Did you?

After the polls close this evening, the ballots will be counted and, tomorrow, analysis of the 2010-mid-term-electionwill begin in earnest. For students weighing the fallout from Tuesday’s vote, there are a number of resources in a variety of digital collections that will help you as you break down the results and put them in historical perspective.

 The U.S. Senate’s Historical Office has published an interesting essay on the Mid-Term Revolution of 1958 that saw Senate Democrats gain 13 seats, the largest transfer from one party to another in Senate history. As mentioned previously in this blog, the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara features an excellent graphic depicting the number of House and Senate seats lost by the ruling party during mid-term elections. The U.S. Census Bureau provides interesting data about voters in the 1994 mid-term election.

 Finally, American Rhetoric, The Online Speech Bank, provides the full text and audio of Newt Gingrich’s speech as he assumed the Speaker of the House post as a result of that so-called Republic Revolution of 1994. (That digital repository is updated frequently.  If you’d like, you can also find Jon Stewart’s keynote address delivered at last weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity.) And,  if you haven’t already, go vote.

Winners and losers in mid-term elections past

Election season is heating up, judging by the number of political science students posing questions about various Congressional races. With the mid-term elections just a month away, you might want to check out The American Presidency Project’s excellent graphic detailing the number of Congressional seats lost or gained by the President’s party during mid-term elections. The chart includes information about the President, his political party, the President’s lame duck status, their job approval rating in the months leading to the election and the number of House and Senate seats lost during the mid-term elections. The data used to create the chart was culled from a number of sources,  including  the Gallup Poll and Vital Statistics on the Presidency.

 The American Presidency Project contains a wealth of primary source and statistical material spanning the administration of George Washington to Barack Obama. The editorial cartoon shown above depicts the fall-out from the 1922 mid-term elections. That image comes from the National Archives online exhibit: Running for Office: Candidates, Campaigns, and the Cartoons of Clifford Berryman.

Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy-Nixon Debates

50 years ago this week, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy squared off against Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the first-ever general election presidential debate. To mark that anniversary, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has partnered with YouTube to make the full, unabridged debate available for viewing. The photo at right of the debate is a video still from the Internet Archive.

The Women's Political Communication Archive - it will be helpful come November

Tuesday’s primaries saw women candidates earn an impressive string of wins in state and national contests. Women candidates were victorious in Senate primaries in California, Nevada and Arkansas. Additionally, women gubernatorial candidates bested their primary opponents in California and South Carolina. As the campaigns heat up in advance of November’s election, political science students and professors might want to visit the Women’s Political Communication Archive.

 That collection, developed at the Carrie Capman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, actually houses two separate archives – a web-based archive of women’s speeches and a collection of videos of women political candidates’ campaign commercials. The site can be searched by or browsed by keyword. On it you’ll find a profile of Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and the winner in this week’s California Republican Senate primary. You’ll also find remarks and the text of speeches by Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, the incumbent Ms. Fiorina hopes to unseat.

 The picture of Sen. Boxer (bottom left) comes from the U.S. Senate. The picture of Ms. Fiorina (top  right) comes from the California Republican Party.

When in doubt, try the Statistical Abstract

A student came to the desk looking for scholarly journal articles about young voters' impact on the 2008 presidential election.He found some relevant items, but wanted more numbers. We found them in the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010. Right there in table 387 was just what he needed - the Democratic and Republican vote percentages for the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections characterized by year of the voter's birth. This question (and answer) made me realize I've neglected to recommend this reference source to freshman history students as often as I could have.It's online, easy to search, and includes data dating back to 1878. So, history students, next time you're looking for historical data on the nation's population, labor force, crime, education or health, give it a look.