Free Republic

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican Renee Ellmers has unseated veteran Congressman Bob Etheridge, according to unofficial results of a recount in the tight Second District race. "What's done is done," Etheridge said Friday afternoon in conceding defeat. The seven-term Democrat picked up six votes on Ellmers after voting results were tabulated a second time, but it was nowhere near enough to overcome her 1,489-vote lead following the Nov. 2 election. The State Board of Elections still must audit the results and will meet next Tuesday to certify the results of all elections statewide. Etheridge touted his accomplishments during a brief news...

Breaking: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski wins re-election to Senate as write-in candidate

President Obama sounded a bizarre note upon his return home on Sunday when asked about upcoming ne gotiations with Republicans in Congress: "They're still flush with victory, having run a strategy that was all about saying no," he said. The thing is it doesn't matter what the GOP strategy was in the election's run-up. What matters is what the voters said by the way they cast their votes. It was the voters who said no. A remarkably original analysis of election results by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research makes this not just an assertion but a matter of...

Lisa Murkowski has officially pulled ahead in the race to be Alaska's next senator. The latest numbers from Juneau show Joe Miller with 90,458 votes. That includes 10 write-ins credited to him. The Division of Elections has counted 92,164 votes to Lisa Murkowski. That number includes 7,601 votes challenged by the Miller campaign. Ballot counting is finished for Monday. Elections workers and volunteers will return Tuesday and continue to pore over ballots. Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell says that could continue likely until the end of the week. Absentee votes represent the last big batch of outstanding ballots from the Nov....

On Tuesday, November 2, voters across the country turned out in droves to give Republicans control of the House of Representatives GOP wins in the U.S. Senate trimmed the Democratic majority, and over 675 State legislative seats were taken from Democrats nationwide. So historic was the win that the Minnesota Senate will be run by Republicans for the first time in that state's history, and Alabama will be in GOP hands for the first time since reconstruction. But what happened to California? Are Californians really so liberal that they would elect a man who was once known as "Governor Moonbeam"...

Where did all the Republican votes go in Bridgeport, Connecticut? Either over half of the traditional Republican voters in gubernatorial elections were no-shows on November 2 or the Constitution State's most populous city...lost its constitution. Bridgeport is certainly not the sort of idyllic Norman Rockwell town found throughout most of Connecticut. It has long endured political corruption and patronage, high rates of poverty and crime, a shrinking economy, a  declining population, and more recently, an infestation of radical progressive groups such as ACORN, AFL-CIO, WFP, and SEIU. Bridgeport did not earn the nickname "Chicago of the East" for nothing. Despite its...

Chip Cravaack, an ex-Navy pilot, was driving down the road, obeying a call from afar. It was a hot day in August 2009, at the peak of Tea Party fervor. A radio talk show host was railing against the Democrats' health care plan: Visit your congressman -- the talker said -- demand a town hall meeting. "I had my kids in the back of the car," recalls Cravaack, 51, a self-described stay-at-home dad with two boys, ages 8 and 6. "I was going down Highway 14, towards North Branch." It was a trip that would put Cravaack on a course...

In a sign of things to come, perhaps the first in a wave of Democrats across the country to switch to Republican has begun. (OK maybe not the first, but you get the idea).PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — A Democratic legislator from Aroostook County has announced that he has switched his affiliation to the Republican Party. Michael Willette of Presque Isle, who was elected to a second term in the Legislature on Nov. 2 as a Democrat, told the Bangor Daily News on Friday that he has labored over his decision to switch since he couldn’t convince himself to support a...

  Votes without voters - the notion seems like something from "The Twilight Zone." Yet this outcome, the result of a mysterious computer glitch, may have helped re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, last week by a 50.2%-44.6% margin. Actually, the "mystery" is very likely the doing of a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which nationwide provides votes, money and muscle for the Democratic Party. Critics are charging that voting machines throughout Clark County (Las Vegas), where about three-fourths of the state's population resides, were rigged to place check marks next...

No bargaining, no deals, no compromise — that's the hard-line stance that Republicans have staked in the days since seizing control of the House. Their prescription for the sluggish economy — lower taxes, huge spending cuts, less regulation, and repeal of the sweeping healthcare law just taking effect — excites the party's conservative base. But a long and ugly fight with President Obama and Senate Democrats, starting with next week's lame-duck session, could end up alienating the large number of Americans more interested in jobs than ideological battles. The midterm vote was "an expression of anger and impatience," said James...

Back to Article Democratic Losses Hit State Farm Teams Hard By Steve Peoples Roll Call Staff Nov. 9, 2010, 11:30 p.m. While the GOP celebrates historic gains in the House, Republicans in state capitals across the country are cheering massive pickups that wiped out key Democratic bench players — a shift that they say may shape elections for years to come. From Minnesota to Montana, Democrats lost state Speakers, Senate Majority Leaders, lieutenant governors and other up-and-comers whose political futures are now uncertain at best. Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in New Hampshire, where the GOP won all...

The election post-mortems keep rolling in. Politico's Byron Tau's report on the remarkable shift in voting patterns among America's oldest voters goes a long way to explain why last week's contest became such a rout for Republicans. Voters over 65, he writes, favored Republicans by a 21-point margin after breaking narrowly for Democrats in 2006, and in some key races the margin was even more lopsided: In New Hampshire, for instance, seniors backed GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte over her Democratic challenger by 33 points. In the narrow Illinois Senate contest, Republican Mark Kirk won older voters by 22 points....

AMONG the many firsts in the 2010 elections, it is safe to assume that the following words had never before been uttered about a future member of Congress, “This is a candidate who is probably best known for getting drunk and having sex on television.” The comment, made by the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, was lobbed at Sean Duffy, who overcame his bawdy past as a star on MTV’s “Real World: Boston” in 1997 to ride a wave of conservative discontent into office. Some of Mr. Duffy’s youthful indiscretions that were captured on film and dredged up by...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the Senate race in Delaware was "a missed opportunity" for his fellow Republicans to pick up the seat long held by Democrat Joe Biden.

She may have lost the Delaware Senate race but Christine 'I am not a witch' O'Donnell has no plans to leave the public eye. Appearing on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show Friday night O'Donnell talked about her many offers. She confirmed she plans to write a book and said she's received multiple television offers. 'We have a lot of opportunities,' she told O'Reilly. 'We're meeting with different publishers today so definitely a book deal.' She's also contemplating a possible television show, saying she had been offered a commentary show as well as reality show offers. But unlike Sarah Palin, who...

In an election marked by dramatic defections from the Democratic Party, older voters swung hardest, seemingly threatened by President Barack Obama’s mantra of change. Voters over 65 favored Republicans last week by a 21-point margin after flirting with Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections and favoring John McCain by a relatively narrow 8-point margin in 2008. Concerned by changes to Medicare and compelled by a Republican Party that promised a return to America’s glory days, seniors played a crucial — and often understated — role in races across the country.

Unsurprisingly FNC easily won in primetime as well as the 5p-7pm period.  CNN pulled ahead of MSNBC but not nearly by the margins separating FNC and CNN. 8-11p ET MSNBC CNN FNC P2+ 1,945,000 2,423,000 6,957,000 25-54 669,000 1,030,000 2,431,000 5p-7p MSNBC CNN FNC P2+ 869,000 945,000 3,092,000 25-54 256,000 283,000 750,000   Fox News average viewership (6.935 million) topped all the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) coverage of the 2010 midterm elections head to head in the 10pm (Eastern) hour.In the news advertiser target adults 25-54 demographic, NBC lead the 10pm hour, followed by Fox, ABC and CBS....

The fear and loathing after defeat in Las Vegas don't mask the reality that Sharron Angle's campaign was just not top notch. The reasons for Sharron Angle’s loss to Harry Reid in a GOP surge year, when other conservative candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Joe Walsh of Illinois won victories, are not rooted in strategy. Nor are they rooted in a flawed ideology that was too conservative. Instead, the loss was a product of simple logistical failures by the Angle campaign, failures they often were unwilling or unable to understand.“Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics,” said...

In what has become one of the stranger twists in an already bizarre Governor's race, a bag of uncounted ballots was found in Bridgeport Thursday night. Republican officials were approached by Democratic operatives and told about the surprise ballot bag, according to Bridgeport GOP Chairman Marc Delmonico. “It adds to the inconsistencies from the Democratic Party in Bridgeport. It just keeps adding to it,” said Delmonico. “There’s nothing odd about it; there’s certainly nothing missing about it,” said Ed Maley, a representative for the Democratic Party. Delmonico said Democrats asked to have several people deputized to count the uncounted ballots,...

NEW YORK (CBS) — After a suffering a “shellacking” in the midterm elections, President Obama acknowledges what many have seen as his chief weakness – failing to sell the importance of several legislative milestones to the American people. “I think that’s a fair argument.