2014 US Congressional Election Results

[Vosem]

Well, Cresent Hardy ran way behind Sandoval, but I think we can all agree Hardy owes his victory to Sandoval's landslide. What happened in CA is a less extreme version of the same phenomenon; the closest Democratic victories took place because of Democratic landslides and Republican uncompetitiveness at the top of the ballot. Even if Brown had been unpopular, of course, he and the other statewide Democrats would still probably have won, but he'd certainly have cost House Democrats a few points, and that would have been enough to doom many of them.

[Vosem]

So, Tacherra actually gained on the last update -- a net of 11 votes. Costa now leads by 75 votes.

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It makes some sense though -- Lankford's opponent was a state legislator, while Inhofe's was just a Some Dude.

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^per the exit poll:

Among black voters

Graham: 6% (4% with women, 10% with men)
Hutto: 89% (92% with women, 83% with men)

Scott: 10% (7% with women, 16% with men)
Dickerson: 88% (91% with women, 83% with men)

Among white voters

Graham: 74% (73% with women, 74% with men)
Hutto: 19% (22% with women, 16% with men)

Scott: 82% (78% with women, 85% with men)
Dickerson: 18% (20% with women, 15% with men)

These racial crosstabs make sense in the context of how Dickerson and Hutto performed statewide. While Hutto lost by 15.48% and Dickerson by 24.04%, both won a similar number of raw votes. Hutto only won 21,350 more raw votes statewide than Dickerson. Hutto garnered 38.78% of the vote, while Dickerson won 37.09%. According to the exit poll, Scott marginally improved upon Graham's performance with blacks (10% to 6%) it was Graham's underperformance with whites that accounts for his smaller margin. Almost all these dropoff whites voted for third parties while Hutto only outperformed Dickerson by the barest of margins among whites. Hutto's larger raw vote can be explained almost entirely by a consolidation of African American support.

are you suggesting there were a bunch of blacks who voted for Hutto but not Dickerson?  I don't see any evidence for that, and it would be surprising if true.

I don't know if you can say 4% of blacks who voted in South Carolina in 2014 is 'a bunch', but he's certainly saying that such people do exist. (Possibly more than 4%, actually, but cancelled out by a smaller population of Graham/Dickerson voters).

[Vosem]

I don't know that we can call this a Blanching. Blanche Lincoln lost by 21 points, George McGovern by 19, Mark Pryor by 18, Rick Santorum by 16. Mary Landrieu lost by 12, which actually seems to me like a reasonably good showing for a Democrat running statewide in modern-day Louisiana.

[Vosem]

I don't know that we can call this a Blanching. Blanche Lincoln lost by 21 points, George McGovern by 19, Mark Pryor by 18, Rick Santorum by 16. Mary Landrieu lost by 12, which actually seems to me like a reasonably good showing for a Democrat running statewide in modern-day Louisiana.

Santorum actually lost by 18 (59-41).

And I'm saying this just to annoy Phil, but when you go to the decimal point, Santorum actually lost by 0.2 more than Pryor.

Ah, my mistake. The point still stands, that Landrieu isn't quite in that category

[Vosem]

I don't think Libertarians or Greens are on an upswing, but I think it's difficult to argue that the Republican Party isn't becoming more libertarian, or that the Democratic Party isn't becoming more environmentalist, and that libertarianism and environmentalism aren't becoming more widely held, mainstream positions, as time goes on.

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I actually know why North Dakota wasn't a blowout this year. George Sinner was the former governor of North Dakota from 1985-1992. He's 86 years old.

Yeah, but he wasn't the candidate -- the Democratic candidate in 2014 was his son, also named George Sinner. (To distinguish them in North Dakota, the father is called George A. Sinner, while the son is George B. Sinner).

Also, pleasantly surprised that the GOP won the PA House vote by double-digits. I think it was lost in 2012, so that's nice to see.

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Seriously, the fact that Republicans think the Arizona map is such an affront to democracy over any other map is so hypocritical and blind that it blows my mind.

What frustrates Republicans about the Arizona map is that it was drawn by an independent commission with a clearly Democratic slant in mind. There are much more virulent Democratic gerrymanders out there (Illinois, Maryland) but those were drawn openly by Democratic legislatures. The Arizona map was intended by the system to be a neutral map, and it is clearly not.

The same is true of the California map, but Republicans are more muted in their criticism there since the alternative is a full Democratic gerrymander and something like 6 Republican seats left in the state.