Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Alaska-GOV:
Prediction: Tony Knowles (D) 51 - Sarah Palin (R) 48
Reality: Palin 49 - Knowles 41

CO-04:
Prediction: Angie Paccione (D) 50 - Marilyn Musgrave (R-inc.) 48
Reality: Musgrave 46 - Paccione 43
This is a tough loss since Musgrave is so awful and thinks that gay marriage is the biggest danger facing America. Hopefully Paccione will win this one in 2008, when Colorado becomes a swing state too.

CO-05:
Prediction: Jay Fawcett (D) 48 - Doug Lamborn (R) 47
Reality: Lamborn 59 - Fawcett 41
My first state with two misses! This prediction was not close. I admit I look ridiculous here in retrospect, but for some reason I thought the Ted Haggard scandal would depress turnout more than it did. That's my mistake.

CT-02
Prediction: Rob Simmons (R-inc.) 51 - Joe Courtney (D) 49
Reality: Courtney 50 - Simmons 50
This one was very close, with Courtney winning by about 100 votes. The only Haverford alum in Congress took a long time to give up, but ultimately he's no longer joining Chris Shays as the only House Republicans left from New England. I still think my guess was pretty good.

CT-04
Prediction: Diane Farrell (D) 51 - Christopher Shays (R-inc.) 49
Reality: Shays 51 - Farrell 48
Things didn't go as well for Connecticut Democrats as I had hoped, what with Shays retaining yet again and that mess of a Senate race. This is congressional run #2 for Farrell, so despite hitting at least 48% both times, it looks like we'll need someone new against Shays next time. When is that guy going to get sick of the acrimony in Congress and retire?

FL-13
Prediction: Christine Jennings (D) 52 - Vern Buchanan (R) 47
Reality: Buchanan 50 - Jennings 50
This election was stolen and needs to be re-run, for separate reasons. On the stolen part, the National Republican Campaign Committee called voters repeatedly, at early-morning hours, calling back more often if people hung up quickly. They suggested in the calls that they were coming from the Democratic candidate, so everyone would get mad at the Democrat. They did that here to Christine Jennings, and the current total has her down 400 votes out of over 237,000 cast, so I don't feel badly about mis-calling this race. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that there needs to be criminal penalties for shit like this, because civil damages (i.e. payouts from lawsuits) aren't doing the trick. As for the re-run, amid reports that the electronic voting machines were screwed up and didn't have this race listed, something like 18,000 people just didn't vote for anyone in the congressional race. I don't know if that's a high number for how many people voted, but going off the rest of their ballots, those 18,000 voters skewed heavily Democratic. Again, this race was "decided" by 400 votes. It's not unprecedented for campaigns with indecipherable wins to be re-run, and this time I think we would get a representative who represents the will of the district.

Idaho-GOV:
Prediction: Jerry Brady (D) 49 - Butch Otter (R) 47
Reality: Otter 52 - Brady 44
This might not have been my best pick.

Illinois-06:
Prediction: Tammy Duckworth (D) 49 - Peter Roskam (R) 47
Reality: Roskam 51 - Duckworth 49
Thanks to DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel for putting $3 million into this race when there were clearly better options. I am starting to suspect that if the DCCC treated this as a normal race instead of its marquee race we would have won: Duckworth has an appealing personal history but that just isn't enough to win a campaign. Narrow primary loser Christine Cegelis had a much more energetic campaign.

Iowa-02:
Prediction: Jim Leach (R-inc.) 55 - David Loebsack (D) 43
Reality: Loebsack 51 - Leach 49
Aw! I did NOT see that coming! I call this the second-biggest upset of the night.

Maryland-GOV:
Prediction: Robert Ehrlich (R-inc.) 51 - Martin O'Malley (D) 49
Reality: O'Malley 53 - Ehrlich 46
O'Malley held a big lead for most of this campaign, but by Election Day it looked like it had narrowed into a tie. Momentum matters in politics and the World Series, so I don't feel too moronic for missing this call, even if it's one of my worst predictions overall. I'm not complaining!

Minnesota-GOV:
Prediction: Mike Hatch (D) 52 - Tim Pawlenty (R-inc.) 47
Reality: Pawlenty 47 - Hatch 46
Now, if I had said something like "There's no way Tim Pawlenty's support goes above 47," then I look like a smart guy. Here, not so much. I thought Pawlenty would be swept up in the anti-Republican mood both nationally and within Minnesota, but apparently it didn't work out that way. On paper these both look like strong candidates, but I guess I'm not as sharp on Minnesota politics as I could be.

MN-01:
Prediction: Gil Gutknecht (R-inc.) 51 - Tim Walz (D) 48
Reality: Walz 53 - Gutknecht 47
Apparently Gil Gutknecht is a really good guy, and now he'll be a really good guy in the private sector. Seriously, I've never understood why people want to keep elected officials who differ from them drastically on the issues that matter. It's not my responsibility to make sure that members of Congress have gainful employment; if I don't like their politics, I think they should leave. Anyway, Gutknecht's loss is mitigated by Tim Walz being one of my favorite candidates and now one of my favorite congressmen. From his Wikipedia entry:

Walz was inspired to run for office in part by an occurrence at a 2004 rally for George W. Bush in Mankato "where he and two students were removed due to a John Kerry sticker on one of the students' wallets". Walz had no opponent in the race for the DFL nomination for the seat in the September 12, 2006 primary election. He beat incumbent Republican Gil Gutknecht in the general election on November 7, and will take office in January 2007. In his victory speech, Walz said, "maybe they should have let us in" to that event.

NE-03:
Prediction: Scott Kleeb (D) 51 - Adrian Smith (R) 47
Reality: Smith 55 - Kleeb 45
This is another one where I was really far off. I had heard the internals for both parties looked really good for Kleeb going into the final weekend, but apparently this is one of the few districts in the country where a late visit from President Bush will actually help your campaign. This is a tough one to take since Scott Kleeb is so awesome and Adrian Smith is such a bad fit for the district. I've heard rumors of pushing Kleeb into the Senate race if Chuck Hagel retires in 2008, but that may be too ambitious.

Nevada-GOV:
Prediction: Dina Titus (D) 54 - Jim Gibbons (R) 45
Reality: Gibbons 48 - Titus 44
I underestimated Nevada voters' ability to look past assaulting a cocktail waitress when they choose a governor. That was my mistake.

NH-01:
Prediction: Jeb Bradley (R-inc.) 54 - Carol Shea-Porter (D) 45
Reality: Shea-Porter 52 - Bradley 48
This is the biggest political upset I have ever seen. Shea-Porter was an absolute underdog in the primary, but you can explain away her win because her primary was the only strongly contested race that day, and her supporters were the only ones eager to go to the polls. That sometimes happens. The general election, though, is an entirely different story: plenty of candidates think they can win an election by not raising money, hardly running any TV ads, and somehow energizing the community enough that everyone will just turn out and vote for them. That plan is usually ridiculous, but Carol Shea-Porter just pulled it off. There is a DailyKos post by the tech guy on her campaign which is truly amazing, as he goes through what it was like to be on this campaign in both the primary and general elections. That link has my highest recommendations. (One example for my campaign-veteran friends: they couldn't afford the state party voter file, so they went to every town hall's voter registration lists and made their own. That's ballsy, brilliant and the sign of a really dedicated team.) I thought my prediction here was being generous.

New Mexico-01:
Prediction: Patricia Madrid (D) 53 - Heather Wilson (R-inc.) 47
Reality: Wilson 50 - Madrid 50
This race was very recently called. What happened here was that in their last debate, Wilson's question for Madrid was something like, "how are you going to protect New Mexico voters from a tax increase?" The answer (which, to be fair, I had to think about) is to ignore the question and say that after Heather Wilson, her friend George Bush, and the Republican Congress racked up such a record deficit, there no longer are any easy answers, and maybe Heather Wilson should have thought about basic budget balancing before she voted for the war in Iraq, costing taxpayers millions a day. Madrid kind of froze, started an answer, and froze again. That moment turned into pretty much the only ad the Wilson campaign ran from there on out. Wilson was really living the dream there: every candidate and staffer always hopes that their question in the candidates-ask-each-other section of the debate will somehow magically knock the other candidate out of the race. This is the only time I've ever seen it happen.

New York-29:
Prediction: Eric Massa (D) 50 - Randy Kuhl (R-inc.) 49
Reality: Kuhl 52 - Massa 48
It's fantastic that Democrats picked up three House seats in New York, but it's depressing how close they came in so many other races: Democratic candidates lost three House races in New York while still taking at least 48% of the vote. Hopefully that bodes well for next time but there's always the possibility 2006 was the best shot in a while.

North Carolina-08:
Prediction: Larry Kissell (D) 54 - Robin Hayes (R) 45
Reality: Hayes 50 - Kissell 50
This one is still up in the air until all the provisional ballots are counted (and may actually switch) but I'm counting it as a loss. It's a shame, too, since Kissell is so awesome. I'm not sure if he'll be an even better candidate next time or if Hayes was more vulnerable caught off-guard.

Ohio-01:
Prediction: John Cranley (D) 50 - Steve Chabot (R-inc.) 48
Reality: Chabot 53 - Cranley 47
Despite lots of success in the races for governor and senator, I was expecting Democrats to pick up more seats in House races in Ohio than they did. I'm not really sure what happened; the environment was toxic both nationally and statewide. I can guess that most of the GOP incumbents like Chabot hadn't been softened up in a while, but there were plenty of incumbents nationally who lost their first serious challenge in years.

OH-02:
Prediction: Victoria Wulsin (D) 51 - Jean Schmidt (R-inc.) 48
Reality: Schmidt 51 - Wulsin 49
It's still amazing that Democrats have kept this district competitive, but it may be that Schmidt's repeated inanity has contributed too. I guess we'll see in 2008: find out the district's presidential vote and compare it to the national popular vote, then compare that difference to what it was in 2004. I hope and suspect that this district is beginning to become more Democratic.

OH-15:
Prediction: Mary Jo Kilroy (D) 53 - Deborah Pryce (R) 45
Reality: Pryce 51 - Kilroy 49
I really thought Pryce, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, would be swept up in the anti-Republican environment, but apparently she did a great job campaigning. I still think we can take her out next time.

Pennsylvania-04:
Prediction: Melissa Hart (R-inc.) 51 - Jason Altmire (D) 49
Reality: Altmire 52 - Hart 48
Melissa Hart will retire from Congress without me knowing much about her, but I do know a bit more about Jason Altmire. He worked for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, he was a legislative aide on health care in the 1990s, and he played for Florida State when they won the Sugar Bowl. When I originally saw that Democrats had a serious House candidate named Jason, I assumed he was in his late 30s, and sure enough, he is. I went to the Social Security Administration's awesome Baby Names Database and discovered that Jason, besides being the #2 name for boys for five years in a row in the 70s, went from out of the top 100 to a top-10 name in the span of five years from 1966-1971. Does anyone know how this happened? Was the lead singer of Strawberry Alarm Clock named Jason?

PA-06:
Prediction: Lois Murphy (D) 51 - Jim Gerlach (R-inc.) 49
Reality: Gerlach 51 - Murphy 49
I think this is the exact same margin from 2004, and it would be odd if it were again so close. I'm not sure how many times Murphy can run, but it seems like one of these times she should be able to pull it off. That said, I think Myrth York shouldn't have run a third time for governor of Rhode Island after winning the nomination and failing twice, so hopefully PA-06 has someone else who can come through for Team Democrat.

PA-08:
Prediction: Mike Fitzpatrick (R-inc.) 51 - Patrick Murphy (D) 48
Reality: Murphy 50 - Fitzpatrick 50
Man, I did not do well on the Pennsylvania House races.

Virginia-02:
Prediction: Phil Kellam (D) 50 - Thelma Drake (R) 49
Reality: Drake 51 - Kellam 49
I just don't get the feeling that Thelma Drake is that strong a candidate. I think if Kellam learns from his mistakes this time around, he could beat her in 2008.

Wisconsin-08:
Prediction: John Gard (R) 54 - Steve Kagen (D) 45
Reality: Kagen 51 - Gard 49
This one was a pretty random guess, and I missed. Kagen's a doctor, though, which reminds me of a funny anecdote Howard Dean told. Apparently when he first became governor of Vermont there weren't many doctors in public office, so he used to go to medical conventions and tell doctors to run for office. Then he discovered that all the doctors who ran were right-wing Republicans (I'm sure he was thinking of Bill Frist here) so he decided to stop. Steve Kagen: reversing the trend!

Wyoming-AL:
Prediction: Gary Trauner (D) 49 - Barbara Cubin (R) 47
Reality: Cubin 48 - Trauner 48
This one hurt, mostly because Cubin is so terrible. I hope she loses next time.