I said earlier this evening that while Republicans were outperforming predictions in the House, Democrats appeared to be doing the same in the Senate. That’s much less the case now that Giannoulias and Sestak went down to narrow defeats. But if the Dems hold on to 53 Senate seats that will be a decent showing relative to what a lot of people expected. Nate Silver noted earlier this evening that the Senate-House split that he’d somewhat discounted earlier seemed to be coming true.
So here’s a thought. Would Sharron Angle have gone down to defeat if she were a House candidate? Would Christine O’Donnell? I think Angle would have won, though O’Donnell’s so out there she may not have made it in a House race either. Similarly, Joe Miller? I don’t think he would have had a hard time in a House race. I think out of the 65 or so Republicans who won tonight you’ve got a number of Joe Millers and Sharron Angles.
There are lots and lots of House races. The candidates tend to get much less scrutiny than Senate candidates. Much less. There are just too many of them. We’ll need to get a much closer look at just who won and by what margins and so forth. But I think it’s a plausible explanation — possibly to be confirmed by a closer look at the numbers of the coming days — that the really wingnut Tea Partiers slipped through in the House because they didn’t get the kind of intense scrutiny the folks on the Senate side did. And vice versa.
