Parties Scramble to Decipher District 12 Results

[Bunny]

I think this is an interesting article by Dennis Roddy on the election results from last week. If nothing else, it does show the general weirdness of PA-12.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10144/1060436-454.stm?cmpid=news.xml

<snip>
Once again, a remote district in Appalachia's steel-and-coal belt declined to behave as predicted, opting to be less a mirror of national mood than a window into a unique corner of America.

Now analysts on both sides are struggling to identify precisely what happened in the sprawling 12th District, where Democratic candidate Mark Critz ran up an eight-point spread over Republican Tim Burns in the race to succeed the late John Murtha.

-snip-

That 2008 general election gave the often quirky 12th, with its 2-to-1 Democratic registration margin, not to Democrat Barack Obama but to Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Those 2008 numbers, coupled with the 12th's profile as a seedbed of conservative, anti-abortion, pro-gun labor Democrats, raised hopes that the GOP could wrest control of a congressional seat that had been in Democratic hands since the Nixon administration.
<snip>

[blue neen]

1. Excellent article.

It was nice to keep the seat and fool the Republican strategists!

The people of the Conemaugh and Kiski valleys will always be grateful to Murtha for what he did for PA-12 and for Pennsylvania in general. Critz deserves a chance to show what he can do. :)