Sep 14 2010
DE Primary Results – O’Donnell Wins!
Final Update: Well we can add Christine O’Donnell to the list of outsiders taking on the GOP establishment. With 66% of the vote in she is leading with 55-45%, and I doubt she will lose. She will join a suite of excellent Tea Party candidates in NV, AK, CO, etc, If she loses the general election, there will be some explaining. But this is a clear sign there is a wave out there like no one has ever seen in living memory. Look out Dems – DE is more a sign of what is coming. Congrats to the O’Donnell campaign! (9 PM update, 78% in and O’Donnell leads 46-54%) Good night folks! – end update
So, will a little known, completely quirky, unsubstantiated paragon of conservative virtue (Christine O’Donnell) beat a center-right, well known, state-wide shoe-in Congressman (Mike Castle) for the GOP primary? I seriously doubt O’Donnell’s tarnished rep and completely unproven claims to be a Tea Party conservative will beat out the sure bet for a GOP pick up in Castle. We will know in 24 minutes as results start coming in. Be back then to start the live blogging.
Either way, this is not the end of the Tea Party (given all their excellent candidates now challenging for top rung seats). Nor is it the end of the establishment GOP. Hype seems to be the essence of the coverage for this race. So I think cooler minds will resolve the path forward. See at 8 PM EST for the first results and probably a not too late call.
Update 8:50 PM: Yep, O’Donnell looks like the surprise win of the night. 47% of the vote in and she still holds her 55-45%, which is a 2959 vote lead. If there are no large regions out there for Castle, it will be over not long after 9:00 PM.
Update 8:43 PM: OK, looks like O’Donnell may pull this out. With 37% reporting O’Donnell is holding her 55-45% lead. Her vote lead is 2290. When they hit 60% reporting is when I will call it.
Update 8:38 PM: DE results site is down. Lots of premature high fives at O’Donnell party, Will be back when results show up.
Update 8:30 PM: 14% in, and O’Donnell is strong so far. She leads 56-45, or 703 votes. 7459 cast. Still way too close to see a winner,but the fact O’Donnell is still ahead is good news for her. O’Donnell is winning the machine vote, but Castle is winning the Absentee (a fraction of the size).
Update 8:25 PM: All right. 8% of precincts in it has tightened immensely. O’Donnell leads now by 52%-48%, or 2186-1995 votes. That is on 191 vote differential.
Update 8:20 PM: Finally some results! 1% in O’Donnell has a small lead of 57-43%. But don’t get too excited, it is 136-101 votes. Expecting 20-40 thousand!
Update 7:45 PM: Hmm, not so good indicators for O’Donnell:
The word from a campaign source in Delaware: Mike Castle is seeing “good turnout in key areas.”
Large turn out means larger margin of win for Castle.
HHHmmm…Thought O’Donnell said good turnout, too?
For Statewide Offices:
Democratic Voter Turnout = 12 %
Republican Voter Turnout = 31 %
Looks like Democrats stayed home and only a third of Republicans voted today.
The above is from:
http://elections.delaware.gov/results/html/election.shtml
Can’t wait Chrissy Mathews to explain this one! American’s have turned the political process on it’s ear and the pundits won’t be able to explain it and love up Obama in the same breath. Oh this is just so fun.
Ok, now, no matter WHAT we think, we need to give this candidate our support. She is now the Republican candidate.
Anyone know how her polling stacks up against the Democrat?
Rncc has just said they will NOT support her financially. Have they lost their minds?? Stupid, stupid, stupid of them to do this, imho. THE VOTERS SPOKE! They should have kept quiet.
That should be the Rep senatorial commitee, not rncc.
Agreed. Michelle Malkin says that Castle has had 9 terms behind him and it’s time for fresh blood (she said that yesterday).
Christine got around 38,000 votes. Sean Trende felt that Castle was no general shoe-in. Now that Christine won tonight, Sean thinks DE is lean-Democrat pending the polls. We shall see.
Sean Trende said:
“It is impressive. But the Democrats had no primary to speak of. In the 2008 gubernatorial primary, which *was* contested, the Democrats scored 73K votes. Tom Carper received 170,567 votes in 2006, and Biden got 257,539 in 2008. So O’Donnell still has an awful lot of work to do if she wants to be a Senator.”
Rangel is up at 45.2 with 7.6% counted. Huffman in NY-23 is now trailing behind Doheny.
And now the beauty of my “Senate isn’t so important” argument becomes clear! If O’Donnell wins the general, then great! It’ll drive the Dem’s crazy and help cement control of the Senate. And if she loses, oh well, there’s an advantage to be gained from leaving the dems in nominal control of that body.
It’s all good, either way!
Polls are not good, but you know what ? Sooner or later you must *change* to make change. That carries big risks.
If the Rep establishment maintains, our destination is the same. They are simply statist-light. Same end, though.
It’s not the end of the world if we lose this race In fact, as a couple have maintained here, it could be advantageous in 2012. But on the other hand, we have never seen a year like this one in our lifetimes, so who knows ?. We will get the House, and that’s all we need for now. This is a longer term effort. If capturing the Senate with people who continue our national trajectory is the only way we can get it, then the victory is hollow and only a ‘pullback’ in the progression of statism. We must elect people who are committed to changing the paradigm.
The RNSC just said they will spend no money for O’Donnell. Lol… who cares ? They are almost superfluous. She got this far without them. Grassroots will fund her.
At the end of the day, we either change things, or the ship sinks.
Now I know those here who are self-anointed conservatives will probably be aghast, but this is only the beginning. You haven’t seen anything yet.
Ever occur to you that you might be wrong ?
I believe that O’Donnell didn’t win this race as much as Castle lost it. He made a conscious decision to go out of his way to crap all over the Tea Party people; he wanted to make a point that they weren’t necessary for someone like him.
Well, the point was made, all right. It got made all across the country. Castle’s arrogance, more than anything else, is what did him in.
And you KNOW that the media already had their “Sarah Palin’s magic is dead!” story’s already written. D’OH!!!!
Well, it doesn’t look like Sarah’s endorsement did much good in New Hampshire.
WWS,
You know I respect you. But we have 3 weeks to determine if O’Donnell is the classic Pyrrhic victory for the Tea Party – which means they and the GOP lose the independents.
You may not have lost the Senate, you may have lost a lot more.
I hope I am wrong – I fear I am not.
It’s just one race in Delaware. If it has any effect at all nationally (and I’m not convinced that it will) then it is probably going to pump the Tea Party voters up and increase the national turnout on their side even more. Nothing pumps up the spirits like a victory, after all, and this election is going to be all about turnout. And I very much doubt it is going to have any effect on Independants outside of Delaware because no Independent in Missouri, say, is going to care one way or the other what happened in Delaware. He’s never cared about anything that happened in Delaware before, why start now?
And I’m beginning to suspect that all this vitriol being heaped on O’Donnell by the GOP establishment might actually help her rather than hurt her. It’s hard before the fact for any of us to really know what the rules are in an election where all the normal rules are going to be turned on their heads – but obviously none of the normal rules are in play anymore.
The GOP establishment is not well-liked right now, not by anyone. You can see that in the polls – Republican favorability is right down there with democrat favorability. Likely voters this time around aren’t listening to anything either Party establishment is saying – hence all the incumbent losses. When the establishment officially proclaims their hatred for someone, as they are doing tonite, their scorn may just backfire.
This may just be one of those elections where the voters decide to do exactly the opposite of what all the Establishment types are telling them to do, just to spit in their eye. Doesn’t happen much, maybe once in a lifetime – but this may be the year.
And one last thought – I’m finally convinced that the Tea Party movement is for real, and that’s precisely because tonite they’ve reached the point where they can seriously piss off *Everyone* in Washington. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.
And let me close tonite with something guaranteed to put a warm feeling in everyone’s heart.
Latest Fox News Poll:
Rubio: 43%
Crist: 27%
Meek: 21%
Looks like the New Hampshire race has swapped places, looks like less than one percentage point separating the front runners.
AJ,
The Hot Chick beat the Big Eared Skull on a stick by more than 6% in the highest turn out DE Republican primary ever.
It was not even close.
Too Quote Jim Geraghty:
1. As much as I may have had many bones to pick, this is a victory for Christine O’Donnell and her supporters to savor. The turnout is set to go well ahead of the expected 45,000, and she’s had no trouble finding the votes on a scale that large. Rep. Mike Castle and those who preferred him threw everything they had at her; she managed to persuade Delaware GOP primary voters that the key issue in the race was Castle’s record and not hers.
2. Delaware Republicans are a much more conservative group that past elections would lead us to think. In retrospect, how did Mike Castle never have a primary challenger in 9 terms?
3. She didn’t just beat Mike Castle’s campaign. She beat the state party.
4. Go beat the heck out of the once-bearded Marxist, ma’am.
Using the “Nuts & Sluts” political attack on female Republican candidates utterly enrages Tea Party voters into showing up in overwhelming numbers.
This Tea Party hot button is the legacy of the Democratic/Ruling Class media machine attacks on Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
Republican establishment candidates and Obama really need to pay attention to this. This was pure tribal voting by the Jacksonian American working class.
We not for an election day fact that if you give the “Under Served Right” a candidate they want to vote _FOR_ and they will show up.
As for what is coming in the General Election, there is a three word reason to think O’Donnell (the Hot Chick) is electable — Senator Al Franken.
The people most fearful of a successful O’Donnell General Election victory right now are Senator Cornyn and the RNSC. (Someone ger a change of underwear for Senator Lindsey Graham — STAT!)
Which you can count on as being part of her Senatorial campaign message against her Democratic opponent, as she stands side by side with Palin in the General Election campaign.
Grrrr….
That should have read:
We NOW KNOW for an election day fact that if you give the “Under Served Right” a candidate they want to vote _FOR_ and they will show up.