2012 Non-Presidential Primaries Thread (6/12 - AR runoff, ME, ND, NV, SC, VA)

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Prop. 29 is at 50.1%. Most of the bay area is in. The SoCal counties where it's failing (which include LA county) are mostly not in. I think it's hosed. The one hope for it is that maybe it's the more conservative areas of LA county reporting. I can't really see it passing statewide while failing in LA county.

Big Tobacco has prevented California from raising cigarette taxes in 14 years, and they are only about half the nationwide average now.

And here is why the blanket primary can be bad. CA-31 is considered a tossup, but the 4 Democrats are trailing the 2 Republicans.

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/31

Meanwhile, the reverse is happening in the neighboring 8th district, which has a Republican incumbent:

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/8

There are Republicans in 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th there. Not exactly the reverse.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Prop. 29 is now trailing for the first time.

[smoltchanov]

Manchin is pretty right-wing, so whatever.

Manchin? Absolute centrist, may be even slightly left-of-center. At least - on economy...

[smoltchanov]

Yeah, Feinstein is awful. I'd love to see a real Democrat win.

Far-left loonie?))) No, thanks))))

[Meeker]

The result of something like CA-31 is that next cycle the party leaders are going to be much, much more out front about discouraging candidates from running and telling donors not to support them. Which essentially leads to party candidates being selected behind closed doors. Which is why the top-two system sucks!

[Хahar 🤔]

And here is why the blanket primary can be bad. CA-31 is considered a tossup, but the 4 Democrats are trailing the 2 Republicans.

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/31

Meanwhile, the reverse is happening in the neighboring 8th district, which has a Republican incumbent:

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/8

There are Republicans in 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th there. Not exactly the reverse.

Looks like things have changed since the last time I checked.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Balderas ended up winning 59-41. Michelle Lujan Grisham won in NM-01 40-35. (I guess Marty Chavez is not fondly remembered in Albuquerque, he only got 25% in Bernalillo County.)

[krazen1211]

CA-31 is a GOP hold now?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The fact that smoking rates in California are so low are exactly why I'm shocked they voted it down and fell for the Big Tobacco propaganda. Raising cigarette taxes has been pretty easy in far more conservative states with higher rates of smoking.

[WMS]

Balderas ended up winning 59-41. Michelle Lujan Grisham won in NM-01 40-35. (I guess Marty Chavez is not fondly remembered in Albuquerque, he only got 25% in Bernalillo County.)

Amongst the liberal Democratic primary electorate here, no, he's not. Marty was always more popular with the independent centrist types and moderate Republicans, as shown in his electoral results as Mayor. The extremes always hated him, and since they dominate primaries...

[Keystone Phil]

Once again, Taitz remains a figure of "relevance" only to MSNBC/Maddow (think something is going on there?) and the blogosphere.

[tmthforu94]

Once again, Taitz remains a figure of "relevance" only to MSNBC/Maddow (think something is going on there?) and the blogosphere.

The liberal media always finds the craziest GOP candidates, even if they have no support, and showcases them in an effort to make Republicans as a whole look bad. Its unfortunate.

[minionofmidas]

And here is why the blanket primary can be bad. CA-31 is considered a tossup, but the 4 Democrats are trailing the 2 Republicans.

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/31

Meanwhile, the reverse is happening in the neighboring 8th district, which has a Republican incumbent:

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-congress/district/8

There are Republicans in 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th there. Not exactly the reverse.

Looks like things have changed since the last time I checked.

And ended up in 1st and 2nd.

[timothyinMD]

CA-31 is a GOP hold now?

Yup!  So is CA-8.  Both safe R now

[Torie]

I am moving a bunch of my posts that were put in the wrong thread by me in a senior moment, which has become a garbage dump anyway. Here is the first:

And here gentlemen is the biggest upset of the night going away. The Pubs win a Dem leaning/weak safe seat 5 months early (it's a jungle primary, so 2 Pubs will run against each other in November)! It has a Dem PVI of around 4%. I am in shock. Thank you.

I might add that Gary Miller had to carpet bag into this CD. One can call him an "incumbent," but that is a stretch.



cc: muon2
sbane

[Torie]

And here gentlemen is the biggest upset of the night going away. The Pubs win a Dem leaning/weak safe seat 5 months early (it's a jungle primary, so 2 Pubs will run against each other in November)! It has a Dem PVI of around 4%. I am in shock. Thank you.

And the two Republicans got >50%, so it's not as if split Dem opposition was the only reason. Was it low turnout among Dems for a primary? If so, that's going to kill us again and again in CA in this kind of case.

Probably a combo of a trend to the Pubs in this area (the economy there is a disaster - close to the worst in the nation), light Hispanic turnout, a guy labeled as an "incumbent," another Pub who is a strong candidate in the San Bernardino area, who might well knock Gary Miller off in November, and the main Dem having an Hispanic name (Anglos in this area just don't vote for Hispanics). That is my little list off the top of my head.

The result might have been different if the Dems had a hot race up ballot. But the Senate race is almost a waste of money to even bother having this year, and there of course were no statewide state office races.  The only thing that was sexy at all was the cig tax initiative - a Dem idea that was probably not very popular with more down market voters, including lots of Dems.

And the two Republicans got >50%, so it's not as if split Dem opposition was the only reason. Was it low turnout among Dems for a primary? If so, that's going to kill us again and again in CA in this kind of case.

Yes. Republicans in California generally demonstrated better turnout yesterday then Democrats. They even managed to come first in one Bay area Assembly district (no small feat by present-day standards). Most likely - they will not win it in November, but still - ...

If I had to guess, I would say the primary electorate was skewed about 3 points to the Pubs, plus or minus a point. The Dems for the Senate race got 56% of the vote, and in the General, 59% seems more like it. Looking at the other CD's, which I will put up another thread about in due course, the under performers were Capps in the Santa Barbara area, and Bilbray down in San Diego County. The Pubs seems to have the open "Hispanic" CD in the south Central Valley (used to be a Dem CD elsewhere) in lockdown, which has about a zero PVI. It looks like there may be a fair number of close CD races in the General, in a whole series of Dem PVI plus 2-4% CD's (with the exception of the Garamendi CD up between SF and Sacramento (2.82% Dem PVI), which he seems to have in lockdown), along with more Pub CD's, in particular Bilbray, and Lungren up in the east Sacto burbs (which in general seem to be trending Dem I might add). Another big exception is Riverside, mentioned below.  Oh, and McNerney in the east Contra Costa burbs and San Joaquin (Dem PVI 4.27%), also seems in pretty good shape. He got 48.4% of the vote to the Pubs' 51.6%, and given the Pub skew, should win in November (call it likely Dem).

Overall, despite the Pub skew, it was not a good night for the Dems in CA. It looks like about a 2-5 point trend to the Pubs generally after correcting for the skew (it varies substantially by region, with the Dems in meltdown in the inland empire (in Riverside (ground zero when it comes to economic meltdown, with just about the worst economy in the nation), with a Dem PVI of 7%, the Pubs got 55% of the vote, a trend correcting for the skew of about 9 points), in an even national election environment (which really seems to be the case this year at the moment).

[Хahar 🤔]

Top Republican candidate for Senate in each county (percentage is of total vote for Republican candidates). The top Republican finished in second place in each county, although San Francisco was very close.

[RogueBeaver]

So next week the only remotely interesting race will be the sacrificial lambs running against King in Maine. Hmm... I'll wait another few weeks for Hatch's margin in Utah.

[Хahar 🤔]

Here's another map of the Senate primary; this one shows which party received more votes overall. This seems to me to be a pretty reasonable baseline for Feinstein in the general.

[tmthforu94]

I'm in Utah for the summer, so ill be able to be on the ground as another veteran Republican fends off a Tea Party challenger. I plan on doing some volunteer work for Hatch, though his opponent doesn't seem too horrible, and this is a state that'll vote GOP regardless, unlike Indiana.

[RogueBeaver]

Hatch is safe. Liljenquist is a great candidate but he's plenty young enough to fight with Chaffetz over the 2018 nomination.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

CA-31 is certainly an upset. Turnout combined with the undemocratic nature of the top 2 primary system screwed the Democrats there. The other cases where a party got shut out were not upsets.

Here's the list

CA-08 - Democrats ran, but 2 Republicans advanced
CA-31 - Ditto

CA-30 - Republicans ran, but 2 Democrats advanced
CA-33 - Republican candidate, but a Democrat and an Independent advanced.

In addition, there was 1 district (CA-23) where no Democrat ran, and  several districts where no Republican ran.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Just when you thought the South Carolina primaries couldn't get weirder this year, they have.

As you may or may not be aware, around 200 candidates got kicked off the primary ballots last month because our State's Supreme Court chose to have the audacity to say that the election law as written needed to be followed even if it might not have been what the General Assembly intended, and that the law in this case said that prospective candidates for the primary needed to file an economic interest statement both online with the State Election Commission and hand in a paper copy to their county party.

But another court decision yesterday is stirring trouble even more.

TheState.com

WYFF4.com

The first article refers to just the Florence County GOP, but as the second shows, this is affecting other county parties as well.

A few county parties tried not to follow that order and refused to provide a list of those who did not do what the court said the law required  So now the court has ordered those county parties to provide a list of those who did do what was required and if they don't, everyone gets thrown off.  Not only that, but the county election commissions are required to either get new ballots prepared or if not possible so late, to post signs at each polling place with a list of the stricken candidates and warning voters that ballots cast for them will not be counted.  In addition, the county parties which chose to ignore the court's prior order are required to pay the added costs the county election commissions will incur.  In the case of Oconee County, the primary has been cancelled, as no contested races remain there.  (South Carolina does not allow write-in votes in party primaries.)

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I wouldn't infer too much about November from the June results here in California. Only 24% of registered voters voted. Wisconsin had over half the voters we did yesterday.

[smoltchanov]

CA-31 is certainly an upset. Turnout combined with the undemocratic nature of the top 2 primary system screwed the Democrats there. The other cases where a party got shut out were not upsets.

Here's the list

CA-08 - Democrats ran, but 2 Republicans advanced
CA-31 - Ditto

CA-30 - Republicans ran, but 2 Democrats advanced
CA-33 - Republican candidate, but a Democrat and an Independent advanced.

In addition, there was 1 district (CA-23) where no Democrat ran, and  several districts where no Republican ran.

I greatly prefer present system (Independent redistricting comission and "top 2") to pprevious. California was ABSOLUTELY boring state under previous system: congressional and state legislative distrivcts gerrymandered to such extent that usually there was maximum 1-2 interesting races in November. And, in addition, results of the primaries were almost always the same: loonies of both paties almost invariably won. I have relatives in California with similar to my modertate views - they cursed loudly each election reading candidates list, and then choose "the lesser evil". That was previous system - thanks God it's in the past..