2010: a surprisingly unremarkable election

After months of bloated campaign spending and negative advertising, ranging from the Tea Party's cries that we’re “losing our country� to a litany of personal attacks and distortions, the end results in Tuesday’s election were frankly not all that remarkable, aside from the few races that were too close to call.

As pundits have been reiterating for weeks and months now, the Republican Party enjoyed its expected mid-term gains, taking back control of the U.S. House of Representatives by winning more than 60 seats. The GOP only needed 39 to regain control, and the party did that by a comfortable margin. The resulting balance of power in the House was predicted to be about 243 Republican seats to the Democrats’ 192.

But even presumptive House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was tempered in his remarks about the win. “Frankly, this is not a time for celebration,� he said. “Not when one in 10 of our fellow citizens are out of work, not when we have buried our children under a mountain of debt, not when our Congress is held in such low esteem.�

That sentiment hit the nail on the head — as Americans have expressed with less than 20 percent approval ratings for Congress in recent months. It also underscored the less pleasant news for the GOP in the Senate, where Democrats retained majority control.

Across the country, governorships created a sea of red states, with islands of blue in Arkansas, Colorado and California. Connecticut was one of those islands, bucking the national trend in its legislative races by giving wins to every Democrat. Voters in both parties continued to wait for the final results in a razor-thin gubernatorial race. If the trend of late ballot counting continued, things were looking good for Democrat Dan Malloy, who had regained a lead of about 3,000 votes over Republican Tom Foley Wednesday and was predicted the winner by Fox News as early as Tuesday night.

On Wednesday shortly after noontime, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz announced that unofficial returns suggested Malloy was the winner.

As with many midterm elections, domestic issues and criticism of the incumbent president have led to big gains for the opposing party, but Tuesday night’s election was no landslide, as predicted by some right-wing pundits. The result is a more balanced Legislature that will be forced to make compromises in order to pass legislation in the next two years, or be doomed to partisan stalemates and gridlock, which we’ve also seen plenty of times before.

With it all said and done, there were a few disappointments, numerous predictable wins and a handful of upsets in the 2010 midterm elections. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the election turned out to be not so surprising.