Aug 25 2010

Primary Night Reflections

Published by at 7:07 am under 2010 Elections,All General Discussions

Updates Below!

I was not surprised to see most of the results coming in last night. I was surprised at how poor the CNN coverage was. In an election year when hyper-partisanship on both sides is disdained universally, CNN decided to have on Anderson Cooper 360 Erik Erickson and John Avoros – two fairly conceited hyper-partisans who want to control their respective party and chase out all RINOs & DINOs. If you want to kill your ratings CNN, keep promoting the hyper-partisans.

This is the year of the independent – a.k.a RINOs and DINOs and Tea Partiers. At least for the GOP side of the equation. Look who lost and won in AZ. The great Maverick, RINO, promoter of comprehensive immigration reform and of campaign reform, and the 2008 GOP presidential candidate Senator John McCain romped (56%) former congressman and far right flame thrower JD Hayward. Hayward was the hyper-partisan GOP candidate and got romped just like the far right candidates got romped in the 2008 presidential election. It takes a special mix of independence and conservatism to win the American public over these days. Too far outside the central mainstream and you get the boot. Hayward was never inside the comfort zone, he never had a chance. And is lame claims of an upset near the end of the race were simply pathetic.

Rubio in FL represents more of blend of tea party libertarianism and muted social conservatism that can rally the people in 2010. In a year when the country is fed up with being told how and what to think from DC, dictating social norms from Washington is not a winning strategy for either party. That is why Rubio is destined to take the Senate seat in November – he remains inside the acceptable bounds of the center, just like VA Governor Bob McDonnell, NJ Governor Chris Christie and MA Senator Scott Brown.

FL’s primary results show that the Democrats still have a major problem. They remain the party of big government and the party that believes in the concept of the elite ruling political class. That is the only explanation for Meek’s romp (57%-31%) in the Democrat senate primary race. Meek is the establishment candidate and comes from an emerging political dynasty (his mother was a famous liberal congresswoman). The choice of Meek indicates it is the Democrat Party which continues to follow a path at complete opposition with the voters of America. It is that political party (not just its leaders) out of touch and heading for election disaster in November. This is not the year for the big government. political ruling class party.

The FL Governor’s results on the GOP side pretty much confirm that GOP voters are not interested in pedigreed career politicians. In that race former US congressman and state AG McCollum had a surprise loss to political newbie Scott 43-46%. It is clear from this totally different result that those who wish to clean house are on the GOP side in spades, if purple FL is any kind of barometer of the national mood.

FL also clearly shows the enthusiasm gap between the two parties. The total number of voters in the GOP primary for governor was roughly  1.28 million, while the total number on the Democrat primary for governor was 0.86 million. That means the GOP took 60% of the primary voters and the Dems got a paltry 40%. We can cross-check this by looking at the senate primary races in FL. The GOP contest took 1.25 million and the Dem contest took 0.91 million. That equates to a GOP wave of 58% to the Dems 42%. Finally, another cross-check in the AZ senate primary shows the Dems got 250,ooo votes and the GOP took in 500,000 votes, which puts the GOP up 66%-33% over the Dems. There may be exceptions, but it still looks like we have not seen the last of results like we saw in VA, NJ and MA.

I have heard a lot of lame commentary by party stalwarts or hyper-partisans trying to spin other messages on these results. Everyone in the liberal media is looking at Meek and saying incumbents from the big government party are safe. Well, they can be in denial all they want. They are not shaping this election – it is being electorate than either major political party or the liberal media. This is not a pro-government election year.

Update: Again, Alaska illustrates clearly this is not a year for career politicians or the big government party as sitting Senator Lisa Murkowski (another political dynasty in the making) may have lost her primary race. To see an incumbent like Murkowski go down to a political outsider (and Tea Party candidate) is just one more clear message from the American people. Dems, you will be losing a ton of seats come November. This looks to be historic.

Update: Ed Morrissey puts it well (as usual!):

When Shira Toeplitz notes that no poll predicted this outcome, it’s not an exaggeration.  Palin’s endorsement of Miller was seen as a long shot, as well as another volley in a years-long political feud between Palin and the Murkowskis.  Few people gave the endorsement much chance of changing the status quo, especially since Murkowski didn’t have a record that produced anywhere near as much ire among conservatives as Palin’s former running mate John McCain — who won his primary by 30 points.

If Miller wins this race, it’s a testament to the power of Palin in Alaska and the energy of the Tea Party.  It may also be a warning to pollsters to start making some adjustments to likely-voter models in the days ahead. We’ll keep an eye on the outcome of this race today.

I predicted a while back that the polls were under-estimating the wave coming, just as they did in the NJ and VA governor races of ’09 and the MA Senate race won by Scott Brown. If you move all the polls 3-5% to the right you get a wipe out of Dems in both houses and the governor seats. 3-5% is the margin of error in most polls, so that is not a huge number in absolute terms, but it is huge in terms which side wins in November.

I actually suspect, like NJ, VA and MA, the polls are more likely off by 5-10%. Which again is quite accurate for a unique year with no historic precedent for pollsters to estimate against.

Update: Ace of Spades has a great smack down on all the liberals who predicted the extinction of Palin in a Miller loss. Lots of crow being served up this morning!

Addendum: Going back to the pollster issue. If you look at FL the polls between McCollum and Scott were all over the map. Which is another indication the error bars on this year’s polls maybe be a lot larger than pollsters care to admit or advertise.

Update: DC just began to wake up:

The stunning news that developed over night in Alaska — with 98 percent of precincts reporting, attorney Joe Miller (R) leads Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) 51 percent to 49 percent — reveals the depth of anti-incumbent sentiment in the country, the power of former Alaska Gov.Sarah Palin (and the tea party movement) and the perils of prognostication in low turnout intraparty fights.

Not to mention the incredible level of denial in the Political Industrial Complex about how bad it is for Dems BECAUSE of all the crap they passed!

27 responses so far

27 Responses to “Primary Night Reflections”

  1. WWS,

    We have just seen a Democratic Party political equivalent of 15-kiloton nuclear hand grenade detonate in Colorado.

    I just got back an e-mail from a very left of center Denver friend of mine — who I e-mailed the EPA lead bullet ban link — on how quickly, and hugely bad, this EPA action is playing in CO:

    Happening already. I have a local liberal talk radio show on even as we squeak, and
    .
    1) The Western Slope has gone up with a whoosh and a roar,
    .
    2) So has the Eastern Plains, and
    .
    3) So are most Front Range environmentalists calling in, because they can count, and any effective environmental measures out here have always been tied to hunting and fishing (or watershed maintenance).
    .
    So far there’ve been two callers who tried to defend it as a first step toward banning hunting, and the host (who was an Obama guy back in 2007) is bawling them out and hanging up on them. (This may be because he hunts or it may be because he’s the guy from whom I got the useful phrase Second Amendment Socialist. Or both). The program doesn’t seem to have a website or I’d post a link and let you all listen in.
    .
    There is no chance at all of this coming to anyone in the administration’s attention, unless they’re taping it at Ken Salazar’s in-town office. Which they should be. But they won’t.
    .
    Oooh. Just heard a caller say “They’ve got their RINOs and we’ve got our DINOs and we just need to dump the coasts so we can slug it out like honorable gentlemen.” I think it’s the guy who always brings up Lenin having been a passionate bird hunter.

    When you are pissing off left wing Colorado Environmentalists and gun-huggers with the same act of EPA looniness…Hubris, nothing but pure Hubris.

    This is the logical outcome of appointing a leftist flake like Jackson in the first place, but I doubt that this particular outcome even occurred to Axelrod and Obama.

    They both strike me as utterly blind in some respects, and the flakiness of their Leftist appointees is one of them.

    IMO, they won’t realize any need to do anything about this action until far too late to have any effect, save pissing off their own side, just like they have done with the Ground Zero Mosque.

  2. lurker9876 says:

    They didn’t exactly dump her as the votes were too close…within two grand and each got at least 40K.

    And this one…pat of the beginning sign of a massive defection inside the Democratic Part?

    http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/25/oh-my-house-democrats-launch-ads-touting-opposition-to-obama-pelosi/

  3. archtop says:

    WWS on 25 Aug 2010 at 1:09 pm

    “Meanwhile, new home sales “unexpectedly” dropped to the lowest amount yet measured, and durable goods orders “unexpectedly” fell as well.”

    As far as the economy this fall is concerned, look for:

    (1) Growth well under 1%
    (2) A market correction of 5% or more
    (3) Unemployment to rise, maybe above 10% again (though the true unemployment numbers have been above 10% all along)
    (4) Some oversea economic/political crisis – perhaps Iran?

    And look for more vacations from the president and his family (no need to campaign when your party doesn’t want you to…).

  4. MerlinOS2 says:

    With all the precincts finally in in Alaska Miller leads by about 1600 or so vote and there are 16000 absentee ballots out there that still have over a week to arrive before the deadline.

    This is not a done deal yet.

  5. If Red State is to be believed:

    http://www.redstate.com/bk/2010/08/25/lisas-apparently-not-ready-to-give-up-the-murkowski-seat-just-yet/

    It looks like Senator Lisa Murkowski is so pissed at losing to Palin’s candidate that she is trying too find a way to run as an independent.

    This is pure high school drama queen, losing clique, crap.

    I don’t think it will play well in Alaska…or anywhere else.

    I know Joe Lieberman, and Murkowski is no Lieberman.

  6. Fai Mao says:

    I don’t know how many, if any Republican big wigs read this blog but I can give them a platform for their presidential campaign that will give them 1,000,000 votes.

    I realize this is my soapbox

    It is so easy. They need to ammend US law so that the following web page is unneeded.

    http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0%2C%2Cid=97324%2C00.html

    Even Canada, the UK, and Scandanavian countries don’t require expats to fill out the tax forms even if they live out side the country.

    If you are an American living overseas you are assummed to be there to avoid US taxes which strickes me as a violation of the presumed innocent clause in the Bill of Rights. It is also nearly always untrue. If you have a spouse who is not a US citizen your tax situation is so complex that you are probably going to be hauled into tax court if you ever return to the US.

    Honestly, if Barrak Obama said he’d abolish these hideous laws I would consider voting for him. They are that repugnant.

  7. […] Same thing in FL in the GOP primary. And in fact, FL also was a good method to see the trend where the Democrats are still voting for big government, political elites (or incumbents) while masses of people are voting GOP and voting out the professional pol (just look at the governor primary results). […]