County-Level Maps of the Election

Here is a map of the election by county made by Mark Newman of the University of Michigan.

If you want to see a REALLY good animated map of the elections from 1960 to 2004, try this one from Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University. You have to wait about 10 sec for it to start. Here are scaled down images of his maps from 1960 to 2004.

Pelosi Is the Most Powerful Female Politician in U.S. History

Politico has a story on Nancy Pelosi, claiming she is the most powerful female politician in U.S. history, ranking right up there with powerful male Speakers like Sam Rayburn and Tip O'Neill. Her power is to control the agenda. In the past, nothing much she did mattered that much because any bills that the House passed were going to be vetoed by President Bush anyway (unless Bush had ordered the bill). All that is different now and Pelosi has a real chance to get laws enacted. Furthermore, with a majority of over 80 seats, she can safely ignore the Republicans and deal just with Senate majority leader Harry Reid and the President. In public she is calm and polite, but behind the scenes she definitely knows how the game is played.

One-Party Rule is Popular

Toward the end of the campaign, when Republicans saw that Barack Obama was going to win, they began running ads saying effectively: "We need to elect Republicans to the Senate to prevent one-party rule." Turns out that wasn't a good strategy. A new CNN poll shows that 59% of the people think one-party rule will be a good thing and 38% think it will be a bad thing. In addition, the poll showed the favorable/unfavorable ratings of the Democrats at 62%/31% whereas for the Republicans it is 38%/54%. In other words, people have no problem with one-party rule provided that the party is the Democratic Party.

Poll: Bush Has the Lowest Approval of Any President in History

CNN also ran a poll on Bush's approval/disapproval ratings. His approval is now at 24% and his disapproval is now 76%. This is the worst showing for any President since these polls began during the Truman administration. Even Nixon did better than this with a 66% disapproval just before his resignation. Politico made a table with the worst ratings each President got going back to Truman. Quiz:

1. Which wildly popular President's disapproval never got above 30%?
2. Who was more disappoved: Lyndon Johnson or Ronald Reagan?

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