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The 2006 United States midterm elections were held on Tuesday, November 7, 2006. All United States House of Representatives seats and one third of the United States Senate seats were contested in this election, as well as 36 state governorships, many state legislatures, four territorial legislatures and many state and local races. The election resulted in a sweeping victory for the Democratic Party which captured control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and won a majority of governorships and state legislatures from the Republican Party. The victory of the Democratic Party in the 2006 Congressional elections was a major milestone for an additional reason: it saw the election of the first woman to serve as the Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, became the highest-ranking woman in the history of the government of the United States upon her election as Speaker in January 2007. In the United States, the Speaker is not only the presiding officer and leader of the majority party, but the Speaker also directly follows the Vice President of the United States in the line of succession to the presidency. It was also the first election in U.S. history in which the losses for one side were so lopsided that the victorious party did not lose a single incumbent or open seat in Congress or governor's mansion. Reasons for the Democratic party takeover include the decline of the public image of George W. Bush, the dissatisfaction of the handling of both Hurricane Katrina and the War in Iraq, the beginning of the collapse of the United States housing bubble, Bush's legislative defeat regarding Social Security Privatization, and the culture of corruption, which were the series of scandals in 2006 involving Republican politicians. ==Background== In March 2003, President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq, a state which the U.S. government claimed was linked to the September 11 attacks in 2001, and, more importantly, was producing weapons of mass destruction. That May, just two months after the initial invasion, Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. In the following months, insurgents began resisting the American occupation. Additionally, religious tensions between majority Shiite and minority Sunni Muslims, tensions which had been suppressed under the grip of the Hussein regime, began to result in violence. By the end of 2003, despite the war being initially popular, the post-war occupation was losing support from the American public. A November 2003 Gallup poll showed that Bush’s job approval rating had fallen to 50% from a high of 71% at the outset of the war. The next year, Bush won reelection over Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry with less than 51% of the popular vote and 286 electoral votes (only 16 votes ahead of the 270 votes needed.), the smallest winning margin for an incumbent president since Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 Presidential Election. It was, however, the first time since 1988 that a winner garnered a popular majority. Terrorism and the war in Iraq dominated the election, with domestic issues taking a secondary role. Bush began his second term with a continuation of the occupation and a push to overhaul Social Security with his privatization plan. Both policies proved unpopular, and violence in Iraq continued to increase. Compounding the unpopularity of the war was that no weapons of mass destruction were found. August 2005 was the last time any major public opinion poll recorded majority approval of Bush’s job.〔(Roper poll )〕 Negative perceptions of Bush following the slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina further weighed on his popularity. Simultaneously, the Republican-controlled 109th Congress’s popularity was declining as well. A series of notable congressional scandals also took place in Washington D.C., including the ongoing Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal as well as the Mark Foley scandal and the Cunningham scandal, both in October 2006. Throughout 2006, sectarian violence was ongoing in Baghdad and other areas of Iraq; many〔http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62443/james-d-fearon/iraqs-civil-war〕 claimed that the conflict was evolving into a civil war. President Bush’s job approval rarely rose above 40%. Perceptions of Congress and Republicans in general remained highly negative. Additionally, the Congress had a smaller than average list of major accomplishments (considering that the Party in charge of both the House and Senate also had control of the White House) and was not in session for a larger than average amount of days, allowing Democrats and others to characterize it as a “Do-Nothing” congress and blame the Republican leadership for the lack of progress. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States elections, 2006」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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