After today’s misfortunes, Republicans seeking a silver lining further down the ballot are sure to be disappointed. While the 2006 elections have not entirely repealed the Republican realignment of the 1990s, voters have amended it significantly — and consistently in a Democratic direction.

In gubernatorial elections, not a single Democratic seat fell to the Republicans, but six Republican governorships went Democratic: Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. A sheer head count shows ill, as this reversed the split from a 28-22 Republican Tuesday to a 28-22 Democratic Wednesday. But the news is actually better than that for Democrats, since seizing populous states like New York and Ohio is of greater significance than the GOP retaining the top jobs in places such as Alaska and Vermont (no insult intended to my friends in the far corners of the country).

Among the state legislatures, outcomes are, if anything, still worse for the Republican Party. As of this writing, Republicans appear to have lost or are tied in nine legislative chambers they formerly held: the Indiana house, Iowa’s house and senate, the Michigan house, the Minnesota house, New Hampshire’s house and senate (yes, you read that right), the Oregon house, and the Wisconsin senate. Should the Pennsylvania house also tip toward the Democrats when all ballots are counted, which would follow the current trend, the result would mark a significant change in power at the state level.

Going into Tuesday, the two parties were closely divided in legislative seats and chamber control. A 10-chamber gain, however, would yield a 57-39 Democratic edge. Democrats would control both chambers in 23 states, while Republicans would have full force in just 15. That’s down from a 20-19 Republican edge.

Again, the news is actually worse than these figures might suggest. In states where Republicans constituted a strong minority, Democratic gains have pushed the margins much wider, making takeover in 2008 or 2010 (leading up to the critical 2011 rounds of redistricting for Congress and legislatures) much harder to envision. In my home state of North Carolina, Democrats expanded their margin in the house from 63-57 to at least 68-52, and in the senate from 29-21 to 31-19.

Many of these results were foreseen well before Election Day. Republicans knew for months that they were in trouble in state races, particularly in the Midwest. But the losses of both chambers in New Hampshire and of the Pennsylvania house were considered most improbable; it seems clear now that the national anti-Bush, anti-GOP mood prevailed over local efforts and issues in many of these districts.

So what did Democrats do right to win virtually all the major state-level contests in 2006? Several factors merit a quick mention.

• Candidate recruitment: Democrats enjoy a built-in advantage in this important component of political success, particularly at the level of state legislature, for the simple reason that Democrats typically want government to do more, and are enthusiastic about being around to run that larger government. Most Republicans have an inborn hostility to large government, and will much less readily subject themselves to the rigors of constant campaigning, at the risk of losing their careers and privacy. This year, based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen, Democrats did particularly well in recruiting talented, attractive candidates, as many reluctant Republicans foresaw an unfavorable political environment and nursed their own grievances against their party’s leadership.

• Populism: To the Democrats’ overall qualitative advantage in recruitment must be added their successful strategy of recruiting populist candidates for swing and even GOP-leaning districts. Displaying their religious faith, traditional values, and explicitly conservative positions on issues such as gun rights and abortion, these candidates ran leftward on issues such as the minimum wage and trade protectionism (the latter isn’t within a state legislator’s purview, but the Democratic candidates used it to deflect blame to Washington in states with continuing economic woes, such as Michigan). Some Republican-leaning social conservatives may have crossed party lines to vote for these Democratic populists. Others, seeing no substantial difference between the parties on the issues they cared about, either skipped the legislative race or the election altogether.

• Scandal: Charges of ethics and corruption wreaked havoc on Republican congressional candidates, but the damage seeped down to gubernatorial and legislative races, as well. In states such as Ohio, corruption scandals at the state level piled so heavy a burden on GOP candidates that their fates were never really under their control. Even in Iowa, where the outgoing Democratic governor’s administration had some unflattering corruption stories of its own this year, Democrat Chet Culver was able to use the ethics issue effectively against Republican Jim Nussle by rhetorically covering Nussle with Capitol Hill muck. He won the governor’s race fairly easily, 54-45.

• Money: At the national level, Democrats still got out-raised by Republicans in hard money earmarked for state races, but they narrowed the gap. Significantly, Democrats made use of 527s and other independent expenditures in many battleground states to narrow the gap still further, even reverse it in quite a few cases. (Again, in my home state of North Carolina, Democrats had something like four to five times the campaign cash at their disposal for legislative races than Republicans did). You don’t have to have more money than your opponent to win modern elections, which are less dominated by TV ads than in the past. You do have to meet a certain threshold of seriousness. State Democrats did it, raising money from interests as varied as labor unions, abortion-rights enthusiasts, and smart Democratic donors looking forward to the 2011 redistricting.

• New Media: The Democratic netroots are going to claim a lot of credit for what happened on Tuesday. Some of that will be justified. The more basic problem for Republicans is that while they have pioneered the combination of new technology and old-fashioning canvassing to get out their vote — the extra point or two their machine generated probably restrained an utter landslide — GOP consultants are still using an old model for getting their message out. Splurging on TV time in the last few weeks of the campaign was the model for close elections in the 1980s and ‘90s. It is not the way to win them in the late 2000s, when so many voters are watching pay-TV or DVDs, and are far from the reach of on-air ads. This one factor alone helps to explain why the GOP’s money advantage did not translate into more electoral success.

Set aside the current Democratic ebullience and Republican depression, for they will pass. Both sides will begin to realize that the dynamics of the 2008 election cycle, with an open presidential race and likely a different set of issues, are going to be vastly different from this one.

One key fact — and this applies to both congressional and legislative districts — is that many of the seats that Republicans lost this year were in friendly territory. Lots of these gains will prove difficult for Democrats to defend in two years, as the electorate won’t be voting against Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, or even George W. Bush. Remember, Republicans gave up quite a few seats in 1996 that they more-or-less accidentally won in their 1994 sweep.

But to win those GOP-leaning seats back, and put themselves into contention to win the true swing seats required for majorities, Republicans are going to have to fix problems in candidate recruitment, communication, fundraising, and the new media. And for those seeking to win state elections, it would help quite a bit if the national Republican party didn’t saddle them with indefensible spending, infuriating incompetence, and exasperating scandal.

— John Hood is a syndicated columnist and president of the John Locke Foundation, a state policy think tank based in North Carolina.