Weigel

Election 2011: A (Mostly) Bad Night for Republicans

First, the good news for the party of the center-right.

- If the results hold up, the party will have won control of the Virginia Senate by less than 100 votes in one crucial district.

- Mississippi Republicans got voters to approve a strict law demanding ID proof from voters.

That’s the good news. The bad news:

- In Mississippi, the “personhood amendment” that would have defined life as starting at conception failed, and failed handily, losing by more than 100,000 votes.

- In Ohio, the anti-collective bargaining bill SB5 was repealed by a roughly 3-2 vote.

- In Iowa, Democrats won a special election for an open state Senate seat, letting them keep control of that body.

- In Kentucky, Democrays managed to win all but one statewide office. Jack Conway, the attorney general felled by Rand Paul in 2010, has returned with a victory over Sarah Palin-backed Todd P’Pool. That all complicates the storyline.

- In Arizona, Sen. Russell Pearce lost a recall election, robbing him of his role leading the majority GOP in the upper house, and robbing the immigration restriction movement of a champion.

Shove it all together, and you’ve got the weakest off-year election for Republicans since 2007.