There was arguably an even more significant election result last night. In a congressional race in Mississippi*, Democrat Travis Childers beat Republican Greg Davis by four points. The important of this is that the district, much of which is an exurb of Memphis, had been thought to be reliably Republican; Bush received 60% of the vote in the district in 2004.
This argues for it being a remarkably favourable year for Democrats. Even attempts to link Childers to Obama, and by extension to Jeremiah Wright, seem to have failed. Davis had released this ad:
The Republicans are pretty shell-shocked:
Former NRCC Chairman Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who is retiring this year, seems to have largely given up on his party’s chances. “This is the floor,” Davis said, stopping his foot on the concrete. “We’re underneath it.”
This bodes well for Obama in the autumn.
* Essentially this was a by-election to fill an open House of Representatives seat vacated by a Republican incumbent who had moved up to the Senate.
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