Elections were held in the United States on November 7, 2006, in the middle of Republican President George W. Bush's second term against the backdrop of the war on terror.

In a political revolution that ended more than a decade of Republican rule, the Democratic Party was swept into majorities of both chambers of Congress, governorships, and state legislatures.

Reasons for the Democratic Party's victory included the decline of the public image of George W. Bush, dissatisfaction of his administration's handling of both Hurricane Katrina and the War in Iraq, the beginning of the collapse of the United States housing bubble, Bush's legislative defeat regarding Social Security Privatization and immigration reform, the Republican-controlled Congress's unprecedented and unpopular involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, and a series of scandals in 2006 involving Republican politicians.

A November 2003 Gallup poll showed that Bush's job approval rating had fallen to 50% from a high of 71% at the outset of the war.

The Democratic Party won a majority of the state governorships[6] and the U.S. House and Senate seats, each for the first time since 1994, an election-year commonly known as the "Republican Revolution."

The Senate figure is sometimes quoted in the media as 51–49, which includes two members who ran as independent candidates: Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, who promised to caucus with the Democrats.

[8] The final Senate result was decided when Democrat Jim Webb was declared the winner in Virginia against incumbent George Allen, as reported by the Associated Press.

[9] On November 9, 2006, Allen and fellow Republican incumbent Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana both conceded defeat, ceding effective control of the Senate to the Democrats.

[13] Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) became the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress[14] and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) became the first Buddhists in a United States governing body.

[16] South Dakota rejected a ban on abortion under almost any circumstances, intended to overturn federal constitutional abortion-rights nationwide by setting up a strong test case that proponents hoped would lead to the overruling of Roe v.

[17] This result would eventually happen in 2022, with a Mississippi state law that imposed a 15-week ban on abortion leading to the case Dobbs v. Jackson, which then led to Roe's overturning.

Senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Representatives Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, John Hostettler of Indiana, Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, and J. D. Hayworth of Arizona all won previously Democratic seats in 1994 elections and were defeated in 2006.

Virginia Senator George Allen, a potential Republican 2008 Presidential candidate, saw his chances for reelection disappear when he was caught on video using a racial slur to describe a young Indian-American who worked for his opponent's campaign.

In total, Democrats gained or retained control of the state legislatures and governorships of 15 states, thus creating a unified government in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia, although the governorship of Louisiana reverted to the Republicans with the October 2007 election of Bobby Jindal.

[30] Beginning just after George W. Bush's reelection, political analysts point to a number of factors and events that led to the eventual Republican defeat in 2006.

It is generally agreed that the single most important issue during the 2006 election was the war in Iraq, and more specifically President Bush's handling of it and the overall public weariness over it.

[31] Exit polling showed that relatively large majorities of voters both fell into the category of disapproving of the war or expressing the desire to withdraw troops in some type of capacity.

Exit polls showed that a large block of the electorate had voted for Democrats or for third parties specifically because of personal opposition to or dislike for Bush.

Florida Representative Mark Foley, who ironically headed the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, was found to have been making sexually lewd and highly inappropriate contacts online with male congressional pages, and it was soon found that members of the Republican leadership knew in some capacity of Foley's advances, yet took little action.

[39] The result was that on election day, many congressional seats had been touched by Republican scandals and were easier to pick up for Democrats than under normal conditions.

Some reported problems: Many political analysts concluded that the results of the election were based around President George W. Bush's policies in the War in Iraq and corruption in Congress.

[69] Democrats promised an agenda that included raising the minimum wage, implementing all of the 9/11 Commission recommendations, eliminating subsidies for oil companies, restricting lobbyists, repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, lowering interest rates on college loans, expanding stem-cell research, investigating political appointees for actions taken during and leading to the war in Iraq, allowing current tax cuts to expire,[70] and negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices.

[71] According to Brian Wright, president of Democrasource, LLC (an Ohio-based national political consulting group), "There's no question, the administration and Iraq set the tone for this year.

[74] With apparent reference to the impact of the Iraq war policy, in a press conference held on November 8, Bush talked about the election and announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

[75] On the same day, then Speaker of the House, Representative Dennis Hastert of the 14th Congressional District of Illinois, said he would not seek the Minority Leader position for the 110th Congress.

In the aftermath of the election The Weekly Standard published a number of articles highly critical of how the Republican Party had managed the United States Congress.

The paper, which has been described as the "quasi-official organ of the Bush Administration"[76] also stated that more people would have to "bendover" to get anywhere in a political office and has called on Republicans to move to the center for the sake of the party's future viability saying "conservatives won't want to hear this, but the Republican who maneuvered his way into the most impressive victory ... won ... after moving to the center" and that "the South is not enough space to build a national governing majority".

[77][78] I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the U.S. : The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.

If the U.S. Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America .

But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies.