Tuesday, November 07, 2006

2006 Election Watch: Women in The House and The Senate



This is a good website for following the statistics on women in the United States Congress. It updates every few minutes.

In governor races Janet Napolitano, a Democrat in Arizona, appears to have been re-elected and so has Jodi M. Rell, a Republican in Connecticut.
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Another site updating every few minutes is Emily's List.
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So far (via Eschaton) the South Dakota almost-total abortion ban is losing:



With 194 of 818 precincts reporting results, 60 percent of voters cast "no" votes, according to results from the Secretary of State's Office.

At 11:38 p.m. EST, Think Progress reports that the South Dakota abortion ban was defeated. YES! It's not a final victory, but at least I can now visit South Dakota again.

And Nancy Pelosi looks to be the first female Speaker of the House. Nice.
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12:22 am EST:
Carol Shea-Porter just picked up New Hampshire's first congressional district. This was a surprise addition to the number of women in the House.
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12:43 am EST:
Chris Matthews (Tweety) complains about Nancy Pelosi's speech: "She's giving a barn-burner speech, which is hard for a woman. Lot of men don't like that. Nails on a blackboard."

Well, at least she doesn't have a large, yellow head. A lot of women don't like that.
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1:02 am EST:
Tweety is really showing his fear of women in power. Now he's bashing Hillary Clinton. Imagine what would happen to a political pundit who said similar things about a black politician? Yet I bet Tweety won't have to resign for any of this. Because it's sorta ok to bash women.
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1:22 am EST:
It looks somewhat better in terms of women's representation in the Congress:

This is shaping up as the Year of the Woman.

Nancy Pelosi is poised to become the first female Speaker of the House and a record number of women will be in the U.S. Senate.

Every female senator up for re-election has been projected as a winner.

With incumbent senators Hillary Clinton, Debbie Stabenow, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, and Olympia Snowe projected winners and new senator-elect Amy Klobuchar projected as the winner in Minnesota, there will be a history-making number of female senators on Capitol Hill. At least 15 in the new Congress.

Except that it's really quite disgusting to call these types of creepy-crawly low numbers by the name of "the year of the woman".
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1:53 am EST:
This is very, very good news for women:

Democrat Nancy Boyda defeated five-term Republican Rep. Jim Ryun in the 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday, a stunning reversal of their race two years ago.

With 74 percent of the precincts reporting, Boyda had 51 percent of the vote to Ryun's 47 percent. Reform Party candidate Roger Tucker pulled the remaining 2 percent.

Not only in the sense of a woman getting elected but also in the sense of us getting rid of a man who doesn't think women deserve many rights at all.
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2:36 am EST:
Claire McCaskill is predicted as the winner in Missouri's Senate race against Jim Talent.