2006 United States elections

In George W. Bush's sixth year, with the Iraq war dominating the campaign, his Republicans lost both chambers, and the Senate went in a peculiar way. Joe Lieberman lost Connecticut's Democratic primary, ran as an independent, won anyway and then sat with the Democrats, so their new 51-seat majority counted him and Vermont's Bernie Sanders alongside 49 Democrats. In the House, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to be Speaker, and the day after the vote Bush announced that his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was leaving.