Local races are local. Kentucky elected a Democratic Governor over a Republican incumbent by a 60-40 margin in 2007, then turned around and went 58-41 for McCain a year later. It had nothing to do with any trends; we just happened to have a scandal-ridden jackass on the GOP side in '07. (I was embarrassed that he got 40%.)
As Sam and others have pointed out, the only trend I think you can pick out is that independents moving toward the GOP, which is not surprising since a lot of them were Republicans a year ago. Republicans will spin that as a good thing, but it’s just the opposite; it just means their voters don’t want to be associated with their brand anymore.
That helped. But what helped even more was the low turnout in two huge areas necessary for Dems - voters under thirty and minorities. That killed them in the two governors races. I suspect that 60% of females in New York voted for Owens and that will be the key to his vicory there when such things are examined.
Again, Sarah Palin gets you attention and money and supporters but also gets you defeated in the end.
Right, sorry – I should have been a little more precise. Many of the counties that now constitute the NY-23rd have been historically Republican. The makeup of the district itself has changed dramatically over the years. If you look at which counties are in the 23rd, you’ll see that there is no overlap between the areas that were in the 23rd in 1993 and the counties in it now. I suspect the district boundaries in NY have been especially volatile recently since the state has been losing population relative to the rest of the country for a while.
As you can see, the composition of the electorate changed noticeably between 2008 and 2009. The percentage of under-30 voters dropped from 21% to 10%; the percentage of nonwhite voters dropped from 30% to 22%.
IF there was no correlation between race and age in either year, then the combined share of under-30 and minority voters dropped from 47% last year to 30% this year.
The M-F ratio went from 46-54 last year to 48-52 this year.
Even though Corzine is on my team and I prefer him to Christie, his loss just elicits a shrug because of the Goldman Sachs connection.
This was the biggest disappointment of the night. There’s still the possibility of a recount, but realistically things look bad. At least Washington took a step in the right direction.
That pretty much describes me. I’m more to the right on national security and economic issues, but I’m pretty much a social libertarian with some liberal leanings. Given the two party system, the Republicans have always seemed to be a better choice, but I would prefer they don’t bring the social conservative baggage.
Dems are 5 for 5 in Congressional special elections this year.
Last night was a good night for Nancy Pelosi. A centrist Dem (Tauscher) vacated the CA-10 seat, and was replaced by a progressive Dem. And in NY-23, a moderate Republican was replaced by a centrist Dem. So she’s probably got, on average, at least one more vote on just about anything than she did before the election.
I suspect that the overall tenor of the political discussion now, in the wake of these election results, will be unhelpful to public option health care, cap-and-trade, and a number of other initiatives. I think the “Blue Dogs” will see this as a reason to entrench their positions.
The most fascinating thing about NY-23 to me is that the Republican candidate only got 5% of the vote. I would have sworn it would have been more like 15%, from a combination of protest votes and ‘senior moments’, eg, people who just vote straight republican. The news wouldn’t have reached the low-information voters that soon, so… guess there’s fewer of those than I would have thought.
… it also means that a LOT of people really didn’t like John Ashcroft. And he did, in fact, lose to a dead man.
Also the Hoffman loss could be good for the Republicans if it causes saner heads to prevail in the party purge campaign. Myself, I tend to be sympathetic to the notion that what counts is ideology and not nominal party affiliation, but there’s a limit to how much ideological purity you can demand. Had Hoffman won it would have emboldened right wingers to challenge everyone to the left of Tom Coburn, and leaving aside whether you want everyone to resemble Tom Coburn or not, you cannot get candidates like him elected to anything close to a majority of offices in the US. So you need to save this type of ideological challenge for the more extreme cases.
Meanwhile liberals are apparently intending to challenge moderates in the Democratic Party. So it could balance out in the end.
How else do you expect them to spin it? The Democrats will spin it that it’s merely local and has no bearing on the national situation. It’s called spin for a reason.
Personally I don’t think this has any implication on the national position. I think Obama is losing some steam but not so much that it’s really trickling down to local race.
And calling them tea baggers makes you look stupid. Just a personal opinion.
That sounds like something that might be said if any of the so-called fiscal conservatives had managed to get elected to the house. Did I miss a victory somewhere?
The point that Bricker made bears repeating here. If local Democrats take home just this lesson - that their fates depend on local issues and that general Democratic and Obama popularity won’t necessarily get them re-elected - it could make those in more moderate or conservative districts more reluctant to stick their necks out for the Party positions. And this could translate to troubles for Obama in getting his more ambitious initiatives passed, which could hurt him.
It’s possible, I suppose, that they will totally forget that off-year elections are base elections, and Lord knows the Dem base had no reason to get excited about Deeds or Corzine.
But if they remember that off-year elections are base elections, then they might want to pass something that would give the Dem base in their districts a reason to show up, if they don’t want to be ex-Congressional Blue Dogs. After all, the GOP base will surely bring its A game next year, and the Blue Dogs will definitely feel the brunt of that. They’d better have an energized base to stack up against that.