On Nov. 7, 2006, American Voters Handed Democrats the House for the First Time in 12 Years, and the Iraq War Was on the Ballot

Election Day 2006 fell on Nov. 7, with President George W. Bush's name on no ballot and yet at the center of nearly every race. By the time the polls closed, the midterm had become a national referendum on the war in Iraq and on the Republican Congress that had backed it, and the results would reshape Washington.

The Midterm Wave

Republicans had controlled the House since the 1994 elections, and they entered the fall of 2006 on the defensive. Polls showed voters unhappy with the direction of the war, and a string of scandals on Capitol Hill had added to the party's troubles. Democrats, led in the House by Nancy Pelosi of California, campaigned on the idea that the country needed a change in direction and a check on the White House. On election night, the results rolled in across the East and Midwest, and the pattern was clear early: Republican incumbents who had seemed safe were losing seats, and Democrats picked up ground in districts that had not elected one of their candidates in years. By the end of the night, the party had taken the House, ending twelve years of Republican majorities. For a Congress that had spent much of the Bush presidency in lockstep with the executive branch, the voters had delivered a pointed change of plans, and they had done it on a day when the president himself was not running for anything.

The Senate was slower to settle. Close races in Montana and Virginia kept control in doubt for days, and Democrats ultimately secured a narrow majority when Jim Webb's razor-thin win in Virginia held up after a few tense days. The political fallout moved quickly. The day after the election, Bush announced that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the public face of the Iraq war, was resigning. Pelosi, who had been the Republicans' favorite campaign target, was now in line to become the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, a post she would claim in January 2007. It was a fitting twist for a campaign built on running against Washington's leaders: the villain of the ads became the next person to lead the chamber, and the architect of the war's strategy was out of a job before the votes were fully counted.