Did the Media Do it?

Elections are notoriously blunt instruments. As such, it is often difficult to interpret what the results mean or why the elections favored the winners in the first place. In an era where competitive elections are increasingly scarce, the 2006 midterm elections turned a 232–201 Republican advantage in the House of Representatives to a 233–202 Democratic majority. Similarly, and in some ways more remarkably, the Senate narrowly slipped out of the GOP’s hands as well, giving the Democrats a majority in both chambers of the legislative branch of the federal government for the first time since 1994.