicate. He also points out that McCain did so against a ticket with Joe Biden in the number two slot, which presumably strengthened the Democrats' total.

But this last argument illustrates the Democrats' main problem for 2010. An awful lot of the Democratic members of Congress owe their seats to the strong African American and student turnout engendered by the Obama campaign. Just off the top of my head, I can come up with thirteen. When the impetus for that turnout is removed, what is going to be left?

Indeed, in the Delaware race, there's a powerful positive correlation with the dropoff in Democratic percentage from 2008 to 2009 and the Democratic ticket's performance in 2008 -- the r-square is about .75.

If you don't happen to speak geek, that means that the better Obama performed in a district, the steeper the Democrats' dropoff from 2008 to 2009 was. While you can't prove causation with regression, this finding is certainly consistent with a conclusion that the massive upsurge in Democratic enthusiasm we saw in 2006 and 2008 has abated.

We've seen similar results in Virginia, which makes for some potentially ominous news for Democrats.

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com ... nate-seat/