Every Vote Counts
Friday, November 05, 2010
On Tuesday:
- 300,000 Democrats stayed home, compared to the 2006 Gubernatorial election
- 340,000 Independents stayed home, compared to the 2006 Gubernatorial election
- there were only 72,300 more Republican votes this election than 2006.
In 2006, just like this year, the Governor, AG, Secretary of State, State Senate, State House, Congress, Supreme Court...all were up for election. Granholm, unpopular, was facing Dick DeVos and his gobs of money.300,000 Democratic votes, Indies notwithstanding (53% of whom were trending Democratic just 2 weeks out from the election), means Jocelyn Benson beats Ruth Johnson by 100,000 for Secretary of State. It means David Leyton beats Bill Schuette for AG by 19,000. It probably means Dems don't lose 9 incumbents in the State House, and win more than 2 of 13 "battleground" races.
It means Jennifer Haase, who led by double-digits less than a week before the election, doesn't lose her seat to a 23 year old waitress in a greasy spoon who still lives at home with her parents.
But Dem turnout was so poor - 15% in Detroit - that despite being up in the polls, the Jennifer Haases of the state lose.
Every vote counts. I know loyal ATK readers vote. But if any...any of your friends and colleagues bitch about the results, show them this blog post. If they, too, didn't vote and would have voted Dem, print a copy of this blog post and make them eat it. All of it. With no gravy or ketchup.
4 comments:
I guess the relevant question is: what percentage of those 300k Democrats are bitching about the results? My sense is that many of the no-show democrats were not too thrilled with what their politicians were doing, and are therefore probably not too broken up about them losing power.
What perecent of GOP voters stayed home? Mid-term elections usually have lousy turnouts. The polling data I saw showed independents going 60% in favor of Republicans...a mirror image of what they did in '08.
The 20 somethings I work with didn't vote, despite the fact that my boss would have gioven them time off to go vote. Lazy bastards.
Steve:
The numbers I saw showed 72,000 more Republican voters than 06. This, I am sure, just means a smaller number of Rs stayed home than 06, but certainly a number will have stayed home. Comapred to 300,000 Dems staying home though??
The 60% R-leaning Indies was true at one point, but I was made privvy to other polls that showed the slight trend back to essentially 50-50 in the weeks just before the election, which actually surprised nobody.
The 20 somethings I work with didn't vote
Make them eat this blog post.
Well, at least Ingham County did their job. 12 Democrats on the Board of Commissioners all re-elected! (as well as 3 Republicans). The open seat went Republican, but that wasn't a big surprise.
Post a Comment