The 2014 primary season ends (Sept. 9: DE, MA, NH, NY, RI)

[smoltchanov]

Better night for the Tea Party this year than in 2012.

Moderate Republican State Rep. Ralph Sheffield (Temple) loses to TP challenger.

State Sen. Kel Seliger (Amarillo) barely hanging on against TP challenger.

Don Huffines narrowly leads incumbent John Carona in Dallas senate seat race.

Tea Party State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (Ft. Worth) has comfortable lead over Establishment challenger Andy Cargile.

Ken Paxton leads Dan Branch in AG race with run-off more or less inevitable.

IMHO - not very surprising. Turnout always drops in midterms, and the more he drops - the more "activist" becomes primary electorate. In case of Texas Republicans - even more right-wing...

P.S. Very bad weather in DFW metropolis probably "helped" too)))). Tea-partiers are much more "whether resistant". They are warmed from inside by burning ideological "passion"...

[smoltchanov]

If there are two GOP candidates in the general for Controller in November, you can bet Perez is going to be eating some tough [inks] from the party.

If there are two, the California Democratic party needs to put their full forces behind repealing our idiotic top two system. The results are still early, but it's unsettling that 2 Republicans lead for the Controller race, and aren't far off from leading in CA-31 again.

Even if Perez/Yee sneak through, at the time of this post Perez's lead over Evans has reduced to 1924 votes. California needs to do its best to get rid of top two. It's just terrible election policy. Maybe we should do a popular referendum. My bet is that top two would die if it went up for a vote in 2016.

The problem is not with top 2, it's with abysmal laziness of Democratic electorate to turn out in ANY elections, but few chosen. And i don't want to give a bunch of hyperpolarised (on the verge to being "crazy") "activists" in both major parties a right to decide who will be next Governor, Senator or Congressman. So, i am absolutely in favor of "top 2", which gives indies, who dislike both parties (like me), a much better choice.

[smoltchanov]

LOL, 2 Republicans and no one else isn't much of a choice.

Not a big one. But there was an ample choice in primary. Most people decided that 2 Republicans were the most deserving people in this paarticular district (in many other these were 2 Democrats). That's absolutely fine with me. What people like me got BEFORE: a pair of candidates, chosen by "activists", both of which they frequently despised, and voted for those, whom they hated least. Is THAT a choice?

[smoltchanov]

So, to introduce myself, I am a 19 year old Democrat from the East Bay. Yesterday was my first voting election. Today I joined this site. In my free time I play around with ideas from elections, so here is what I got from the numbers today. Sorry that I am partisan and include some opinion in my psephology which should be a non-partisan practice,but nobody can be perfect.

First I studied the performance of Neel Kashkari vs. Donnelly by county.  Here is the link to results of anybody who is curious/wants to check my work: vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/governor/county/all/. My original hypothesis was that Donnelly would outperform Kashkari in more Republican areas.So I divided the counties into 3 groups. 1. Brown outperforms state avg. Brown>.545. 2. Brown mildly under performs .545>Brown>.445 and 3. Brown severely under performs, Brown<.445.  This did not lead to anything because group 1 had Donnelly beating Kashkari (D>K) 10/18 of the time. In two it was (5/12) and in 3 it was (13/27). This went nowhere.

So I decided to take a look at places where D>K. The following counties are where D>K. Alameda, Alpine, Butte, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity. The pattern I discerned from this is that the more conservative candidate won in areas that were either sparsely populated or so Democratic that Republicans could not create a normal party structure. The exceptions being San Bernardino, Kern and arguably San Luis Obispo and Shasta. Coming off of this hypothesis I decided to look at places where the difference between Kashkari and Donnelly was wider than the state as a whole. So K-D>4.2. The following counties qualified: Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Fresno, Kings, Los Angeles, Madera, Orange, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Joaquin, Sutter, Tulare, Ventura, Yolo, and Yuba. Despite only containing 18/58 of the state's counties. This group of counties includes almost every major Californian city outside the Bay Area. In the D/K groups the only cities in the top 20 population wise outside of the Bay Area are San Bernardino and Bakersfield.

So in conclusion, in the state of California, based off of the 2014 gubernatorial primary, when faced with a choice between a Tea Partier and a Moderate, The Tea Partier will win in extremely liberal places and sparsely populated areas. The Moderate will win in cities that are conservative enough to have an established Republican structure in place. I will look through other results later this week in similarly built states to see if this holds. Feedback is appreciated. Hopefully this made some sense.

This makes a lot of sense and thanks for good analysis. IMHO, the reason why hardliners like Donnelly win in the most liberal areas of the state (like Bay Area) is very simple - few remaining Republicans there (or, at least, active part of them) tend to be a "diehard" type, living in "homes attacked and besieged by enemy" - and vote correspondingly. Traditionally, many Bay Area Republicans (which were elected from area until 1990 or, in few cases, until app. 2000) were of very moderate, even openly progressive variety, but older of them are now dead, and for their children and grandchildren there is very little sense to stay Republican.

[smoltchanov]

This makes a lot of sense and thanks for good analysis. IMHO, the reason why hardliners like Donnelly win in the most liberal areas of the state (like Bay Area) is very simple - few remaining Republicans there (or, at least, active part of them) tend to be a "diehard" type, living in "homes attacked and besieged by enemy" - and vote correspondingly. Traditionally, many Bay Area Republicans (which were elected from area until 1990 or, in few cases, until app. 2000) were of very moderate, even openly progressive variety, but older of them are now dead, and for their children and grandchildren there is very little sense to stay Republican.

Sounds about right.

Exactly what i meant. And it's a pity - in the past this area supplied excellent and thoughtful Republican legislators anyone (even Democrats) could be proud of...

[smoltchanov]

This makes a lot of sense and thanks for good analysis. IMHO, the reason why hardliners like Donnelly win in the most liberal areas of the state (like Bay Area) is very simple - few remaining Republicans there (or, at least, active part of them) tend to be a "diehard" type, living in "homes attacked and besieged by enemy" - and vote correspondingly. Traditionally, many Bay Area Republicans (which were elected from area until 1990 or, in few cases, until app. 2000) were of very moderate, even openly progressive variety, but older of them are now dead, and for their children and grandchildren there is very little sense to stay Republican.

Sounds about right.

Exactly what i meant. And it's a pity - in the past this area supplied excellent and thoughtful Republican legislators anyone (even Democrats) could be proud of...

Bay area Democrats certainly go right-wing enough with noted anti-atheist bigot Eric Swallwell.

In some sense Swallwell occupies exactly the niche moderate-to-liberal Republicans of the past recently had. No surprises here. The "business Democrats" of today (of which there are lots now) are lineal descendants of them...