Religon, Race, and 2008 Election Results: Your County

[Torie]

Well, here is info on my precinct. As you can see, I was not the only Pub type in my precinct who voted for Obama (look at the governor partisan stats versus the Obama-McCain ones).  My precinct was probably close to the top 1% in the nation in swinging to Obama, and then away from the Dems in 2010 way back to the Bush 2004 numbers and then some.  I suspect Obama will be wiped out this time - maybe as high as a 70-30 split.

[Torie]

I suspect Obama will be wiped out this time - maybe as high as a 70-30 split.

So you're predicting a Mitt landslide, eh? Let's say Mitt wins by 2 points, still Obama won't lose Laguna Niguel by more than 25-30 points. And I'm being pretty generous here.

Just my precinct.

[Torie]

I suspect Obama will be wiped out this time - maybe as high as a 70-30 split.

So you're predicting a Mitt landslide, eh? Let's say Mitt wins by 2 points, still Obama won't lose Laguna Niguel by more than 25-30 points. And I'm being pretty generous here.

Just my precinct.

So your precinct voted by 30 points for Whitman. And I am assuming the vote for Boxer was similar. That is the worst case scenario for Obama. If he lost by that margin, he would be losing by more than 3-4 points nationwide and even with tough economic conditions I don't see him losing by more than that. In a more likely scenario, he wins by 3-4 nationwide, and loses your precinct by about 15 points, perhaps less. The war on women is not completely hyperbole.

I meant to get back to you on this sbane. No I am not predicting a Mittens landslide. It looks like a very tight election at the moment. What I was/am predicting, is that upper middle class centrist seculars  will trend heavily to Mittens. I think that is almost written in stone at this point. Mittens is not that threatening to that cohort on other issues (he's no Newt or Rick, etc., either in tone or substance really), is trusted on economic issues, and Obama has gone populist - almost demagogically so. That is all totally toxic to this cohort, along with his performance on economics, and decisions in connection therewith, which have belly flopped.

We shall see how my prediction plays out.

[Torie]

My precinct is pretty uniform. The rich who like to spend on housing live behind a gate at the top of the hill with two way butt kicking views, one way being to the ocean down extremely dramatic Aliso Canyon, about an 800 foot drop (maybe about 30% of the precinct), the upper middle class lives on the next six streets going down the hill, one of which I live on (which you have seen), and about 10%-15% live in a frumpy tract down the hill across Highlands, in a little tract built in the 1970's, basically middle class with a lot of retirees who grew gray there. My precinct will trend more heavily to Mittens than the city of Laguna Niguel as a whole.  About 3-4 precincts in the city are considerably more upscale than the city as a whole, of which mine is one.

[Torie]

Well, I was just going by the governor's vote (which will be very similar to the Boxer vote in your neck of the woods. I don't see Obama doing worse than that, and if he is doing as bad as that, he has lost by at least 3-4 points. While the polls do point to a snapback among the rich secularites, it's not going to be THAT much. And if it is, Obama is way f'ed and we might as well start speculating about 2016.

My strong surmise, is that in my precinct Obama at the moment is considerably less popular than Jerry Brown was on election day 2010, or for that matter Boxer, both of which had quite flawed opponents to boot. We shall see. I know four votes that are going to flip from Brown to Mittens right on my street, by my neighbors on one side to the north (Jewish olds), and two doors down on the other (and this all without my "help"). My neighbors immediately next door to the south are Indian and strong Pubs, who never vote for the "socialist" party, so no trend is available out of them.

[Torie]

Torie, how much did your area swing from '04 to '08? It was pretty dramatic and ripe for an equally large correction, right?

Well this is interesting. My precinct trended Dem in 2008 at about the Orange County average, and then snapped back to 2004 about 2 points more than the county (the county as a whole just went back in 2010 to the 2004 figures more or less), so that in 2010 the Torie hood voted more GOP than in 2004.  In the Torie city, LN is more volatile, and trended more Dem than the county, and then snapped back so much in 2010 that it now votes more GOP than my precinct - particularly in the Senate race, where Laguna Niguel went into Fiorina outer space, breaking the surly bonds of earth's gravity, and the only issue left is whether the LN Fiorina charged mass will remain tied to the gravitational pull of the sun's solar system or just keep going until it's finally corralled by the pull of  another star.

I wonder if my precinct is a tad more Jewish than the LN city as a whole (because it's richer and far more rug rat free - those views make the cost per square foot of housing disgustingly high, and when you have rug rats, the more square feet the better - screw the views), which propped up the Boxer vote a tad. Just a wild thought. I would need to check out the other uber-bourgeoise LN precincts to see if that thought has any potential merit at all, and I don't propose to do that. It's a pain in the butt for reasons I won't bore you with.

In short, my territory is just overall getting deeper red - at least from a Bush 2004 baseline.

The issue is whether in 2012 there will be a clear secular centrist upper middle class breakout of rather massive proportions, which will break the mold from the above referenced chart, because yes, at least for my precinct, I am "predicting" a GOP PVI of say 20%, which means that the Torie hood will break not only break out of earth's gravity, and that of the solar system, but also from the galaxy, wandering and wandering until it finds another "galaxial"  home. And if it goes in the "wrong" direction with this kind of velocity, since the Milky Way is rather close to the edge of the universe, the hood may never hook up with another gravitational system ever again.

Daunting stuff! I may be out rather far on the limb, but hey, high wire acts are fun!

CC: sbane