MA Senate - Special Election Results thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What kind of town demographically is Winchester?

70% of the adult population have degrees, 71% of those in employment have managerial or professional occupations and the median household income is over $100k...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

About a fifth of Lynn is in and Coakley only leads there by 3%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Al pays attention to it because, well... you know.

64% in and Coakley leads by around 6. She's done for, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Coakley is from Western Mass, fwiw.

Al - with 6/14 precincts in, Coakley only leads by six in Holyoke (just to give something you might miss).

Ouch.

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With 30% in, she's only on 56% in Fall River...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Holyoke - Coakley won by 12 Al.  May still be some hope for her, though that is worse than any Dem ever.

Fall River is all in. Coakley 57%, Brown 41%. Meanwhile, Coakley lost Achushnet - which went over 60% for O'Brien. Brünnhilde is burning.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The bellwether of Waltham (where I once lived) is at 50-49 for Brown with 89% in.

I know! I've been following it too. Didn't know Waltham had it in her, bless her heart.

Long time no see, M.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A couple of random results from near Boston... Winthrop - Brown 55%, Revere - Brown 53%, Quincy - Brown 53%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amusing: Radio Three is playing an organ version of Danse Macabre.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well they came off the ganja break and brown won Lowell 52-47.

Er... wow.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worchester Coakley 52, Brown 47

Collapse in working-class Mass is something to behold really.

To add to that (and everything else so far), Brown's margin in Bristol county is close to 10pts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would guess that Brown won the following Congressional Districts 3,5,6, 10 for sure right?

He must have won 9.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thats Lynch's right?

Yes.

Um... working class Bay Staters hate a black?

No. But I think you need to understand the extent to which much of the traditional 'ethnic' working class is (for now) no longer loyal to either party; they've been totally excluded from the political process for decades and have, it appears, finally noticed (we can probably date this from 2006, actually. Why, it may even be possible that the some of pattern of support for Clinton in the primaries reflected disillusion with politics-as-usual as much as the pattern of support for Obama).
This isn't unprecendented of course; the same was true of the 1970s and early 1980s. The voters that sunk Coakley last night are the same sort (in some cases almost certainly the same ones) that did for Carter in 1980 and then swung violently against congressional Republicans in 1982. Which of course doesn't mean that mean we can say that Obama will meet Carter's fate or anything like that, but it does mean that the Democratic Party has to wake up unless it wants to suffer huge losses later in the year.

I mean, there's a limit to the amount that you can extract from by-elections (or special elections or whatever), but sometimes certain patterns are too striking to be ignored.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't want to get into another class-definition argument, but what the map suggests to me is that much as we like to pay attention to ye olde mill towns , the Dems have at least as much of a problem is in sort of lower-middle areas - the "exurbs" and the like, where people have never been too loyal to either party.

Of course, but then that's pretty much a given, isn't it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Something that would be interesting would be a swing map from the 2002 Gubernatorial election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Something that would be interesting would be a swing map from the 2002 Gubernatorial election.

If I get you the swings, can you do a map?

But of course.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That Brown may have won the Frank district is pretty surprising. How are you splitting Boston, btw? Because it's pretty obvious that the parts in the 9th were better for Brown than the parts in the 8th.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The difference between Lawrence and other towns like it is quite interesting. So is the Friends-and-Neighbours effect in northern Berkshire county; note that it was only the area around North Adams that swung strongly to Coakley. That area is surrounded by towns that O'Brien did better in. Hilarious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The difference between Lawrence and other towns like it is quite interesting.

Why is it interesting, and in any event, what do you think caused it?

Not a clue. Hopefully one of the MA posters have an idea.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The difference between Lawrence and other towns like it is quite interesting.

Why is it interesting, and in any event, what do you think caused it?

Not a clue. Hopefully one of the MA posters have an idea.

Maybe Lawrence is a white blue collar island surrounding by a sea of bourgeoisie liberals?

Wouldn't that make it more likely to swing under the circumstances of the election?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So is the Friends-and-Neighbours effect in northern Berkshire county; note that it was only the area around North Adams that swung strongly to Coakley. That area is surrounded by towns that O'Brien did better in. Hilarious.

It's worse than that. The town in the northwest corner, Williamstown, swung on the college-town-pro-Obama swing (see Amherst, Northampton, Cambridge, and Somerville), not the friends-and-neighbors swing. The other two towns have a combined total of <2,000 people. North Adams and Williamstown have a severe town-and-gown discrepancy.

Hahaha. Brilliant.

Btw, why do you think things turned out the way they did?