Since 2008, President Obama has been essentially crowned the king of political technology.  From his use of social media in the campaign to his transition team, the President was deeply engaged with technology. I think we all recall the fight over his blackberry.

This year for the annual State of the Union address, the President has again engaged the use of technology by offering advanced information to those who use digital technology.  For instance, you could have gone to YouTube and uploaded a question that he could answer on Thursday or you can visit the White House website during the speech to see annotated statistics and graphs illustrating how the White house came to the conclusions drawn in the speech.  Or you can do what I’m doing and participate in a nationwide poll that could gauge the reactions of hundreds of thousands of citizens, right from the comfort of your smartphone.

If you ever watched The West Wing, you may have seen this clip where, during a State of the Union the White House is collecting polling numbers based on live-reactions to the speech. If you don’t salivate over polling data like I do, then give this clip a watch for a quick understanding of what I am talking about.

Last year MoveOn.org ran an approach with similar “dial-in” live reporting amongst its members.  You had to sign in and the results were, by the nature of MoveOn.org, rather partisan.  They then presented the results of the survey with little to no reference data as to what it meant.  This year a group called SurveySwipe has put together an iPhone app that lets users dial in their reactions to the State of the Union.  While not a scientific survey, this approach may provide the largest number of respondents to the President Obama’s speech.  Blackberry and Android users can still download the app and answer polling questions, but will not be able to provide live dial-in reactions. SurveySwipe has guaranteed that the results of this survey will be released under a Creative Commons BY 3.0 license meaning that as long as users attribute SurveySwipe as the source, anyone regardless of party can use this data.

While this app is being sponsored by partisan or ideological groups, we find this use of technology innovative and interesting because it will provide a unique snapshot of our nation’s reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union address regardless of which groups help fund the project.

Only the most insensitive, self-absorbed person would try to make the events of the last week about I/me/we/us rather than she/he/her/him/they/them.  But, here goes.

Last Wednesday, my first stop on swearing in morning was at the office of Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ 8).  Her husband, parents, and in-laws were at her office early, along with her staff to greet everyone who had been invited to stop for a visit.  She was thrilled because it was one of the few occasions where all of them were in the same city at the same time.  That day, she was one of 19 Democrats not to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker.  She later read the First Amendment of the Constitution on the floor.  Today, she is in a medically induced coma after being shot at a constituent event in a public shopping center.  BIPAC helped her in 2006 over her Republican opponent in the open seat general election.  She was one of the many candidates we interviewed that cycle.  She came alone without handlers, and her appointment was made at the recommendation of business people who thought we should talk.  We haven’t helped or opposed her since, yet she is one of the few members of Congress to call on occasion just to chat about the issues.  One of the things we talked about that morning was the need for the returning members to get to know the Republican freshman class.  All those nonincumbents BIPAC backed who were sworn in with the freshman class … charity keeps me from mentioning how many offered us coffee or donuts.

From my exposure to her, she is everything you’ve read she is and her remarkable traits aren’t often so evident in everyone we meet in Congress.  I could tell you stories about her kindness, but they wouldn’t be unique because thousands have been told since the weekend.  But, the other 534 members of Congress aren’t ogres to the people who deal with them.  I know that because audiences always tell me I’m wrong to say Representative or Senator XYZ isn’t an ally or should be defeated.  Imagine that any other member you know had been shot on Saturday; we’d all be telling similar stories of personal encounters or efforts made to handle a constituent problem.  Perhaps grassroots managers and PAC managers need to do a better job in humanizing the elected officials with whom we deal.  Their personal stories may not be as compelling as Speaker John Boehner (R-OH 8 ) – bar, lots of kids – or Representative Bobby Schilling (R-IL 17) – pizza parlor, lots of kids, but everyone has a backdrop that explains who they are as fellow citizens.

As for congressional staffers whose lives we now know are on the line too, let’s be less dismissive of the time we get to spend with them rather than the member.  That new chair of Ways and Means, former staffer; that new chair of Energy and Commerce, former staffer.  And, these examples are only but a few.  The new legislative aide your visiting executive won’t see because who wants to explain an issue to a kid … did you just turn down an appointment with a future Representative Dave Camp (R-MI 4) or Fred Upton (R-MI 6)?

How about we take another look at our hesitancy about primaries too.  Post-2010 isn’t the best time to urge us to rethink our policy on this because the February through September experience was so ghastly.  It is hard not to remember how the current Republican House leadership came to Congress.  Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA 5) won their first terms by challenging the so-called conservative establishment.  Each was the moderate, business favorite under attack from the social issue network.

The biggest lesson of the weekend should be to remain careful about what we believe and the sources we accept as credible.  Last Saturday, the internet was full of misinformation and underinformed rant.  Giffords wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t shot by a Mexican illegal, a Muslim radical, or a tea party fanatic.  Upon hearing she was shot/dead, I found the streaming video from the Tucson CBS outlet, assuming the voices on the scene would be the most reliable.  All of their reports quoted staffers, hospital sources, and family members that she was alive and in surgery.  The twitter world repeated false reports from dubious outlets claiming otherwise.  What ever happened to the two source rule? Is this unfiltered internet where your employees are getting their supposed facts about the great issues of the day?

Generally, reliable news organizations admitted after the weekend that they no longer have the kind of field reporters or independent fact checkers to handle breaking news.  If what passes for legitimate sources don’t know if a member of Congress is dead or alive, why would we trust them about what’s going on with the upcoming health care debate.  Hardly life or death, but do we want our stakeholders learning about the Korean trade agreement from so-called opinion leaders, or you?

If you don’t like the political rhetoric, change the discourse.  If you don’t think bloggers should get so much attention, find someone more informed to follow.  If you can’t stand the cable blabbers, tune them out.  At the very least, scrub your websites or issue alerts of all inflammatory, ridiculous language.  Take down links to sources who can’t possibly be informed about the issues that matter to you.  Don’t outsource the dialogue or let outsiders who don’t share your mission tell your members/employees what to think or do about elections, candidates, or public policy.

President John F. Kennedy is often credited for coining the phrase “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.”  Although that is not exactly what he said in 1961, the concept certainly applies to the elections of 2010.  There is no lack of those claiming responsibility for the victories of 2010.  But, separating the truth from fiction, and identifying those who are more accurately linked to the orphans of defeat, will prove to be critical in deciding the future of American politics and the resulting public policy.

The 2010 election was more than a partisan “shellacking” of the Democrats in Congress, although it was all of that.  The gain of 63 seats for the GOP in the U.S. House is a net of 10 more than they won in the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, and is tied for the fifth greatest party switch of the modern Congressional era, which began in 1912.  The GOP gain of a net six seats in the Senate seems modest by comparison, but is a bad starting position for the Democrats, considering they will be defending 21 of the 33 seats up for election in 2012.

But, these Congressional numbers, as definitive as they seem, don’t tell the most important story.

Republicans gained a net of five Governors, for a total of 29, compared to 20 for the Democrats and one independent.  The GOP also had a net gain of 675 state legislators nationwide.  21 state legislative chambers switched to GOP control.  In six states, both chambers switched to Republican control.  The GOP now controls both legislative chambers in 25 states, Democrats control both in 19, and 5 states have divided control (Nebraska is nonpartisan).  Not a single chamber switched to the Democrats.  These results create real depth on the GOP candidates’ bench that will be a factor in the years to come.

Beyond these obvious advantages, the GOP is poised to make gains from the reapportionment of House districts that will result from the 2010 census. The GOP has control of or an advantage in the process to redraw 240 of the 435 house districts, 22 more than a House majority. This process is all but certain to provide for additional Republican gains in the U.S. House.

So, is the father of the victories of 2010 the Republican Party itself?  Not so much.

Despite Republican gains, consider the battle for the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC).  The incumbent was elected with great promise and seemed to have all the right tools.  Yet, his tenure was mired in controversy almost from the start.  The common complaint in the states was the inadequacy or non-existence of a party-driven get out the vote (GOTV) effort that is usually the function of the central party.  In the end, the RNC finished with over a $20 million debt and little credit for the victories, even from its own party members.

Peter Roff from the US News and World Report posted an interesting question during the RNC Chairman contest: “Does it matter? … The rise of social media – Facebook, Twitter, and the like – now makes direct communication between candidates and their supporters possible.  There is no longer any real need for a centralized national structure separate from the campaign committee to bring party loyalists out on Election Day … [The work of the official] committees has been supplemented, if not supplanted, by political action committees, interest groups, and political organizations … that have proven their ability to raise significant resources on behalf of state and federal candidates and to make those resources count, all without the help of the RNC.”

Ultimately, neither the GOP congressional election committees, the Republican Governors’ Association (RGA), nor the Republican State Leadership Committee cooperated closely with the RNC, according to insiders and observers.  As to the gain in governorships, few don’t recognize the influence and operational savvy of Haley Barbour, Chairman of the RGA, who is serving his second term as Governor of Mississippi and was the Chairman of the RNC when the GOP swept to victory in 1994.

While all these groups have paternal bragging rights for 2010 victories, the inescapable fact may be that those most responsible for the outcomes of 2010 are the fathers of defeat.

In almost every poll, focus group or analysis, the 2010 election was more about what the voters didn’t want than what they wanted. Voters didn’t like the way Washington worked, the leftward lean of the Obama administration, or the high-handedness of the Democratic Congressional leadership.  They wanted to “throw the bums out.” But, lest we assume that was all they cared about, the losses by GOP Senate candidates in Delaware, Nevada, and to a lesser degree, Colorado and Alaska, demonstrate clearly that even in “throw the bums out” elections, candidates do still matter.

It would do both parties well to consider that the real father of victory in 2010 was a fed-up, impatient, angry and disillusioned electorate, which wanted government to focus on some very basic things – one of which is making government work.  These individuals get their information from non-political sources, via new technologies, and are beholden to neither political party.  These are the same voters who voted the GOP out of office in 2006 when their desires went unheeded. They show every indication of having the willingness to do it again.  It’s a lesson the new GOP leadership seems to understand.  So far.

It’s also a lesson those of us who constitute these new sources of information should take to heart.  It harkens to the remarks of another U.S. President who said something about those who actually make a difference in the arena.  But that is a subject for another day…

Before we cover the impact the 2010 election will have on congressional redistricting, let’s better understand the dramatic changes that occurred in the state legislatures since this is where the redistricting process is conducted in all but seven states (AZ, CA, HI, ID, MT, NJ and WA).  Of the remaining forty-three states, six states (AK, DE, ND, SD, VT and WY) have only one at large congressional seat, leaving us with thirty-seven states with multiple congressional districts where the state legislature controls the redistricting process.

Highlights of the remarkable shifts at the state legislative level as a result of the election:

• Twenty-five states now have both the House and Senate controlled by the Republicans.  Nineteen states controlled by the Democrats.  Five states now have divided control (AK, IA, KY, NY & VA).  Nebraska has a nonpartisan legislature.  Prior to the election, nine states had divided control.
• Twenty-one state legislative chambers switched party control to Republicans.
• Six states saw both chambers switch party control (AL, ME, MN, NH, NC & WI).
• Five states moved from divided control to both chambers being Republican controlled (IN, MI, MT, OH & PA).
• Four states moved from Democrat to divided control (IA, LA, NY & CO).
• Seventeen states saw at least one legislative chamber move away from Democratic control.
• No legislative chamber switched to Democratic control.
• According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Republicans gained at least 675 state legislative seats across the country.
• Republicans had a net gain of five Governor’s offices and now hold twenty-nine of the offices while Democrats have twenty and one Independent.

At the end of 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau concluded the decennial counting process and will submit, by the end of February, the information to the state legislatures so they can play political cartographer with state legislative and congressional district boundaries.  I will continue to argue that during any ten-year period there is no single issue legislators selfishly think is more important and will fight harder on than redistricting. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of concentrating on sound fiscal policies or improving on a tattered atmosphere in need of greater bi-partisanship.

As there is following every new census and reapportionment, there will be changes in the number of congressional seats awarded to each state.  By far, the biggest winner is Texas, which gained four seats to give it thirty-six seats.  Florida is also a big winner, picking up two seats.  Six additional states each gained one seat (AZ, GA, NV, SC, UT & WA).

Ten states offset the eight states that gained a total of twelve seats.  New York and Ohio lost two seats each.  New York will drop to twenty-seven seats and Ohio to sixteen seats.  Eight states lost one seat each (IL, IA, LA, MA, MI, MO, NJ & PA).  Of note is that ten seats lost come from a state on one of the Great Lakes or along the Mississippi River.

The breakdown of where the Republicans will be in full control or control two out of the three areas in the redistricting process:

• Republicans have control of the House, Senate and Governor’s Office in sixteen states (this counts NC where the Governor has no part in the process).  These sixteen states total 193 congressional districts.
  (AL, FL, GA, IN, KS, ME, MI, NC, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, WI)
• Republicans currently hold five at large congressional seats that are not affected by redistricting (AK, MT, ND, SD & WY).
• Republicans have control of the House and Senate with a Democrat Governor in three states (MN, MO & NH).  These states total eighteen congressional districts.
• There are three additional states (IA, LA & VA) with split legislative control and a Republican Governor.  These states total twenty-one congressional districts.
• Nebraska has a unicameral legislature with a Republican Governor and has three congressional districts.
• Republicans are in full control or have an advantage in twenty-seven states that will be drawing 238 congressional districts.

The breakdown of where the Democrats will be in full control or control two out of the three areas in the redistricting process:

• Democrats have control of the House, Senate and Governor’s Office in seven states (AR, CT, HI, IL, MA, MD & WV).  These seven states total forty-nine congressional districts and counts CT where the Governor has no part in the process.
• Democrats currently control two at large congressional seats that are not affected by redistricting (DE & VT).
• Democrats have control of the House and Senate with a Republican Governor in three states (MS, NM & NV) and an Independent Governor in RI.  These four states total twelve congressional districts.
• There are four additional states (CO, KY, NY & OR) with split legislative control and a Democrat Governor.  These states total forty-seven congressional districts.
• Democrats are in full control or have an advantage in seventeen states that will be drawing 110 congressional districts.

Five states have a commission that will determine the congressional districts in their state (AZ, CA, ID, NJ & WA).  These five states total eighty-six congressional districts.  Montana also has a commission, but is an at-large congressional district. Nine of the twelve gains due to reapportionment occur in five states that the redistricting process is completely controlled by the Republicans (FL, GA, SC, TX & UT).

Looking at the table above, Republicans will sit in 240 seats where they control or have an advantage in the redistricting process.  Democrats occupy 109 seats in states they have an advantage or control the process.  Republicans hold forty-one seats to the Democrats seventy-three seats that the opposite party has either complete control or a redistricting advantage.  Keep a close eye on these 114 seats and the cartography skills of the mapmakers if you want an early look at where many of the battleground seats will be in the 2012 election.