Following up on Adam T's analysis of the overall vote for the United States House last fall that appeared on this site about a week ago, The Hotline's state editor Quinn McCord takes his stab at the numbers and comes to some interesting conclusions of his own.

We all know '06 was bad for the GOP. But the breadth of the Dem victory shows up starkly in a new Hotline analysis of the cumulative nat'l vote for House candidates by state editor Quinn McCord.

Dems won 54.1% of the two-party vote in '06, much better than the GOP's 52.5% win in '02. That fueled Dem advantages in 27 states last year, compared to only 19 in '02. Most importantly, Dems carried the net vote in several swing states (OH, PA, MI, NV, NH), some of which they hadn't carried in more than a decade. Even in the reddest states, GOPers struggled to win more than 55% last year. They lost TN and NC outright. Also, Dems let only 10 GOPers go unchallenged in '06, compared to 45 uncontested Dem seats.

[...]

Here's the nat'l summary of two-party House results for the past four cycles; Leading totals are bolded:

	GOP U.S. House Votes	Dem U.S. House Votes
2000	47,238,467 (50.3)	46,701,783 (49.7%)
2002	37,428,113 (52.5%)	33,905,437 (47.5%)
2004	56,112,869 (51.4%)	53,128,318 (48.6%)
2006	35,904,068 (45.9%)	42,291,298 (54.1%)
____
4-yr Total	176,683,517 (50.1%)	176,026,836 (49.9%)

# of States Won (w. flips)/Seats Uncontested

GOPers	Dems	__	Year	__	By GOPers	By Dems
29	21		2000		32	31
31 (+MS, MO, PA)	19 (+AR)		2002		36	44
30 (+MI)	20 (+CO, SD)		2004		29	36
23	27 (+MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, TN)		2006		45	10

[Tables slightly reformatted]

I'd strongly recommend you check out McCord's full analysis because it offers some very important insights into the political winds in the country. For instance, the Democrats increased their share of the votes in all but three states from 2004 to 2006 and, more importantly, they increased their share of the vote from 2002 to 2004 and again from 2004 to 2006 in 26 states. Four states upped their relative support for Democrats in each of the past three cycles, two of which -- Colorado and North Carolina -- could be evincing trends that could help out the Democrats not only on the congressional level but also quite possibly the presidential level. Fascinating stuff, really. Read it if you have the chance.