2006 Mid Terms Election (RyanFlorida2003)

The 2006 mid term elections were held on Tuesday, November 7th 2006, in the middle of Republican President Richard Cheney's first year in office after succeeding President George Walker Bush after his assassination in Freedom Square, Tbilisi Georgia by a bomb explosion.

In the Senate, Republicans gained a net gain of 6 seats extending their majority in the chamber. Republicans also maintained their majority in the House Of Representatives. On November 26th 2007, Speaker Hastert resigned and a special election was triggered. House Majority leader John Boehner was elected by the chamber to succeed Hastert as the 52nd Speaker Of The House Of Representatives.

Reasons for the Republican Party wave include more American unity after President Bush's death in 2005, Osama Bin Laden's death in March of 2006, series of sex scandals in 2006 involving Democrat politicians.

BACKGROUND
In March of 2003, President George Walker Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq, a state where the Bush administration claimed was linked to the September 11th attacks on U.S. soil in 2001, and claimed was producing weapons of mass destruction. In May of 2003, just two months after the initial invasion, President 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 Gallup poll taken in November of 2003 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 Democrat nominee Senator Bob Graham with less than 53% of the popular vote and 290 electoral votes (only 20 votes ahead of the 270 needed). It was the first election since 1988 for a candidate to win majority of the vote instead of a plurality. Terrorism and the Iraq War dominated the election, with domestic issues taking a secondary role