November 7, 2006
Uncharted Waters Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 08:50 AM EST Further to my post on dirty campaign tricks, the New Mexico Democratic party has asked a state judge to issue an injunction against Republican operatives who appear to be calling Democratic voters and feeding them incorrect information on poll locations. See here. I wondered why Karl Rove appeared so confident this weekend, even in the face of surveys that show his party on the verge of losing control of the House of Representatives. Together with the robocall story, the situation in New Mexico suggests that we may be in store for a very dirty, very contentious election day. I can think of several occasions on which presidential elections proved uncomfortably close (1800, 1960, 1968) and on which their results were contested (1824, 1876, 2000). But I can’t recall a year in which control of both houses of Congress seemed so in doubt. In 1849 the incoming House of Representatives included 105 Whigs, 112 Democrats, and 13 Free-Soilers, and with the existing parties on the verge of realignment, it took 63 ballots to elect a speaker. But these were unusual circumstances, and not particularly relevant to today’s events. If, by the end of the night, we are still unsure who controls Congress, we are in uncharted waters.
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