a. Nevada
b. Illinois
c. Pennsylvania
d. West Virginia
e. Florida
Two senate races which I will analyze are the Illinois and Pennsylvania races. These two races were both won by republicans and were both previously held by democrats. In Illinois Republican challenger Mark Stevens Kirk defeated incumbent Alexi Giannoulias by getting 48.2% of the vote to Giannoulias’s 46.3%. In Pennsylvania, Republican challenger Pat Toomey edged out incumbent Joe Sestak with taking home 51% of the vote to Sestak’s 49%. It should be noted that Illinois and Pennsylvania are usually blue states. What these results tell me is that even in left-leaning areas the American people are unhappy. This will affect the 2012 presidential election because it will force Obama to run a more moderate campaign, especially if he does not turn the economy around or pass any significant legislation the latter of which will rather hard to accomplish now with an overwhelming GOP majority in the House. Also, when analyzing the results of the Illinois race I see that over 6% of the electorate voted libertarian or green-rainbow. This could mean that we could see a third party candidate such as Ron Paul (Libertarian) or Ralph Nader (Green) make a run in 2012 and take away a chunk of votes from the GOP and/or Dems. Also, the people in these two states unseated the incumbent party neither state did it by a landslide. This means that in 2012 the Republicans will have to run a rather moderate campaign as well unless the economy gets severely worse, which unlikely to happen. Overall, these two races show that the American people are not happy campers right now and that the 2012 Presidential election will probably go to a Republican unless Obama makes some vast improvements in the next two years.
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