NATIONAL SENATE/HOUSE RESULTS THREAD (LATE RESULTS/POSTMORTEM)

[Torie]

Why is Barone held in such high regard?

It's because he used to be the best, or at least close to it. Not a David Butler or anything, but someone who turned out solid, respectable analytical work, and that's always been too rare in the U.S. His decline into intellectual dishonesty has been pretty depressing.

He is still very knowledgeable, but you are right. He lets his biases color his judgment, and cloud his insight, as if his vision went from near 20-20 to something unfortunately closer to what mine was prior to my Lasek surgery. That is one thing I try very hard not to do, because I am an even more opinionated SOB than he is. Discipline, discipline!  What would we do without it?

Anyway, I have always been fascinated by ethnic politics since I was knee high from a grasshopper, and his Almanac was just such a joy to read in that regard. I learned just so much, far more than in an ethnic politics class I took at the University of Chicago.  By the way, guess who came to speak to us in that class.  Yes, you guessed, Tony Benn. I enjoyed watching him squirm when a guy in our class with an Irish accent asked him about Northern Ireland. The first thing Tony asked him was where he was from, and then he weaved and dodged.

My professor's specialty by the way was British politics (he said the Tories were unadulterated slime, but we got along famously anyway), so thus his pull in getting Tony to come. I wrote a paper looking carefully at constituency returns, to measure the white Enoch Powell backlash to persons of color showing up in their neighborhoods. And yes, the Wolverhampton zone was where it was most seismic. I got an A+ on the paper, and that was without even doing a regression analysis! In my defense 1) I didn't know then what a regression analysis really was back then, except as some murky concept, and 2) it was a long time before the age of PC's and excel.

[Torie]

California just doesn't have enough blue collar Catholic Anglos. They were the group that swung, and swung hard, against the Dems this year. Joe Biden was chatting about that. As someone noted in a post, the candidate the Dems fear most is Christie.

Which is why Republicans were swept into unprecedented victories here in Massachusetts.

(Granted, that did happen in the Senate special, but certainly not in the general).

Aren't most Catholics in MA Irish? Though I don't know where there are that many blue-collar Catholic Anglos. Probably more of a swing among Catholics of German descent in the midwest.

For better or worse, we here in CA at least, use the term "Anglo" to refer to those who are not Hispanic, Asian or black. And that is how I use the term - and for no other purpose.  I guess part of it is to use the term "white," in the context of excluding Hispanics, just rubs me the wrong way. Indeed, I find it almost offensive for some reason. Thus I embraced the term.

[Torie]

California just doesn't have enough blue collar Catholic Anglos. They were the group that swung, and swung hard, against the Dems this year. Joe Biden was chatting about that. As someone noted in a post, the candidate the Dems fear most is Christie.

The problem for the Republicans in California, and this was especially true for the statewide races, was that the few blue collar whites left in the state didn't swing hard Republican. Republicans experienced a nice wave among the upper middle class, as results from OC make quite clear. But the swing the Republicans needed amongst blue collar folks, that happened basically everywhere in the country, just didn't occur here.

 And you can't blame it entirely on demographic changes either. Look at the Central Valley results for Brown. Obviously he didn't do that well just due to the Hispanic vote (who voted more heavily for Boxer according to exit polls). So Brown must have done quite well amongst lower income whites in this state, while Whitman did better amongst minorities. And she could have done even better if it wasn't for the illegal housekeeper controversy. In fact if minorities voted for Brown at the same rate as Boxer, he would have won by about 15-16 points. But why didn't Whitman do better amongst those blue collar whites in the Central Valley and the IE? I understand why she did better with minorities (because she actually asked for their vote), but what happened with the blue collar white vote? That is what I find most surprising about this election.

That is all quite fascinating. The exit polls showed Brown doing much better than Boxer among white voters?  I didn't know that. Part of it may be because culturally conservative blue collar types might not have related well to a woman who is a billionaire, with an almost mid-Atlantic upper class accent which is now largely gone in the US, hired an illegal alien maid, and was just not their cup of tea. I suppose the answer could be found in other races. Did Whitman run behind white voters as compared to the entire slate of GOP candidates, both state and local, in general?

[Torie]

Well, I lost the rather detailed post that I had been typing, because my computer is sick. Anyway, for now, to add to this discussion, we might look at the net swing over the past two election cycles from Bush 2004.  

Suffice it to say, in mostly Catholic white working to lower middle class to middle, middle class, but not upper middle class, Wayne County (the area does not include the Gross Pointes), the swing to Obama was under 4% in the area I am putting in a new GOP CD in my redistricting map, and the swing against Dingell from 2008 in his portion of Wayne, which includes a somewhat more downscale version of what I put in my GOP CD (it has next to no lower middle class) was17% (and looking at the precincts, I can see a big swing against the Dems there, up and down the line), for a net swing against the Dems of 13% since Bush 2004.  Where else can that be replicated in the North outside perhaps some bits of the Copperhead belt (Southern Ohio (outside Cincy, except to the extent Cincy has migrants for Kentucky), Indiana and Illinois) and the fossil fuel districts?

Where are the white working class Protestant areas outside the South and copperhead and fossil fuel districts?  The iron range?  What areas did you have in mind where you posit massive swings against the Dems this year?  

[Torie]

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This explanation feels right to me, without having looked at the numbers. Sure Hispanics might not warm to a rather shrill pushy woman, who is so passionate about abortion - she's for it. And they are comfortable with the Brown name. Why not?

Sbane, if after having looked the numbers, you have more insights on this, I will be waiting to hear them. Thanks.

 

[Torie]

I assume it is clear now Cinyc, that the GOP took control of the NY State Senate. Is that correct?

[Torie]

Does anyone know if Tim Scott won the black vote in SC CD1?

He won 65%-29% in a district that is 75% white, 25% non-white, fwiw

Based off that its a clear no, and he didn't win much of it either.  The only way he was even competitive with the black vote is if many more whites voted against the GOP in that district than they typically do because of him.

In 2008, Obama of the two party vote got about 40.5% of it in SC-01. So the 10% drop in support from Obama to the Dem who ran against Scott is accounted for by what?

[Torie]

Taking a look at some of the Precinct data, this is a handful of the heavily Obama Precincts in Horry County


Coastal Lane 1 Obama 509-63,  Fraiser 308-49
Leon  Obama 471-184    Fraiser 296-158
Port Harrelson Obama 495-19,  Fraiser 357-14
Racepath 2 Obama 668-20,  Fraiser 556-17

Yes, I agree. In North Charleston, in CD-1 Obama got 67%, and Fraiser 60%, with the margin drop generated by a bigger drop in the Dem totals than the GOP totals from 2008.  So while Scott probably got a bit more of the black vote (it is hard to be sure, because I see no precinct where Scott got more votes than McCain in a heavily Obama precinct),  it it is probably more generated by a fall off in black turnout. However, the exit polls for 2008 and 2010 for SC show the black percentage of voters was 25% in both instances, so maybe not.

[Torie]

Taking a look at some of the Precinct data, this is a handful of the heavily Obama Precincts in Horry County


Coastal Lane 1 Obama 509-63,  Fraiser 308-49
Leon  Obama 471-184    Fraiser 296-158
Port Harrelson Obama 495-19,  Fraiser 357-14
Racepath 2 Obama 668-20,  Fraiser 556-17

Yes, I agree. In North Charleston, in CD-1 Obama got 67%, and Fraiser 60%, with the margin drop generated by a bigger drop in the Dem totals than the GOP totals from 2008.  So while Scott probably got a bit more of the black vote (it is hard to be sure, because I see no precinct where Scott got more votes than McCain in a heavily Obama precinct),  it it is probably more generated by a fall off in black turnout. However, the exit polls for 2008 and 2010 for SC show the black percentage of voters was 25% in both instances, so maybe not.

Drop off in the youth vote

Those under 40 made up 36% of the vote in 2008, but 25% in 2010.   Those over 50 made up 42% of the vote in 2008, but 52% in 2010.

Younger whites vote that differently from older whites in SC?  In many conservative states they vote more GOP in general than the olds, such as in Kansas. Youngs in Kansas are very serious about Jesus - yes they are - and the moral rot corroding away America's virtu.

[Torie]

As expected, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Miller this afternoon.  The federal judge who told Miller to go to the state courts first will hold a hearing on Monday to hear any remaining federal constitutional issues not taken up by the Alaskan Supreme Court.  That will likely go over about as well as Miller's state case.

It's still over.

The Alaska Supreme's opinion is available here.

Why do you think Miller humiliated himself this way, doing a Don Quixote, except in his instance an ignoble one?  I mean the guy is a f'ing lawyer from Yale isn't he? So he does not have the Palin excuse. He actually should know the ropes on this.