Financial Times: Iraq War Decimates Republican Vote

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/58c5691c-6f51-11db-ab7b-0000779e2340.html

Iraq war decimates Republican vote
By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: November 8 2006 17:59 | Last updated: November 8 2006 17:59

All politics is supposedly local in America. But voting patterns in Tuesday’s congressional election were overwhelmingly national by the standards of past mid-term elections.

More than 60 per cent of voters said national issues determined their vote, according to exit polls. Motivated principally by their opposition to the Iraq war, voters across America en-dorsed Democratic candidates regardless of whether they were liberal or conservative on social issues.

Whether they were representing districts in America’s traditionally liberal north-east, in the more embattled swing states of the Midwest, along the ideologically pragmatic states of the west or even in conservative districts south of the Mason-Dixon line, Republican incumbents were punished for their association with President George W. Bush’s unpopular war in Iraq.

Even moderate Republicans, such as Lincoln Chafee, the senator for Rhode Island, who in 2002 voted against the resolution giving Mr Bush authorisation to declare war on Iraq, were ejected. Other Republican casualties included Rick Santorum, the social conservative senator for Pennsylvania, and Conrad Burns, the Republican senator for Montana.

“The principal story of the 2006 mid-term elections is that voters were driven by their opposition to the war in Iraq,” said Charlie Cook, whose Cook political report is widely read among pundits in Washington. “This was not a vote for the Democrats so much as against President Bush and against the war in Iraq.”

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