WTF happened in Indiana? 😱

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Why did Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater fared so extremely well in the Indiana gubernatorial election, whereas Democrat Woody Myers underperformed?
Did Myers pull a Janicek or something?

Moreover, I have noticed that CNN did a mistake in their county map: In Buttigieg County they mistook Rainwater for Holcomb, thus coloring that county yellow.
Even though Dave uses the correct numbers for his databank, St. Joseph County now as before shines yellow on his map. 🤷🏼‍♂️
Whose statewide numbers are correct? Dave's (57|32|11) or CNN's (55|32|13)?

[Roll Roons]

Myers barely campaigned. And a lot of Rainwater's support came from hardcore conservatives who thought Holcomb was a RINO and were upset with his COVID policies.

[bagelman]

Rainwater was polling as high as 20%+ at one point.

[Hope For A New Era]

Rainwater campaigned as an anti-masker. After Holcomb put in place a mask mandate, he jumped to over 20% in the polls for a while.

[Canis]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

[Canis]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

It is to me too pretty crazy how so much ticket-splitting happened here 1 in every 4 Biden voters went to Holcomb basically that's astounding. Also, I'm pretty sure Atlas has the correct results it looks like CNN still has not fixed their error in that county where they gave all of Holcombs votes to Rainwater and all of Rainwaters votes to Holcomb while atlas has already fixed that.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

It is to me too pretty crazy how so much ticket-splitting happened here 1 in every 4 Biden voters went to Holcomb basically that's astounding. Also, I'm pretty sure Atlas has the correct results it looks like CNN still has not fixed their error in that county where they gave all of Holcombs votes to Rainwater and all of Rainwaters votes to Holcomb while atlas has already fixed that.

He didn't fix the color, though.
I always thought the coloring in Dave's maps happens automatically. It's moreover funny that the source both CNN and Dave used delivered wrong data, but Dave somehow recognized that there had to be a mistake, thus correcting it manually, which CNN failed to do.

[StateBoiler]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

To be fair, this is an easy-to-see instance of voters protesting when protesting was cheap, i.e. everyone knew Holcomb was winning. A Republican State House Representative even endorsed Rainwater (he's since been kicked out of caucus).

There's an all things Hoosier megathread where myself and a few others discuss this race as it progressed. But pretty much state Democrats could not get anyone to run for a long time. The professional political journalists through 2019 were commenting no major party had ever gone this long without a declared candidate. Up came Myers as a kind of C-list candidate. You had a few State Senators for the Democrats pretend they were running but never file (one of them plus another undeclared candidate are now running for State Party Chair). Myers could never raise money. He blames Covid but he was unable to raise money before lockdowns either. The smart more left money in the state put their funds with Weinzapfel for Attorney General instead of with Myers.

Race progressing. Then sometime in August or whenever, Change Research publishes a poll saying Holcomb 36, Myers 30, Rainwater 24. For a governor's race that had seen little to no attention, it was a bit of an earthquake. The poll safe to say was an incredible outlier, but it did give Rainwater a ton of attention and money to fund his campaign that he otherwise did not get. Holcomb ignored this threat somewhat but he did raise the "opening stage" from Stage 4.5 to Stage 5 before the election, and now that we're after the election in the face of rising numbers, he hatcheted back down.

I've hitched my horse to the Libertarian Party to grow it long-term, but I can tell you a lot of died in the wool Republicans that told me they voted for him. The places Myers finished 3rd is mostly rural counties where the Democratic Party in those places is just dead. My county Myers finished 3rd and county Democrats didn't run a single candidate for county office. Their state legislature nominees around 20%. Percentage numbers for my county are Holcomb 66, Rainwater 18, Myers 16. Remove straight ticket votes (which is incredibly damning for Myers considering he had that in-built advantage over Rainwater) and the numbers are Holcomb 55, Rainwater 29, Myers 16.

I'm doing a county-by-county breakdown of votes ex-straight ticket votes since Governor was not the top of the ballot race. This requires looking at every county's election results.

At the moment with incomplete numbers (Marion and Lake are already included), this is what I have:

Total votes: Holcomb 55.1, Myers 34.3, Rainwater 10.6
Ex-straight ticket total votes: Holcomb 55.2, Myers 26.4, Rainwater 18.3

When I finish I'll try to make a map of where Rainwater finished ahead of Myers both with and without straight ticket voting.

I'm going to make the case at the 2021 Libertarian State Convention of how to capitalize on this. Per Indiana Code, the major political parties in each political subdivision is based on the top two performing parties in the Secretary of State race, which is next up in 2022. (This is also the race Indiana bases ballot access for 4 years on, you have to get 2% or more.) But if the Libertarian Secretary of State nominee could continue Rainwater's performance and finish 2nd in some of these counties, per currently existing Indiana state law they should replace the Democratic Party for appointment to county election boards. It'd be more difficult than this governor's race due to the large number of votes Rainwater received from people upset with Holcomb which you would think would not transfer to Secretary of State but the incredibly low levels of support Democrats have in a bunch of counties is not changing anytime either. I've been told there's a lot of interest in creating new county chapters for the Indiana Libertarian Party.

[Hope For A New Era]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

It is to me too pretty crazy how so much ticket-splitting happened here 1 in every 4 Biden voters went to Holcomb basically that's astounding. Also, I'm pretty sure Atlas has the correct results it looks like CNN still has not fixed their error in that county where they gave all of Holcombs votes to Rainwater and all of Rainwaters votes to Holcomb while atlas has already fixed that.

Just goes to show - if Trump and Republicans had managed the pandemic well, they would have won in a landslide. This was an incredible electoral gift to them, and they in their infinite wisdom threw it all away.

[Canis]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

To be fair, this is an easy-to-see instance of voters protesting when protesting was cheap, i.e. everyone knew Holcomb was winning. A Republican State House Representative even endorsed Rainwater (he's since been kicked out of caucus).

There's an all things Hoosier megathread where myself and a few others discuss this race as it progressed. But pretty much state Democrats could not get anyone to run for a long time. The professional political journalists through 2019 were commenting no major party had ever gone this long without a declared candidate. Up came Myers as a kind of C-list candidate. You had a few State Senators for the Democrats pretend they were running but never file (one of them plus another undeclared candidate are now running for State Party Chair). Myers could never raise money. He blames Covid but he was unable to raise money before lockdowns either. The smart more left money in the state put their funds with Weinzapfel for Attorney General instead of with Myers.

Race progressing. Then sometime in August or whenever, Change Research publishes a poll saying Holcomb 36, Myers 30, Rainwater 24. For a governor's race that had seen little to no attention, it was a bit of an earthquake. The poll safe to say was an incredible outlier, but it did give Rainwater a ton of attention and money to fund his campaign that he otherwise did not get. Holcomb ignored this threat somewhat but he did raise the "opening stage" from Stage 4.5 to Stage 5 before the election, and now that we're after the election in the face of rising numbers, he hatcheted back down.

I've hitched my horse to the Libertarian Party to grow it long-term, but I can tell you a lot of died in the wool Republicans that told me they voted for him. The places Myers finished 3rd is mostly rural counties where the Democratic Party in those places is just dead. My county Myers finished 3rd and county Democrats didn't run a single candidate for county office. Their state legislature nominees around 20%. Percentage numbers for my county are Holcomb 66, Rainwater 18, Myers 16. Remove straight ticket votes (which is incredibly damning for Myers considering he had that in-built advantage over Rainwater) and the numbers are Holcomb 55, Rainwater 29, Myers 16.

I'm doing a county-by-county breakdown of votes ex-straight ticket votes since Governor was not the top of the ballot race. This requires looking at every county's election results.

At the moment with incomplete numbers (Marion and Lake are already included), this is what I have:

Total votes: Holcomb 55.1, Myers 34.3, Rainwater 10.6
Ex-straight ticket total votes: Holcomb 55.2, Myers 26.4, Rainwater 18.3

When I finish I'll try to make a map of where Rainwater finished ahead of Myers both with and without straight ticket voting.

I'm going to make the case at the 2021 Libertarian State Convention of how to capitalize on this. Per Indiana Code, the major political parties in each political subdivision is based on the top two performing parties in the Secretary of State race, which is next up in 2022. (This is also the race Indiana bases ballot access for 4 years on, you have to get 2% or more.) But if the Libertarian Secretary of State nominee could continue Rainwater's performance and finish 2nd in some of these counties, per currently existing Indiana state law they should replace the Democratic Party for appointment to county election boards. It'd be more difficult than this governor's race due to the large number of votes Rainwater received from people upset with Holcomb which you would think would not transfer to Secretary of State but the incredibly low levels of support Democrats have in a bunch of counties is not changing anytime either. I've been told there's a lot of interest in creating new county chapters for the Indiana Libertarian Party.

Thank you for this post its really high quality! isn't Indiana one of those states that has a very strong Libertarian Party? Like how Maine and Arkansas has a pretty strong Green party? Why do you think Indianas Libertarian party is so strong?

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Here's a map indicating the runner-up in each county.
Donald Rainwater's best county is Putnam County with 25.8% of the vote.
Can you recognize a pattern?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

To be fair, this is an easy-to-see instance of voters protesting when protesting was cheap, i.e. everyone knew Holcomb was winning. A Republican State House Representative even endorsed Rainwater (he's since been kicked out of caucus).

There's an all things Hoosier megathread where myself and a few others discuss this race as it progressed. But pretty much state Democrats could not get anyone to run for a long time. The professional political journalists through 2019 were commenting no major party had ever gone this long without a declared candidate. Up came Myers as a kind of C-list candidate. You had a few State Senators for the Democrats pretend they were running but never file (one of them plus another undeclared candidate are now running for State Party Chair). Myers could never raise money. He blames Covid but he was unable to raise money before lockdowns either. The smart more left money in the state put their funds with Weinzapfel for Attorney General instead of with Myers.

Race progressing. Then sometime in August or whenever, Change Research publishes a poll saying Holcomb 36, Myers 30, Rainwater 24. For a governor's race that had seen little to no attention, it was a bit of an earthquake. The poll safe to say was an incredible outlier, but it did give Rainwater a ton of attention and money to fund his campaign that he otherwise did not get. Holcomb ignored this threat somewhat but he did raise the "opening stage" from Stage 4.5 to Stage 5 before the election, and now that we're after the election in the face of rising numbers, he hatcheted back down.

I've hitched my horse to the Libertarian Party to grow it long-term, but I can tell you a lot of died in the wool Republicans that told me they voted for him. The places Myers finished 3rd is mostly rural counties where the Democratic Party in those places is just dead. My county Myers finished 3rd and county Democrats didn't run a single candidate for county office. Their state legislature nominees around 20%. Percentage numbers for my county are Holcomb 66, Rainwater 18, Myers 16. Remove straight ticket votes (which is incredibly damning for Myers considering he had that in-built advantage over Rainwater) and the numbers are Holcomb 55, Rainwater 29, Myers 16.

I'm doing a county-by-county breakdown of votes ex-straight ticket votes since Governor was not the top of the ballot race. This requires looking at every county's election results.

At the moment with incomplete numbers (Marion and Lake are already included), this is what I have:

Total votes: Holcomb 55.1, Myers 34.3, Rainwater 10.6
Ex-straight ticket total votes: Holcomb 55.2, Myers 26.4, Rainwater 18.3

When I finish I'll try to make a map of where Rainwater finished ahead of Myers both with and without straight ticket voting.

I'm going to make the case at the 2021 Libertarian State Convention of how to capitalize on this. Per Indiana Code, the major political parties in each political subdivision is based on the top two performing parties in the Secretary of State race, which is next up in 2022. (This is also the race Indiana bases ballot access for 4 years on, you have to get 2% or more.) But if the Libertarian Secretary of State nominee could continue Rainwater's performance and finish 2nd in some of these counties, per currently existing Indiana state law they should replace the Democratic Party for appointment to county election boards. It'd be more difficult than this governor's race due to the large number of votes Rainwater received from people upset with Holcomb which you would think would not transfer to Secretary of State but the incredibly low levels of support Democrats have in a bunch of counties is not changing anytime either. I've been told there's a lot of interest in creating new county chapters for the Indiana Libertarian Party.

Thank you for this post its really high quality! isn't Indiana one of those states that has a very strong Libertarian Party? Like how Maine and Arkansas has a pretty strong Green party? Why do you think Indianas Libertarian party is so strong?

I mean, it was just two election cycles ago that the Indiana Libertarian Party nominated Rupert from Survivor...

[StateBoiler]

As others noted, Myers pretty much had no money and didn't campaign. Holcomb had a mask mandate which was popular among democrats and unpopular with republicans. So a significant amount of Biden voters went to Holcomb and a significant amount of Trump voters went to Rainwater who ran a campaign solely focused on opposing the covid restrictions. Someone in another thread calculated that Holcomb likely won about 25% of Biden voters and Rainwater won about 17% of Trump voters those calculations may be a little off though now cause more votes have came in.

That sounds pretty astonishing to me. When I noticed that Rainwater fared so well that he even surpassed Myers in several counties, I assumed that the Democrat's weakness caused the Libertarian's strength. Never had I imagined that the Republican triggered the strikingly increased third-party vote.

To be fair, this is an easy-to-see instance of voters protesting when protesting was cheap, i.e. everyone knew Holcomb was winning. A Republican State House Representative even endorsed Rainwater (he's since been kicked out of caucus).

There's an all things Hoosier megathread where myself and a few others discuss this race as it progressed. But pretty much state Democrats could not get anyone to run for a long time. The professional political journalists through 2019 were commenting no major party had ever gone this long without a declared candidate. Up came Myers as a kind of C-list candidate. You had a few State Senators for the Democrats pretend they were running but never file (one of them plus another undeclared candidate are now running for State Party Chair). Myers could never raise money. He blames Covid but he was unable to raise money before lockdowns either. The smart more left money in the state put their funds with Weinzapfel for Attorney General instead of with Myers.

Race progressing. Then sometime in August or whenever, Change Research publishes a poll saying Holcomb 36, Myers 30, Rainwater 24. For a governor's race that had seen little to no attention, it was a bit of an earthquake. The poll safe to say was an incredible outlier, but it did give Rainwater a ton of attention and money to fund his campaign that he otherwise did not get. Holcomb ignored this threat somewhat but he did raise the "opening stage" from Stage 4.5 to Stage 5 before the election, and now that we're after the election in the face of rising numbers, he hatcheted back down.

I've hitched my horse to the Libertarian Party to grow it long-term, but I can tell you a lot of died in the wool Republicans that told me they voted for him. The places Myers finished 3rd is mostly rural counties where the Democratic Party in those places is just dead. My county Myers finished 3rd and county Democrats didn't run a single candidate for county office. Their state legislature nominees around 20%. Percentage numbers for my county are Holcomb 66, Rainwater 18, Myers 16. Remove straight ticket votes (which is incredibly damning for Myers considering he had that in-built advantage over Rainwater) and the numbers are Holcomb 55, Rainwater 29, Myers 16.

I'm doing a county-by-county breakdown of votes ex-straight ticket votes since Governor was not the top of the ballot race. This requires looking at every county's election results.

At the moment with incomplete numbers (Marion and Lake are already included), this is what I have:

Total votes: Holcomb 55.1, Myers 34.3, Rainwater 10.6
Ex-straight ticket total votes: Holcomb 55.2, Myers 26.4, Rainwater 18.3

When I finish I'll try to make a map of where Rainwater finished ahead of Myers both with and without straight ticket voting.

I'm going to make the case at the 2021 Libertarian State Convention of how to capitalize on this. Per Indiana Code, the major political parties in each political subdivision is based on the top two performing parties in the Secretary of State race, which is next up in 2022. (This is also the race Indiana bases ballot access for 4 years on, you have to get 2% or more.) But if the Libertarian Secretary of State nominee could continue Rainwater's performance and finish 2nd in some of these counties, per currently existing Indiana state law they should replace the Democratic Party for appointment to county election boards. It'd be more difficult than this governor's race due to the large number of votes Rainwater received from people upset with Holcomb which you would think would not transfer to Secretary of State but the incredibly low levels of support Democrats have in a bunch of counties is not changing anytime either. I've been told there's a lot of interest in creating new county chapters for the Indiana Libertarian Party.

Thank you for this post its really high quality! isn't Indiana one of those states that has a very strong Libertarian Party? Like how Maine and Arkansas has a pretty strong Green party? Why do you think Indianas Libertarian party is so strong?

I mean, it was just two election cycles ago that the Indiana Libertarian Party nominated Rupert from Survivor...

He was actually a good candidate for them. He came to the party instead of the other way around and the LP's State Director at the time Chris Spangle who now runs a national podcast network had to first be persuaded as he didn't want to run a celebrity seeing it as a joke, but when he sat and met with Rupert, Rupert had great ideas he wanted to push. He's heavily involved through an organization he has with the upbringing of troubled youth, and he had a policy he first stated in a debate that Pence adopted making it his own of vocational job training programs for youths. Percentage-wise he doubled the vote of the previous LP candidate in 2008 (2.1% to 4.0%) when 2008 was an easy Daniels victory and 2012 was much tighter (Pence won with 49.5% to 46.6%). He wasn't the 100% pure Libertarian if you talked about his policies but he was enough libertarian to get the overall point across (Spangle is a big pusher of incremental or direction libertarianism versus being an absolutist).

Think the main problem was Rupert said he was running, Spangle was his campaign manager and told him "no tie-dye", so first function when he announced his candidacy the lack of tie-dye was the only thing any of the media would ask him about. So from that point forward, he had a tie-dye tie to just get any media Rupert did get away from that point.