CBS 2 School: Seeing Red
Two years after sweeping into the White House, President Barack Obama is now blushing, and the U.S. House of Representatives is turning just as red as his cheeks.
Obama has now seen the Republicans dominate the 435 elections for the U.S. House of Representative. And the President campaigned hard in his home state but has watched a Republican win his old U.S. Senate seat.
Illinois had been a solidly blue state before 2010. We had two Democratic U.S. Senators. Democrats held a majority of the U.S. House seats. The Governor and every statewide elected officer was a Democrat. We had voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 5 straight elections.
But after Election 2010, the Democratic governor is barely leading his Republican challenger, half of the other statewide elected officials are Republican. More than half of the U.S. Representatives are now Republican, and Democrats could not hold on to Obama's old Senate seat.
We don't assume that these results indicate a Republican mandate sweeping the country.
Rather, we see the Republican surge as another indicator that voters have dealigned from party loyalty. Voters are more independent than ever before, and their impatience for political change was made perfectly evident as red swept the national and Illinois electoral map.
