From sj-r.com:

Some past and future candidates make it look that way, but experts disagree on whether the election of Barack Obama for president, Aaron Schock to Congress and Alexi Giannoulias as Illinois treasurer mark a trend or are just a collection of individual races with interesting results.

“What we sometimes do is jump to conclusions about patterns that might just be coincidental,” said Chris Mooney, political science professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield and part of the U of I’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

“Did it help him that he looked more on the ball than (U.S. Sen. John) McCain did?” Mooney said of Obama’s 2008 presidential race against McCain. “Yeah. But it was more the fact, I think, that McCain was too old.”

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