"Half a re-alignment" : Part 1 of 3 - The Senate

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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Yes and I'm sure that nothing... interesting... happend out in the Ozarks...2002:

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Who was beaten pretty badly for an incumbent: 54/46. Arkansas can't be treated as a Republican state IMO

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It was close, but Wellstone would almost certainly have pulled through IMO... he was pretty popular in rural areas.

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Only because of those damn suburbs... ;-)
Seriously though, the reason why Cleland lost was because Chambliss ran an extremely dirty campaign (whether anyone thinks it was somehow justified or not, that's not the point) not because of any natural GOP leanings etc.

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No party has held that seat for more than one term in a row since Sam Ervin. Creepy, eh?

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Interestingly, it seems as though the LA Republicans thought that if it got into a runoff, Vitter would have lost. Not the point o/c

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Hardly. Ask McGovern.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

=>>Arkansas is kinda transitional actually, the are fairly GOP presidentially now, but they still have strong "dixiecrat" roots locally.

I don't really think that Arkansas does trends (although it has backed the winner in every Presidential election from 1972 onwards. And likes local candidates) and the assertion that it's fairly GOP presidentially now, rests on the assumption that the last two Presidential elections are somehow a perfect indicator of partisanship (something that has sod all evidence in favour of it and plenty against) rather than a perfect indicator of what people in East Carolina or wherever think about George W Bush (and even then it isn't perfect...)
If it's treated as "transitional" it's been that way for over 30 years. Which makes no sense at all.

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It's actually the suburban areas.
Interestingly, MN was one of the few states that last year's Presidential elections was fairly close to actual partisanship (which is why you had all those rural counties flipping to Kerry)

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Also true (but related to that ugly ever expanding blob called Atlanta Suburbia...)

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Oklahoma hasn’t been mentioned…

Then again the race there proves Vorlon’s point I guess, very strong Dem candidates got soundly beat by a “Rightwing Nut-Job”… Alaska would be another case where an extremely strong Democrat was beaten by a mediocre and discredited Republican.   

If the Oklahoma Senate election had been in the Mid Terms, Carson would have won... there was a huuuuuuge Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist turnout (Bush won every county in Oklahoma... including the east central coal counties that Gore won... though he won those by small margins) in Okie last year.

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I don't know about that.  Coburn did win by nearly 12%.  Two things that would make me think otherwise that you need to take into consideration.

1.  Bileyeu (Green Party cand.) took nearly 5% of the vote and I'm pretty sure that in Oklahoma nearly all of that came from Carson.  Unless she's not in the race, that makes a bigger margin for Carson to overcome even if Evangelical turnout isn't so high.

2.  Carson and Coburn in the House were from the same district, those east-central coal counties that Gore won in 2000.  Both were extremely popular there (Coburn even maybe more so).  I don't think Coburn percentages would have declined much even in a non-Presidential race in these areas because of that.

Remember, most people thought Inhofe couldn't win either because he was too right-wing as well.  He's gotten about the same 55% in both of his races.

Coburn was the only Republican who could win that race because of point #2.  Most moderate Republicans still don't realize this.

Yeah, Coburn (despite certain... er... not exactly moderate or entirely sane remarks) is a pretty strong candidate. Regional stuff seems to matter a lot in Oklahoma... If the GOP had run some Tulsa or Oklahoma City politician (like the guy that lost the nomination to Coburn... Humphries?) they wouldn't have won many Conservative Democrat voters as Coburn did and Carson would *probably* have won last year.
In a MidTerm year Carson v Coburn would probably be a tossup, but I think that Carson would pull it off. Maybe not. Certainly would have been a lot closer.

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Can any of you tell me something about that Green woman?

IIRC she's not exactly on the right side of sane