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Eyes on Washington
Alert - November 12, 2008
 
In this Issue...
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Congressional Make-up for 111th Congress
 
 November 12, 2008
 

Though the dust has not completely settled on all the congressional races, there have been a number of seat changes which will affect the party balance in both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, aside from the three races still being decided in Alaska, Georgia and Minnesota, the Democrats so far have picked up six additional seats, winning races in Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia. This brings the number of seats that Democrats now control in the Senate to 55. In addition, that chamber’s two Independents, Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Bernard Sanders (I-VT), currently caucus with the Democrats theoretically giving them 57 votes. However, it remains to be seen what, if anything, Democratic Leadership will do with Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) due to the fact that he openly campaigned for Senator John McCain, to the Democratic Party’s dismay. If Senator Lieberman remains in the Democratic Caucus, and the three undecided races go to Democrats, that party will have enough votes to override any filibuster attempts by Republicans, however it is not certain which party will win in those races.

In the three undecided races, the margin of votes separating the two candidates is razor thin. Minnesota’s race is divided by less than 200 votes, while in Georgia, if incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) cannot garner 50 percent plus one, that race will head into a December 2 runoff. As for the Alaska race, incumbent Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) leads by a few thousand votes, but the race cannot be decided until state officials finish counting the thousands of absentee and early ballots.

On the House side, while there are currently four races still undecided in Alaska (2nd District), California (4th District), Louisiana (4th District) and Ohio (15th District), Democrats have so far picked up 25 additional seats (not in¬cluding open Democrat seats which they retained), keeping them in the majority, but boosting their overall party number to 261, leaving Republicans with just 174 seats. Though 19 new Republicans were elected to the 111th Congress, all but four are seats which were under Republican control in the 110th Congress.