2006 More Impressive than 1994, Statistically Speaking

Chris of Mixing Memory points us toward a good comparison of the Democratic victory in 2006 to the Republican victory in 1994. In short, the comparison--located at a Columbia statistics blog, Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science--shows that the Democrats won a greater percentage of the total vote in 2006 (56%) than the Republicans won in 1994 (51.6%). The Democrats were shortchanged, in a sense, because the number of seats they won does not truly reflect their impressive lead in total votes. In light of this, although the Republican victory in 1994 was incredibly significant politically, it wasn't really that impressive.

The site also compares the Democrats' standing in the 2006 election to that of previous years. There's good news for the Democrats here, as their performance in 2006 was in line with their performance in the elections before 1994, when Democrats held the majority of seats in Congress.

For more thoughts on the election, see my previous post.

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