ANALYSIS OF THE D vs. R VOTE! Admittedly, this is very preliminary, but let's see where those votes were distributed...because it can be deceiving to just throw out raw numbers.
From the "Election 2006" site on CNN, I can see 13 RACES where the Republicans lost. Roughly speaking, they lost those races by a TOTAL of 4,687,000 votes. But where did those votes come from? Let's look:
NUMBER OF VOTES per state of 'rats over Republicans:
Connecticut: 339,000 (the Democrat lost that race to Independent Joe Lieberman, btw)
Maryland: 164,000
Michigan: 589,000
Minnesota: 440,000 (a big disappointment, Minnesota should have been closer)
Missouri: 42,000
Montana: 2,800
New Jersey: 187,000
New York: 1,328,000
Ohio: 453,000
Pennsylvania: 691,000 (another big disappointment, Santorum should not have lost by this many!)
Rhode Island: 27,000 (this is truly no big loss--both candidates were basically liberal Democrats)
Virginia: 7,200
Washington: 242,000
28% OF THE SURPLUS VOTES FOR THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IN THESE RACES CAME FROM NEW YORK STATE.
15% came from Pennsylvania: a true problem for the Republican party! So there IS a problem there.
13% of the surplus votes from the (sadly) blue state of Michigan. Wanna bet 90% of those came from Detroit? ;)
So far, we see THREE STATES have 56% of the extra Democrat votes....
Another 9% came from Minnesota. We're at 65% now.
Five percent came from Washington. 70%.
Tack on a big 10% for Ohio, where RINO DeWine lost. 80%.
You see my point: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan gave the 'rats about 66%--2/3--of their extra Senate votes. And 25% of those votes (15% in PA and 10% in Ohio) came AGAINST Republican incumbents; a significant number to be sure, but hardly an endorsement nationwide of the Democrat ideas.
Smarter people than I can deconstruct all this and tell us what to about it...but I think when the raw number is thrown out there, it makes the 'rats popularity look a bit exagerrated. I mean, look: Hillary's share of the "extra votes" was HIGHER than Ohio's and Pennsylvania's COMBINED!
I hope this makes sense.
P.S. of course in my post above I'm talking about SENATE RACES!!!!
Thanks for the break out. However, the Republicans lost seats in the NE and mid-West which they are not likely to make up in the South.
All states that have suffered loss of manufacturing jobs.
Bill Nelson, the weasel socialist, got more than 1,000,000 votes more than his Republican rival Katherine Harris--SO 2.3 MILLION of the 6.5 MILLION (roughly 35%)extra votes came from TWO STATES--New York, a Hillary stronghold...and Florida, where we had a weak candidate.
I still say the 6.5 million Dem advantage is a nice raw number, but not very effectual when you look at the details.