Jeff Merkley pulled ahead in the Oregon Senate race, which brings the Democrats a sixth seat gained in the upper chamber. (The others were in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado.)
We are headed for a recount in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by 0.03 percent of the vote. What is wrong with the 400,000+ people who voted for independent candidate Dean Barkley?
Absentee and provisional ballots are still being counted in Alaska, where seven-time convicted felon Ted Stevens has a narrow lead over Mark Begich. They sure like their Republicans in Alaska.
The Georgia Senate race will go to a runoff in December, but Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss has to be heavily favored over Jim Martin.
If I could choose only one of the late-to-be-determined races to win, I would pick Oregon. Merkley has been very effective in the Oregon legislature and is going to be a huge asset to progressives in the Senate. Also, he is likely to have an easier time holding this seat than our candidates would in AK, MN or GA.
There are still a few U.S. House races to be determined. It looks as if Democrats will end up with a net gain of about 19 or 20 seats, which gives them a solid majority of about 250 (there are 435 seats in the House of Representatives).
However, there’s no getting around the fact that many analysts were forecasting Democratic gains of 25 to 30 seats before the election. Republicans have to feel good about protecting most of their incumbents from the Obama wave. The Democrats did not make enough of a case for why a Democratic Congress would be a force for good, and the Republicans may have energized their base with warnings about one-party rule.
As for the presidential race, some of John McCain’s staffers and conservative talking heads are already trying to blame Sarah Palin for dragging down the Republican ticket. They are complaining about her clothes shopping spree and her refusal to accept preparation for her interview with Katie Couric. I agree that Palin hurt McCain, but get real: whose fault is it that such an uninformed, unprepared candidate was on the ticket?
If Fox News goes along with the effort to discredit Palin (and judging from this clip, they will), it will be interesting to see if the network’s ratings decline. Palin now has a loyal following among ideological conservatives who are the core viewers for Fox. If you watch Fox or listen to any right-wing talk radio, post a comment or write a diary about how the various hosts are explaining McCain’s loss. I am curious to see how many parts of the right-wing noise machine try to undermine Palin, and how many will keep encouraging her to run for president in 2012.
Also, if you know Republicans who were active in supporting a presidential candidate this past year, do you think they would stick with that candidate in 2012, or might they prefer Palin?
Looking to the future on the Democratic side, Clinton White House staffer Mike Lux explains what’s wrong with the conventional wisdom about Clinton’s so-called “overreaching” in 1993 and 1994.
Early analysis of the presidential voting is already appearing. Obama did better than Al Gore or John Kerry among protestants and evangelicals, including frequent church-goers.
At Swing State Project, Crisitunity has already calculated the new partisan voting indices for all 50 states, taking into account the 2008 election results. The partisan voting index looks at the popular vote in each state from the last two presidential elections, and compares that to the nationwide popular vote. So, in a state that is R+5, the share of the vote garnered by Bush in 2004 and McCain this year is about five percent higher than the share of the national popular vote Bush and McCain received.
Although Obama did substantially better than Al Gore and John Kerry in many states, he also outperformed those candidates in the national popular vote. The result is that the change in partisan voting index is minimal for most states. Crisitunity explains,
In most people’s minds, this was a sea change election, a total map-changer… but if you look closely at the underlying data and not just the colors on the TV screen, it wasn’t. Most of the states behaved exactly as you’d expect them to, coming in a few points more Democratic in a year where the Democratic candidate performed a few points better than the previous few Democratic candidates. In other words, most states’ boats were lifted the same amount by the one overall rising blue tide.
There were some big shifts and drops, though; where were they? The states where the PVI most notably shifted to the Democrats were Colorado (+3), Hawaii (+6), Indiana (+3), Montana (+4), Nevada (+3), New Mexico (+3), North Dakota (+3), South Dakota (+3), and Vermont (+5). With the exception of Hawaii (favorite son effect) and Vermont (large 2000 Nader effect falling out of the equation), the explanation for these states seems to be a combination of two factors: Obama’s greater appeal (maybe personality-wise more so than policy-wise) to midwestern and western states, and the fact that the Obama campaign actually put a lot of ground game effort into these states instead of treating them as an afterthought.
Based on the 2000 and 2004 presidential election results, Iowa had a partisan voting index of D+0, meaning the state as a whole closely mirrored nationwide popular voting for president. Dropping the 2000 numbers and adding the 2008 results, Crisitunity calculated a PVI of D+1 for Iowa, meaning our state has a very slight Democratic tilt compared to the national electorate.
This is an open thread for any thoughts you have about the election or anything interesting you’ve read lately about the results.
7 Comments
Thoughts
The one problem that I have with the Minnesota recount is that thanks to the voter intent law, in the end the likely winner will be the party or candidate who had the most supporters unable to correctly fill out a ballot.
As far as Palin goes, I hope that the Republican Party is smart enough to leave it alone. I would much prefer a candidate such as Romney or even a fresh face like Jindal’s to Palin. With the momentum that Huckabee was able to get early in the race he might even be a viable choice.
Also, I find the partisan voting index for Iowa rather interesting. How can it only be D +1 when 4 out of 5 districts are Democrat-leaning? The one that is Republican-leaning is strongly partisan, but I’m not sure that would cause that much of a difference. Another observation is that this only taken into account is presidential elections. Two other things that should be considered are other races’ results in each district and district support in caucuses. I think it was obvious from the caucuses this year that Obama was able to mobilize a large number of enthusiastic voters and that he was going to be very successful in Iowa.
rgiertz Thu 6 Nov 9:35 AM
partisan voting index
It does only take into account the presidential voting, and the fifth district does skew heavily Republican, while Iowans in the other four districts do not.
In terms of presidential voting, D+1 seems about right for Iowa. Both Kerry and Obama did about 1 percent better in Iowa than they did nationally.
The new PVIs for Congressional districts have not yet been calculated.
desmoinesdem Thu 6 Nov 10:13 AM
Those numbers will be interesting.
According to the initial auditor’s office results, Urbandale went 51-49% for Obama on Tuesday, compared to 61-39% for Bush over Kerry in 2004. I talked to lots of voters in my precinct who were voting for Obama but chose Republican Scott Raecker in our state house race and voted for Schmett over Boswell as well. I suspect there were lots of split-ticket ballots in our area.
urbandaleforobama Thu 6 Nov 11:02 AM
clearly Obama's campaign was working Polk County hard
hence the strong turnout for Obama in places like Urbandale.
desmoinesdem Thu 6 Nov 11:14 AM
I don't know the details of the MN law
but in general I support trying to figure out the intent of voters, and that is what courts have generally supported doing. If you use a red pen or a crayon rather than a black pen to fill out your ballot, it should still count. If you fill in the circle next to your candidate’s name but also write in the same candidate’s name, that should count as a vote for your candidate (not as a spoiled ballot or “overvote”).
A few years ago, there was a strong write-in candidate for Windsor Heights city council. He finished 7 votes behind the incumbent, but an additional 22 people wrote in his name without filling in the oval next to the write-in line. In my view, he should have been seated on the city council, because the intent of those 22 voters was clear.
desmoinesdem Thu 6 Nov 10:16 AM
Voter Intent
I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad law, I just found it amusing that it would come down to the voters who filled out the ballot incorrectly. It is a shame that slight irregularities in directions can result in votes not counting and a second chance for those voters is probably nice, I just was noting the irony.
rgiertz Thu 6 Nov 10:41 AM
Regarding the MN Dean Barkley Vote
Anecdotal evidence about “what’s wrong with the 400,000+ people who voted for independent candidate Dean Barkley” from friends and family in my native Minnesota suggests that Democratic leaning voters who enthusiastically cast their votes for Obama simply didn’t like Al Franken but didn’t want to vote for Coleman either. From my liberal leaning college roommate in Minneapolis to my very traditional DFL-voting mom in rural northern Minnesota, I think there were lots of Obama voters who felt like the choice between Franken and Coleman was a little bit like choosing between two highly unpalatable menu options at a wedding reception.
After the Ventura debacle of the 90s, Minnesotans are highly suspicious of celebrity candidates, and both Coleman and Franken are viewed as opportunists (Coleman’s party-swap and Franken’s relatively recent discovery of his Minnesota roots being two examples cited by sisters of mine). I don’t think those 400,000 people were enthusiastic Barkley supporters but were instead reluctant to support either of the major party candidates. I think if the Minnesota Democratic Party had presented them with a “safer” choice for the senate seat, we wouldn’t be looking at a re-count today.
urbandaleforobama Thu 6 Nov 10:49 AM