NATIONAL SENATE/HOUSE RESULTS THREAD (LATE RESULTS/POSTMORTEM)

[Sbane]

Wisconsin is close but unfortunately I think Feingold will lose. Bennett looks like he might hang on though. Looks like there was just a moderate wave in the Senate. The house looks pretty bad, but it should be less than 60.

[Sbane]

I am quite surprised by the quick call for Boxer. This one is going to be close, although Boxer should win.

[Sbane]

Ok, I am ready to call CA-11 for Mcnerney. It will be damn close, and perhaps a recount will happen, but I think Mcnerney will be on top when it's all said and done. Harmer just didn't get the numbers he needed out of San Joaquin and only won his home county of Contra Costa by 1. As long as Mcnerney wins by about a 14 point margin in Alameda, and holds up well in Santa Clara, he should win.

[Sbane]

MN-08 isn't looking good for the Democrats. Bennett should win though, as has been echoed already.

[Sbane]

Ok, I am ready to call CA-11 for Mcnerney. It will be damn close, and perhaps a recount will happen, but I think Mcnerney will be on top when it's all said and done. Harmer just didn't get the numbers he needed out of San Joaquin and only won his home county of Contra Costa by 1. As long as Mcnerney wins by about a 14 point margin in Alameda, and holds up well in Santa Clara, he should win.

I suspect the GOP will get zip out of CA. But the redistricting commission now controls CD redistricting, so the GOP will not be totally wiped out come 2012, although I suspect they will still lose a couple of seats. CA given the national GOP is now a Dem bastion, and a reliable one. In some ways, almost as reliable as NY, if not more so in some ways.

I think Calvert really needs to watch out. I would say the same for Drier and Bono-Mack, but they seem like decent candidates. They should survive till a wave sweeps them out.

California has become a democratic stronghold, much more than during the Bush administration. Obama has a 54% approval here, while being about 45% nationally. Kerry won 54% here, while winning 48% nationwide.

[Sbane]

CNN has called CA-47 for Sanchez. Wonder if that ad helped or hurt?

It hurt undoubtedly. Though it was a while back so it probably didn't have much of an effect at all. I had a feeling Sanchez would hold this one comfortably.

[Sbane]

McNerney down 23 votes right now. Can you say recount?
BTW, he's not a Blue Dog. Blue Dog Costa seems to have lost (also one of the uncalled races).

Harmer is probably going to lose to the Dem, unless the 2 or 3 precincts out in Santa Clara County are disproportionately Republican, which is possible (somewhere in gated communities in Moraga or something), but unlikely.

Santa Clara
Updated 7 minutes ago
McNerney    4,900 51%
Harmer     4,254 45%
86% of precincts reporting

Now 100% of precincts have reported and Mcnerney won Santa Clara 52-44. Turns out the precincts weren't in some country club in Moraga (especially since the city the district picks up in Santa Clara is Morgan Hill ). I knew Harmer was going down when I saw San Joaquin was within 5 and 100% reported with about half of Alameda still to go. A Republican really needs to win by about 8 or so to win. The only reason this one was close is because Harmer overperformed in the tri valley, especially in Contra Costa county, which is his home county.

[Sbane]

If Cooley ends up losing by a tiny margin, and since Mcnerney has more or less held on in his district, this election cycle will have been awesome.

But what chance is there really of Cooley losing? He is still ahead by 20,000 votes, and that margin is going to be hard to whittle down. She might be able to get it down below 10,000 but obviously that is not enough. The one statewide race where I actually cared whether the Democrat won, the Republican wins.

[Sbane]

If Cooley ends up losing by a tiny margin, and since Mcnerney has more or less held on in his district, this election cycle will have been awesome.

But what chance is there really of Cooley losing? He is still ahead by 20,000 votes, and that margin is going to be hard to whittle down. She might be able to get it down below 10,000 but obviously that is not enough. The one statewide race where I actually cared whether the Democrat won, the Republican wins.

How many ballots are they left to count, my friend? Do you want to take a guess? It's over a million, yes a million!  You just gotta love our state; it is just such a blast. If you are a masochist, I suppose you could slap the ballots left to count numbers from here on to a spreadsheet, and do candidate splits based on the split in each county so far, and do a projection. Glancing at the sheet, maybe Cooley will pull it out, if he is running close in LA County. Is he?  I have not checked.

Addendum: The sheet does not reflect ballots that were counted and totals released on the afternoon of Nov 10 I see (I know that, because it says San Joaquin's last numbers were from Nov 8, and I know they released a count of a bunch of votes late yesterday afternoon (the ballots which put a stake into the heart of Harmer).

To do an easier one first, Harris would need to win the rest of the ballots (provisionals so maybe that helps her) by a 10 point margin to win bellwether San Benito County. It seems like Los Angeles county has a lot left as well as Contra Costa. Unfortunately for Harris, she is not running as well as she needs to in those counties to win, though she sill has a 13 point lead in both counties. And the counties she did better in like Alameda and Santa Clara have mostly reported. San Diego and Sacramento also have a lot of ballots left and Harris is losing in both. Actually she might be the only Democrat to lose Sacramento county this cycle.

[Sbane]

Nah he'll probably survive. All the Republican parts of Dold's seat likely end up in his and Dold ends up with the two-year career.

Tsk Tsk.  You need to start thinking creatively about Gerrymandering.  The Democrats can probably take out every Republican in the Chicago area if they're greedy/skilled enough

Yeah, they should be able to take out both Dold and Walsh. And perhaps create swing seats out of two more and leave 2 more lean R districts in the Chicago area while creating another downstate Dem district.

[Sbane]

Michael Barone's ethno-geographic take on the mid-term election results:
In 2010 sweep, even the Finns voted Republican

Once he gets down to the ethnic part of it, his analysis stinks. Hispanics voting only "narrowly" Democratic in Texas? Try looking at the gubernatorial results again. Hispanic turnout just sucks in off years, so they got outvoted in seats that are drawn to only just barely favor their preferred candidates. Finns "voted Republican"? Look at the county breakdown of MN-08. Hint: The Finnish areas voted for Oberstar overwhelmingly, as usual. But, again, they were outvoted.

His analysis is like looking at Sanford Bishop's seat and wondering why blacks nearly voted for a Republican.

Why is Barone held in such high regard? Recently at least he always seems to be wrong, or makes up things to suit his partisan fantasies. I also remember he had a horrible, horrible analysis of the Clinton-Obama primary results.

[Sbane]

California just doesn't have enough blue collar Catholic Anglos. They were the group that swung, and swung hard, against the Dems this year. Joe Biden was chatting about that. As someone noted in a post, the candidate the Dems fear most is Christie.

The problem for the Republicans in California, and this was especially true for the statewide races, was that the few blue collar whites left in the state didn't swing hard Republican. Republicans experienced a nice wave among the upper middle class, as results from OC make quite clear. But the swing the Republicans needed amongst blue collar folks, that happened basically everywhere in the country, just didn't occur here.

 And you can't blame it entirely on demographic changes either. Look at the Central Valley results for Brown. Obviously he didn't do that well just due to the Hispanic vote (who voted more heavily for Boxer according to exit polls). So Brown must have done quite well amongst lower income whites in this state, while Whitman did better amongst minorities. And she could have done even better if it wasn't for the illegal housekeeper controversy. In fact if minorities voted for Brown at the same rate as Boxer, he would have won by about 15-16 points. But why didn't Whitman do better amongst those blue collar whites in the Central Valley and the IE? I understand why she did better with minorities (because she actually asked for their vote), but what happened with the blue collar white vote? That is what I find most surprising about this election.

[Sbane]

California just doesn't have enough blue collar Catholic Anglos. They were the group that swung, and swung hard, against the Dems this year. Joe Biden was chatting about that. As someone noted in a post, the candidate the Dems fear most is Christie.

The problem for the Republicans in California, and this was especially true for the statewide races, was that the few blue collar whites left in the state didn't swing hard Republican. Republicans experienced a nice wave among the upper middle class, as results from OC make quite clear. But the swing the Republicans needed amongst blue collar folks, that happened basically everywhere in the country, just didn't occur here.

 And you can't blame it entirely on demographic changes either. Look at the Central Valley results for Brown. Obviously he didn't do that well just due to the Hispanic vote (who voted more heavily for Boxer according to exit polls). So Brown must have done quite well amongst lower income whites in this state, while Whitman did better amongst minorities. And she could have done even better if it wasn't for the illegal housekeeper controversy. In fact if minorities voted for Brown at the same rate as Boxer, he would have won by about 15-16 points. But why didn't Whitman do better amongst those blue collar whites in the Central Valley and the IE? I understand why she did better with minorities (because she actually asked for their vote), but what happened with the blue collar white vote? That is what I find most surprising about this election.

That is all quite fascinating. The exit polls showed Brown doing much better than Boxer among white voters?  I didn't know that. Part of it may be because culturally conservative blue collar types might not have related well to a woman who is a billionaire, with an almost mid-Atlantic upper class accent which is now largely gone in the US, hired an illegal alien maid, and was just not their cup of tea. I suppose the answer could be found in other races. Did Whitman run behind white voters as compared to the entire slate of GOP candidates, both state and local, in general?

I don't want to overstate it, since the difference between the Senate and Governor's race wasn't that much, but whites (or Anglos or whatever) did vote at a greater clip for Brown than the overall difference would suggest. The difference could be attributed just to margin of error, but the county results make me wonder if there is something to it. I don't think whites in the bay area, LA, SD or OC voted that differently in the two races. Yet those whites who live in the more inland parts of the state didn't seem to warm to Whitman. And your explanation for the phenomenon, if it exists, makes sense to me.

The other explanation could be that Hispanics who live in the inland parts of the state were really enthusiastic for Brown but didn't like Boxer, and were more than balanced out by greater support for Boxer amongst Hispanics in the cities. We have to wait for the supplement before we can be sure of what exactly happened.

[Sbane]

Gubernatorial:


Senatorial:


Not much difference.

The difference was mostly in the margins, and it didn't flip many counties. Only San Joaquin flipped, and Merced was close. Brown certainly did better in the whole Central Valley, as well as inland parts of the LA area. Compare that to the urban coastal areas, which voted about the same for both races.

[Sbane]

<snip>

Not much difference.

The difference was mostly in the margins, and it didn't flip many counties. Only San Joaquin flipped, and Merced was close. Brown certainly did better in the whole Central Valley, as well as inland parts of the LA area. Compare that to the urban coastal areas, which voted about the same for both races.

Del Norte flipped, too, and it didn't even vote for Obama. Loggers and prison workers for Brown?

Not sure about the loggers but the prison union might have voted for Brown. I know Whitman made some sweetheart deals with a few police unions, but might not have extended that offer to the prison workers.

[Sbane]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This explanation feels right to me, without having looked at the numbers. Sure Hispanics might not warm to a rather shrill pushy woman, who is so passionate about abortion - she's for it. And they are comfortable with the Brown name. Why not?

Sbane, if after having looked the numbers, you have more insights on this, I will be waiting to hear them. Thanks.
 

That explanation also feels right to me, but I was surprised by the exit poll. The main difference was amongst the white vote, with minorities voting slightly more for Boxer than Brown, and amongst geographies the only difference was inland. It is possible that shifts in the vote also happened in the more urban areas, but were obscured since the counties are so big. You really can't say anything definitive without looking at results by city. A few counties must have already released that data, no? I'll try and look through them when I can.