Our analysis shows that House Democrats didn’t suffer for voting for cap-and-trade more than they might have otherwise, even though some champions of the bill, such as Rep. Rich Boucher (Va.), were defeated Tuesday.Photo: Boucher for CongressCross-posted from ScienceBlogs.
There’s been some debate among the climate hawks about last night’s election returns. Politico posted a story suggesting that the toll was especially hard on Democrats who supported the landmark climate change legislation passed by the House last summer. Kate Sheppard observed that quite a few of the Democrats who opposed the bill also lost their seats, and Chris Mims (formerly of ScienceBlogs, now at Grist) argued that the election wasn’t a referendum on climate change, pointing to the significant numbers of bill supporters who survived last night. NRDC found the same thing.
The tricky thing about just looking at the raw numbers is that some of the people who lost last night would have lost no matter how they voted, while others might have held their seat if they had voted differently. Most of the Democrats who supported the bill would never have lost re-election... Read more
