Indiana's 7th congressional district special election, 2008

Indiana's 7th congressional district special election of 2008 took place March 11, 2008 to fill the seat in the United States House of Representatives left vacant by the death of 7th district representative Julia Carson (D) on December 15, 2007. The election determined who would fill the vacancy for the rest of the 110th United States Congress. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels set the date for the special election.[1] Both political parties had previously agreed to this date.[2] Democrat André Carson won the election with an 18.17% voter turnout.[3]

Candidates

On January 11, the Democratic caucus chose André Carson to run in the March 11 special election.[4] On January 12, the Republicans chose Jon Elrod as their candidate[5][6] and the Libertarian caucus nominated Sean Shepard.[7]

Democratic

Libertarian

Republican

Environment

Indiana 7th district map

The district, which covers most of Marion County, is considered difficult for Republicans. It includes most of what was the city of Indianapolis before the creation of Unigov in 1970, and includes most of the more Democratic areas of the county. John Kerry won the 7th district in 2004 with 58%, but after the November 2007 upset of Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson by Republican Greg Ballard, the race was assumed to be competitive. However, in the precincts of the 7th District Democrat Bart Peterson still received 54% of the votes.

Results

Indiana 7th District House of Representatives special election, 2008[12]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Democratic André Carson 45,634 54.0%
Republican Jon Elrod 36,399 43.0%
Libertarian Sean Shepard 2,426 2.9%
No party Write-ins 47 0.1%
Turnout 84,506 18.2%
Democratic hold Swing

External links

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/13/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.