A few election observations

[cos]

Not the top stories, but a few interesting things on the side...

• Where will Scott Brown run next? He was born in Maine, but they don't have an election for Senate (or Governor) in 2016. Can he wait four years?


• The flipfloppiest US House seat ever is on a roll. New Hampshire's 1st district. Carol Shea-Porter (who is awesome, BTW, one of my favorite members of Congress ever) won it narrowly in 2006, and got re-elected in 2008. In the 2010 Republican wave, Frank Guinta took it from her. In 2012, she took it back from him. Yesterday, he beat her in yet another rematch. If she runs in 2016 chances are with presidential election turnout she'll get it back, so I suspect she is likely to. As Daily Kos elections put it, "Looking forward to [Guinta's] war with Shea-Porter continuing until Ragnarok #nh01". Or maybe they should just work out a time-share and alternate each year.


• From the 2004 election through this year, Republicans have lost every election for federal or statewide office in Massachusetts, except two: the two times Martha Coakley was nominated for federal or statewide office.


• Minimum wage increases won big: It was on the ballot statewide in Alaska, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Arkansas. The lowest margin it won by was ten points, 55% to 45%, in South Dakota. In the other four states it was over 60%, with the highest margin in Alaska - 69% to 31%.


• Attorney General Eric Holder said he was resigning, but would stay in office until a successor is confirmed. Obama hasn't nominated a replacement yet. If one isn't confirmed quickly, Eric Holder may be stuck, since a Republican Senate seems unlikely to confirm any Obama nominee for any office ever.


• Lots of states had new voter suppression measures in force this year, in part thanks to the Supreme Court eviscerating a large part of the Voting Rights Act. But finally, one state went on the offence in the other direction: A "Right to Vote" constitutional amendment passed in Illinois with something like 70%, forestalling discriminatory voter ID laws and similar measures. Maybe it'll inspire similar measures in other states.


• Black turnout was very high, but the white percentage of the electorate was much higher than 2012 due largely to the fact that Latino turnout was waaay down. Obama reportedly put off pushing on immigration and immigrants' rights issues in the past year to try to help vulnerable Democratic red state Senators. Not only did it not help them, but it seems to have backfired and taken out plenty of other Democrats who would've held on with higher Latino turnout.


• Colorado has now voted down "personhood" ballot measures three elections. "Personhood" laws are ones that define a fetus as a person, giving them all sorts of legal rights. Failed in 2008, 2010, and 2014. Will Colorado have to vote on this again in 2016? Personhood also failed on the ballot in North Dakota this year. It hasn't ever won anywhere yet.


• Ballot measures passed in both California and New Jersey that would reduce prison sentences for drug possession and other nonviolent offenders. Yay, finally! We need a lot more of this.


• Most Democratic candidates for governor in races that were polling as close lost, but two won: Hinkenlooper in Colorado and Malloy in Connecticut. One thing the two have in common is that they both championed and signed major new gun regulation laws after Newtowne, and drew a lot of backlash in both states. Coincidence, or did gun regulation help them?


• Colorado Senator Mark Udall was possibly the NSA's top critic in the Senate (or maybe second, after Ron Wyden). His loss is a win for NSA surveillance.


• Michele Bachmann is finally gone! Although dr_memory says "just wait for her inevitable reality TV show".

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

* Eric Cantor should be more and more inflammatory. Executed properly, this could be hilarious.

* Cuyahoga County, OH, passed a right to vote measure. (Not a state, but hey, it passed by a *lot*)

* Udall's loss troubles me. And it sounds like surveillance issues played essentially no role in his campaign.

* Bachman doesn't seem to have whatever it is that got people excited about Palin? IDK. Maybe a series of ranting dominionist webcasts - oh wait, why would she do that when she can hit the lecture circuit and make bank?

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

"Black turnout was very high, but the white percentage of the electorate was much higher than 2012 due largely to the fact that Latino turnout was waaay down."

Could it simply be the case that more latinos are identifying as white?

[cos]

I highly doubt there would be a sudden shift like that for no known reason and without it being noticed, but if you've seen evidence that happened I'd like to see it too.

[gigglingwizard.livejournal.com]

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/05/millions-of-americans-changed-their-racial-or-ethnic-identity-from-one-census-to-the-next/

Hispanics, particularly those from Latin American countries (as opposed to those born and raised in the US) generally don't see "hispanic" as a race at all. Racism is prevalent in these countries. There are black hispanics, white hispanics, indigenous hispanics--even some hispanics with Asian ancestry--and any combination of those, each with its own place in a racist hierarchy. It's only when they arrive here that they find that estadounidenses lump everyone from German-descended Argentinians to African-descended Dominicans together as "hispanic" just because they all speak Spanish, and then regard that as a separate race. The idea that latin ethnicity is mutually exclusive with being black, white, or native is a solely American notion.

Attitudes about this vary depending on what part of the country you look at. In the Southwest, where most latinos are mestizos of Mexican ancestry, there's a strong identification with the hispanic label and separation from "white" (gringo) people. But if you look at the Cuban population in South Florida, where there's a strong hispanic minority and Cubans are the whiter, wealthier, more educated and politically connected among hispanics there, Cubans tend to regard themselves as just being white. There, being "hispanic" is thought of like being Methodist or being allergic to pollen--it's something that's part of one's identity, but not such that it's used to sort people into advantaged and disadvantaged classes. I've known Cubans and Cuban-Americans who were oblivious to the fact that anti-hispanic bigotry is prevalent in much of the US, simply because they've been insulated from it.

I recall when I met my wife, who was born in Cuba and grew up in Miami. I had never been to Miami, and she was telling me about it. "It's such a diverse place! We have Cubans and Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and Colombians, and Mexicans, and Venezuelans..." Having been raised in Appalachia, I was hearing, "...hispanics and hispanics and hispanics and hispanics," and thinking, "What's so diverse about that?"

So anytime race is brought up and you see them listed as "white, black, and hispanic," you've got to say, "Whoa, are those white hispanics, hispanics of some other race, or what? How are they tallying this up?"

[cos]

I don't see anything here to suggest that there would've been a sudden and dramatic change in specifically this direction in exit polls two years apart. In fact, the data you did link to suggests that this identity turnover tends to go in multiple directions and at a much slower pace than would be needed to account for this turnout difference. So I doubt that possible explanation even more now.

[ceo]

The more I look at this, the more I'm convinced that the Democrats shot themselves in the foot on multiple fronts. Besides the immigration issue, we had Grimes in KY refusing to hammer McConnell over his stated determination to repeal the ACA, even though KY is one of the big Obamacare success stories, and Braley in IA refusing to call out Ernst as the raving nutbag she is because... oh, who the hell knows why.

[sariel-t.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this.