2010 United States House of Representatives election in Delaware


The 2010 United States House of Representatives election in Delaware was held on November 2, 2010, to determine who would represent the state of Delaware in the United States [House of Representatives] for the 112th [United States Congress]. Democratic nominee former Lieutenant Governor, John Carney defeated Republican nominee Glen Urquhart, giving Delaware an all Democratic congressional delegation for the first time since before the 1942 midterms. This is the first open-seat election since 1992 and only the second since 1976.

Background

The state of Delaware is completely contained in a single at-large district. The district has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+7. Since 1993, the district had been represented by Republican Michael Castle.
Castle announced in 2009 he would run for the United States Senate seat held by Ted Kaufman who had been appointed to the seat when his predecessor, Joe Biden, resigned to become Vice President. Castle was defeated by Christine O'Donnell in the Delaware Republican Senate primary.

Democratic primary

Candidates

Results

Carney announced his candidacy on April 15, 2009, and was unopposed in the primary after Scott Spencer, a transportation consultant, dropped out.

Republican primary

Candidates

General election

Campaign

According to a September 2010 poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind, "likely voters in Delaware split 45%-40% on whether they prefer to have the U.S. Congress controlled by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, suggesting that the First State's open congressional seat might be hotly contested," yet in the same poll, Carney led Urquhart by 51%-36%. Peter Woolley, the poll director, remarked that "candidates matter, not just parties" and that in Delaware candidates matter "more than in most states."

Results

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic