Eye on the Midterm Elections

October 12, 2005

Eye on the Midterm Elections

Larry Sabato sees Rep. Tom DeLay's (R-TX) indictment as a dramatic shift in the potential outcome of the midterm elections. "As long as Democrats can keep issues of the GOP's ethics foibles afloat and President Bush's approval ratings fail to bounce back in time, the minority party will be poised to gain a substantial number of House seats in 2006."

"If Democrats find a way to piece together GOP ethics lapses within a single frame and paint a broad picture of 'absolute power corrupting absolutely,' they could foment a partisan wave on the order of 1994, with the qualifier that the lack of potentially competitive seats would severely limit their gains in raw numbers. Still, to put their challenge in perspective, compared to the GOP's stunning 56-seat gain twelve years ago, all Democrats would need to overtake the current majority would be a 15-seat gain -- a tall task and much can change in the next 13 months, but not out of the realm of possibilities."

Specifically, he looks at each of the closest races, a.k.a. the "Dirty Thirty."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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October 12, 2005