Winning candidates in elections in which power changed hands were aided by average spending of $764,326 by independent groups, while losing candidates were aided by average spending of $273,268, a ratio of nearly 2.8 to 1. The analysis deemed outside spending as aiding candidates if it either praised them or criticized their opponents. It does not include outside spending for primaries.

The most blatant disparities, the report notes, occurred in the tight Senate races in Illinois and Pennsylvania:

The Republican winners in the Pennsylvania and Illinois Senate races received by far the greatest advantage over their opponents in outside spending. In Illinois, Rep. Mark Kirk (R) benefited from nearly $8 million in spending over opponent Alexander Giannoulias, chiefly due to $5.6 million in anti-Giannoulias spending by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS entities, and to $1.7 million in anti-Giannoulias spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In total, Kirk enjoyed an advantage in outside spending of greater than 11 to 1.

In Pennsylvania’s Senate contest, victorious former Rep. Pat Toomey (R) enjoyed an advantage of nearly $5.3 million—a ratio of nearly 4 to 1—over Rep. Joe Sestak (D). Toomey was aided by $2.5 million in anti-Sestak spending by the Club for Growth Action Fund, an independent expenditure committee of the organization of which Toomey previously served as president. Also spending more than $1 million against Sestak were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($1.7 million) and the Republican Jewish Coalition ($1.1 million).

When the independent expenditures of the traditional party committees like the NRSC and the DSCC are added in, however, outside spending in these races becomes a lot more equitable. And political scientists will reasonably ask whether the outside spending provided momentum for Republican victories or whether the impetus to give cash to conservative outside groups was simply a reflection of that pre-existing political momentum.

The report remains worthwhile, however, because we haven’t seen a swing in the House this big since the 1930s — and many would argue that the surge in unlimited outside spending has dramatically reduced the power of incumbency. If you believe that corporate and deep-pocketed donors are simply more likely to give to Republicans, then you might also conclude that Democrats will not enjoy the same favor when they are out of office. But both parties have been the beneficiaries of corporate PACs and well-to-do individuals in the past, making it equally as likely that the new normal of outside spending will cause the House to behave increasingly like a seesaw, flipping between parties every two years. Whether that’s a good or a bad phenomenon, on the other hand, is a question for the political scientists…

Presumptive House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

Pundits may differ over which natural disaster analogy was most fitting — tidal wave or  earthquake? — but Republicans made large gains in both chambers of Congress and various statehouses across the country on election day. And while, at the time of writing, races in several key Western states were far from decided, the election night shaped up to be one of few surprises for either party. Republicans guaranteed themselves a majority in the House, while Democrats can rest assured that they’ll retain a majority in the Senate come 2011.

[Congress1] The evening began with quick victories for GOP Senate candidates Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida, raising expectations of a Tea Party-backed surge in Congress. Bellwether House races, including those of Rep. Barron Hill (D-Ind.), Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio), all went for their Republican challengers, causing pundits to revise their estimates for GOP House gains from the 50s up into the 60s, or perhaps higher.

Whether one voted for the Obama health care bill, like Rep. Tom Periello (D), or against it, like Rep. Glenn Nye (D), being a House Democrat in Virginia tonight ended up spelling doom and setting the tone for Democrats’ chances in House races across the country. Even veterans like Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C), chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, were not spared by the GOP wave that swept Southern and Midwestern Democrats. And while DCCC head Rep. Chris Van Hollen criticized the news networks for calling the House for the GOP early, a takeover quickly began to look inevitable.

While liberal Democrats like Rep. Alan Grayson (Fla.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.) also lost their seats, groups that had backed them maintained that Democrats lost because they failed to fight and defend their liberal values. “Democrats lost because party leaders never truly fought for popular progressive reforms like the public option and breaking up the big banks, leaving voters uninspired to come to the polls and vote Democratic,” wrote Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green. “What the average voter saw of Democrats was weak, watered-down change — and weak Democratic leaders who cut deals with the very Wall Street banks and insurance companies they are supposed to be fighting.

On the Senate side, however, quick and decisive victories for Gov. Joe Manchin (D) over John Raese (R) in West Virginia and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) over Linda McMahon (R) in Connecticut allowed Democrats to breathe easy about their control of the upper chamber.

“Tomorrow starts the rebuilding, the road of rebuilding America,” Manchin told supporters in his victory speech. “We must start tomorrow. And I really believe that Washington can learn a few things and a few lessons from West Virginia.” What kind of Democrat Manchin will be after having to run so far to the right to win office remains a big open question for Democrats.

A solid defeat for Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, meanwhile, at the hands of Chris Coons (D) put Republican chances of taking the Senate nearly out of reach and revived questions about the efficacy of the Tea Party in aiding a GOP wave. “It gave me no pleasure to say that she was unlikely to win,” said Karl Rove after her loss became clear. “But this again provides a lesson. This is a candidate who was right on the issues but who had mishandled a series of questions brought up by the press.”

Likewise, a victory for the Democrats’ very vulnerable majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, over Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle confirmed the dangers of a Republican nomination process that often stressed ideological purity over electability.

Democratic Senate candidates Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois got off to strong starts in the polls with high turnout and early reporting from Philadelphia and Chicago, prompting talk of small but significant upsets for the Democrats in those races. But as the rural counties began reporting their tallies, Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk in Illinois eventually took control of both races. Likewise, Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, who shot out to an early lead over Ken Buck, fell slightly behind as more ballots were counted.

In the governors’ races, Democrats lost seats as well but managed to hang on to victories in close races in Colorado, where Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper held off his American Constitution Party challenger, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, and Minnesota, where Democrat Mark Dayton was the beneficiary of a three-way race and defeated Republican nominee Tom Emmer*. But in key races in other swing states — ones that President Obama will likely have to win to secure re-election in 2012 — Republicans can look forward to being in control. Rick Scott (R) rode the coattails of Rubio’s victory, defeating Alex Sink (D) in Florida, while the close race in Ohio never got close enough for incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland (D), who lost to challenger John Kasich (R).

As for the fate of the Tea Party, early decisive Senate wins for Paul and Rubio were offset by decisive drubbing of Christine O’Donnell and a narrow loss for Angle. In the House, Tea Party candidate Sean Bielat, who at one point looked to be posing a credible challenge to Rep. Barney Frank (D) in Massachusetts, lost by a wide margin — but enough Tea Party candidates claimed seats to form a sizable caucus in the next Congress.

Speaking at the Grand Hyatt Ballroom in Washington, likely House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was unable to hold back his tears. “Listen, I’ll be brief, because we have real work to do, and this is not a time for celebration,” he said, “not when one in 10 of our fellow citizens are out of work … not when we have buried our children under a mountain of debt … not when our Congress is held in such low esteem.

“While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it is the president who sets the agenda for our government. The American people have sent an unmistakable message to him tonight, and that message is: ‘change course.’ We hope President Obama will now respect the will of the people, change course, and commit to making the changes they are demanding. To the extent he is willing to do this, we are ready to work with him.”

*UPDATE: Democrat Mark Dayton continues to lead Republican Tom Emmer in the Minnesota Governor’s Race, but the margin is so slim that a recount appears likely.

Alexi Giannoulias (D-Ill.) and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) are out to early leads in their Senate contests — two races that were tilted slightly by pollsters to the GOP. And while the New York Times’ Nate Silver thinks Giannoulias’ lead in Illinois is suspect because the vast majority of the vote trickling in thus far is from Chicago, Sestak’s lead in Pennsylvania looks like it could the real thing. That’s because he’s holding his own in the western part of that state and leading his opponent Pat Toomey (R) in the all-important suburbs of Philadelphia. He’s even leading at present in Lehigh County, which Pat Toomey represented while a House member in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

If the Democrats keep their lead in either of these races, they can pad their margin in the Senate and start patting themselves on the back for their get-out-the-vote efforts in recent weeks.

In Chicago and Philadelphia, Obama’s trips were intended to boost turnout in the Democratic-leaning cities to tip the scales for Senate candidates Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) and Alexi Giannoulias (D). While Obama’s approval rating has stubbornly remained below fifty percent in both states, he enjoyed a warm welcome in the cities, especially his hometown:

He traded high-dollar fund-raisers for free rallies; in his hometown of Chicago on Saturday night, 35,000 turned out to see him in an outdoor park. He doffed his tie and shouted himself hoarse, tweaking his standard stump speech — the one with the laugh lines about Republicans “drinking a Slurpee” and driving the economy “into a ditch” — into a more affirmative, upbeat vision of why voters should elect Democrats, and not just reject Republicans. He suffered hecklers. He persevered. [...]

Harking back to his own election, he conceded that times have changed.

“Some of the excitement of Inauguration Day — you know, Beyoncé was singing and Bono was up there and everybody was feeling good — I know that good feeling starts slipping away,” he said Saturday night in Chicago. The crowd interrupted him, shouting, “Nooooo!”

Clinton, who employed Sestak on his counterintelligence team at the White House, will join him for Get Out the Vote rallies at Bryn Mawr College, Cheyney University and Temple University today. He has also cut a radio ad for Sestak, which makes the case for why Sestak is the best man to represent Pennsylvanians in the Senate:

I’d like to tell you about the Joe Sestak I’ve known for 15 years. He’s a true patriot. Thirty-one years in the Navy. A Three-star admiral. His dad was a Navy man who taught Joe that it’s his duty to serve, to look out for the little guy, to stand up to the special interests. That’s why the Washington crowd is spending so much to elect his opponent. Because Joe is tough enough to really make a difference in the senate.  He’s a very good man.

Having Clinton at your side these days is a better bet than having just about anyone, including the sitting president and his predecessor. He’s still quite beloved in Pennsylvania, and a new Bloomberg poll shows he might just be the best person to have alongside you on the campaign trail, period:

President Barack Obama’s campaigning isn’t helping Democrats, the poll shows, with a majority saying it makes no difference and almost one-fourth saying his efforts on behalf of his party actually make them more likely to vote Republican. Another Democrat, former President Bill Clinton, may be helping, as he outscores other politicians tested on popularity by a wide margin.

It’s a style that differs radically from the ads currently running in a majority of Senate races, as well as many of the ones aired by outside groups in the state as well. As I wrote this week, one of the unintended consequences of the surge in outside spending is that candidates can pledge to run clean campaigns while relying on other interests to do their dirty work for them. But it’s also a style that Pat Toomey excels at, seizing the high ground in his elections at crucial moments in a way that distracts from some of his policy positions that may be too conservative for his constituents.

Sestak won his Democratic primary in part on the back of a devastating ad that depicted Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) as a cynic who switched parties to maintain his grasp on power. But when your opponent is lobbing softballs like this one, it’s at lot harder to paint him as a monster:

Sestak’s insistence on the issue is part of a growing trend among Democratic candidates, who appear to have finally gained some traction by going on the attack against the plans of some Republicans to privatize or otherwise alter the popular entitlement program. He’s among the most recent Democratic candidates to sign a pledge on the issue at SocialSecurityProtectors.com, a campaign launched by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor says the campaign is a part of a broader mission of “saving the Democratic Party from itself. Progressive are working with bold candidates and members of Congress to show party leadership how to go on offense, run progressively, and win — especially on issues like Social Security, where the public is so clearly on our side.”

And while Toomey and other Senate candidates like Nevada’s Sharron Angle, who famously told Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to “man up” about the issue last week, appear unfazed by the Democrats’ new counterattack, a number of House GOP candidates I spoke to about deficit reduction do seem to be taking it to heart:

“I don’t think it’s realistic to believe that Congress is going to make those cuts to Social Security,” said [Steve] Chabot of Ohio. “It’s not going to happen, so to act like it’s going to happen is just going to scare seniors, which is what Democrats do in every election.”

Meanwhile, other GOP House candidates who advocate overhauling the program were careful to insert many caveats into their plans:

“We do need to look at entitlements, realizing of course that there are a lot of people who rely on our current system,” said the campaign manager for Tom Reed, who is favored to win the open House seat in New York’s 29th District. “So a promise made must be a promise kept, but for future generations we need to look at what levels they’ll be at down the road.”

“I’m in favor of personal [savings] accounts,” said Benishek, “but [I want to] guarantee that they don’t lose any money.”

Steve Griffin, who is leading the House race in Arkansas’ Second District, proposes reforming entitlement spending on his campaign website but also opposes privatizing social security or raising the age at which one qualifies for benefits. (He did not respond to repeated requests for more details about his plan.)

That’s a “have your cake and eat it too” kind of plan for Social Security, says Tad DeHaven, budget analyst at the Cato Institute, but it illustrates the political difficulties faced by Republican candidates who want to see real reform but also must run for re-election.

In response, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to announce a $2 million election turnout push in Pennsylvania that will consist of mailings, phone-banking and canvassing. Along with the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU is also supporting an ad in Illinois that goes after GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk for his ties to George W. Bush. “Let’s go back in time: George Bush was president and Mark Kirk was his yes man,” the narrator says. “What did we get? The worst recession in 50 years.”

The latest labor push represents an emerging trend separating left- and right-leaning groups in this election cycle, in which labor and environmental groups have devoted substantial funds to on-the-ground organizing and canvassing efforts while conservative groups like American Crossroads have devoted nearly all their money to broadcast advertisements. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein argues that while it might not be enough to stanch a GOP wave of money, these ground game efforts could very well prove more effective than your average ad:

In-person contact tends to be a much stronger way to persuade voters than television ads. And while the AFL-CIO is limited to talking to union members, an allied group, Working America, has the leeway to make election pitches to non-union laborers. An official with the group says they’ve knocked on “at least 700,000 doors in 13 cities and 9 states across the country” to date.

Democrats pining their electoral hopes on a fine-tuned ground game shouldn’t necessarily hold their breath. In 2006, Republican leadership made the same exact pitch as massive Democratic spending helped fulfill the narrative of massive election losses. But among top members of the Democratic Party, the hope is that direct persuasion can be an antidote not just to the massive deficit the party faces on the airwaves but also to the enthusiasm advantage held by conservatives heading into the election.

“We can make up that enthusiasm gap because we have a far better field operation than they do. And it is funded,” said a senior Democratic lawmaker. “The resources being spent outside the [Republican] party are being spent on the wrong thing… if their cavalry came in a month ago, we would have had a much harder time digging out of it.”

Pat Toomey isn’t some fair weather economic conservative who will abandon pro-growth principles when the pressure is on. Pat Toomey is a true believer, and a true friend to economic freedom.

Pat Toomey is the rare kind of dynamic leader who can persuade independent voters that the path to prosperity is through less government, lower taxes, and freer markets. He won’t only represent our principles, he will expand the number of Americans who hold them. [...]

Our new investment in the Pennsylvania Senate race is big, over $700,000, but we can and should make it bigger.

With your help today, we can add to our buy and put it on more stations in more markets from now until Election Day. Every dollar you can contribute is another audience, another market, another voter we can reach.

The Club for Growth was one of the first groups, along with the Democrat-leaning Commonsense Ten, to petition the FEC to form a Political Action Committee that could solicit unlimited contributions in the wake of court rulings on Citizens United and other court cases that followed it. The Club hasn’t been the biggest national player in this year’s election cycle, but it’s doubling down in a big way on its favorite candidate — and former president — in Pennsylvania, and it’s hoping to use its ability to raise unlimited cash from rich and corporate donors to its advantage.

“As you know, there are NO CONTRIBUTION LIMITS for Club for Growth Action, and it can accept both personal and corporate contributions,” Club for Growth president Chris Chocola reminds supporters in today’s appeal. “Every dollar you can spare is another dollar closer to victory.”

The RJC has taken a strong interest in the Pennsylvania race. It attacked Sestak earlier in the campaign following an endorsement he received from former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), another figure the group considers to be dangerously anti-Israel. Its new ad points out that Sestak said he would support the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in a Pennsylvania civilian court and paints the idea as irresponsible.

Going after Sestak on national security issues seems unlikely to make a big dent in his support. The man is a retired three-star admiral who worked in counterintelligence for years. Yet the added million dollars’ worth of negative air time in an area he needs to win by a wide margin is a sizable sum that will counterbalance the cash-on-hand advantage that Sestak improbably enjoys over former Rep. Pat Toomey.

Another interesting storyline to monitor will be to see what additional moves, if any, Toomey’s old friends at the Club for Growth will make on his behalf in the final weeks of the campaign.