Election Day brought dramatic gains for the Democratic Party, both nationally and at the state level. This month we revisit our last issue and assess how things did and did not turn out as expected. Use the links below to navigate between the Pre-Election issue, as well as the current Post-Election issue artcles.

The editors, Bill Galston, Stan Greenberg, and Ruy Teixeira also weigh in with post-election analyses.

Also in this issue, our roundtable discussion of Thomas F. Schaller's Whistling Past Dixie continues. In Round 2, Schaller responds to his discussants, who include The American Prospect's Ezra Klein, Paul Waldman of Media Matters, and the Strategist's own Scott Winship. Counter-responses will be posted as they come in.

For those who missed Round 1, Schaller summarized the demographic case for a Democratic strategy that makes the South its last priority. Klein, Waldman, and Winship responded.

We also are continuing to run a piece from our pre-election issue by political consultant Robert Griendling, who tells how David Poisson scored an unlikely victory last year in the 32nd district of the Virginia General Assembly. His account offers lessons for other Democrats running in the New South.

In 2005, polls on election eve showed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine dead even with his Republican opponent, Jerry Kilgore.   more >

There are many ways to cast the results of last Tuesday's elections. At their most basic level the elections were a vote for change,   more >

Majority Watch made history in 2006. Before this, no one has ever set out to track district-by-contested-district the race for control of the U.S. House.   more >

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Karl Rove went into this year's election with the same basic play book as in 2002 and 2004:   more >

The 2006 election presents few analytical difficulties. Rarely have the voters' judgment and the reasons for it been so clear-cut.   more >

The 2006 election took Democrats into the majority in both Houses of the Congress, most state legislative chambers and governors' mansions, and took the Republicans to their lowest vote since 1982.   more >

...observed that "[t]he old debates between 'populists' and 'New Democrats' have clearly run out of gas"   more >

The frozen smiles can sear the brain. They belong to Democratic officials, lobbyists and activists when you tell them you are running against a four-term incumbent Republican state house member who has decimated each of his opponents.   more >

Before the 2000 recount had even finished, George W. Bush's pollster Matthew Dowd approached Bush adviser Karl Rove with some surprising news.   more >

Our lineup of discussants includes:

Scott Winship	Paul Waldman
Ezra Klein