Exit poll remainders: jobs, jobs, jobs
A couple of interesting items from the 2010 exit polls (as if you haven’t heard enough election stuff…)
In the Florida Senate race, Charlie Crist may actually have a future as a Democrat. He got 19 percent of the black vote (versus 76 percent for Meek, and about what Crist got when he was elected governor,) 23 percent of the Latino vote (versus 55 percent for Marco Rubio,) he won the 18-24 vote, despite being the oldest of the three candidates (by one point with 37 percentm versus 36 percent for Rubio an d 27 percent for Meek), effectively tied Rubio 40-41 with the most educated voters, and got 42 percent of Democrats (versus 49 percent for Meek) and a pretty stunning 50 percent of self-described liberals, versus 39 percent for Meek. I can’t really explain the 10 percent of liberals who voted for Rubio, but there you go. Crist also won moderates, 38 percent to 36 percent for Rubio and 27 percent for Meek.
Not sure what that means for Charlie Ballgame’s future, but there it is.
On a national level, you can get your House exit polls here. Key findings: Democrats won self-described moderates by 55 percent, but clearly many more conservatives turned out. Dems also won voters with no high school education plus the most educated voters, those with post-grad degrees. Republicans won big with blue collar white voters, evangelicals and conservatives. Dems also won voters who were casting ballots for the first time. Read more
Why we lose: take one
Black voters and young voters had dismal turnout in the just-passed tsunami midterm. The voters who approve of President Obama most, weren’t there for him and his party on Tuesday. But hey, Lil Wayne is free! From the in-box: Read more
Midday clicks: Bennett wins in Colorado, Murray looking good in WA, White House shake-up coming?
With the Denver and Boulder suburbs the last votes to come in, the Denver Post has called Colorado for Michael Bennett, adding a bit more good news for Democrats on a tough post-election day. Democrats also easily won the Colorado governship with John Hickenlooper, meaning that despite losing all the governorships in the eastern and midwest swing states, Democrats overperformed out west, including in Nevada where a strong Latino vote helped carry Harry Reid to a fifth Senate term (though his son lost the governorship to an Hispanic Republican.)
In Washington, Democrat Patty Murray was looking good at half past 11, and is expected (cautiously) to hang on to her Senate seat.
Also trending this morning: the decimation of the Blue Dog coalition in Tuesday’s election means that ironically, the tea party seems to have purged both political parties, one of them by proxy.
And the recriminations begin in the Democratic coalition, with labor saying don’t point the finger at us, and some in the White House calling for a shake-up of the political team (please, please do that…)
And as for what caused the Democrats pain, the answer is pretty simple: voters punished them for the economy, either by voting Republican, or in the case of young and minority voters, by staying home.
In Florida, the unthinkable
Congratulations, Florida. This is your new governor. And you’ve elected David Rivera and Allen West, too. Nice job, people.
Alternet finds the sunshine
On a day like this, for progressives, this passes for good news:
The reality is that Congress is going to be even more dysfunctional, and thanks to the incoming Tea Party candidates, Fox News and the rest of the right-wing noise machine, we’re going to be subjected to endless investigations into pseudo-scandals involving everyone down to the White House gardener’s second cousin. Maybe we’ll even be treated to an impeachment hearing or two.
The bottom line is that progressives went to bed last night fighting a right wing that’s lost its collective mind, in a broken political system, with a centrist, Wall Street-friendly party that can’t sell its successes, and we wake up in pretty much the same situation. In other words, yes, we now face the disheartening fact that Rand Paul is a member of the United States Senate, the “greatest deliberative body in the world.” But remember, we already had James Inhofe.
But despite all of that, the long-term winds that devastated the GOP in two consecutive “wave elections” and propelled a black man with a funny name into the White House are still at our backs.
Want more sunshine? Read on…
From Politico: the story behind the Clinton-Meek intervention
Politico’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Allen dig deeper into the delicate operation that they say began as early as this spring, in which the White House, fresh from trying to intervene to head off challenges to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennett in Colorado, tried to do the same in Florida. Read more
Counterpoint: the volatile electorate
For all the talk you’ll hear over the next two days about “tsunami,” historic rejection of the president, five alarm fires and a collective national yearning for the GOP, the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll offers something much more mundane: an economic downturn that has produced the same kind of electoral volatility as every other economic downturn. A stat that stood out for me: of the voters who say they are likely to vote Republican this cycle, the percentage who call it a protest vote against president Obama: 15. The share calling their vote a protest against Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats: 20. A protest against Obama and the Dems: 10. And the share calling it an affirmative vote for the GOP: 48 — just one point under the likely voter total preferring the Republican Party. Meanwhile, registered voters are essentially split down the middle between the two parties.
The upshot: the more excited party — Republicans, prefer that Republicans win the day. Well knock me over with a feather. Read more
The new normal: millionaire funding Rove ops in KY prosecuted by Conway for alleged nursing home abuse
This is politics in the New Normal as created by the Five Corporate Justices of the Supreme Court in Citizens United. CEO skips out on his hospital company amid record Medicare Fraud, gets sued over more Medicare fraud, hides depo and runs for governor of largest Medicare recipient state … and in Kentucky, a millionaire whose nursing home business is being prosecuted for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of an elderly patient funds the secretive Karl Rove campaign to prevent the prosecutor from becoming a United States Senator. Oh, and he handles all Rove’s other secret money, too … Read more
The Kamikaze candidacy? Bombshell report says Meek agreed to drop out **UPDATE**
If this is true, then this might be the leak that opens the door for Democrats to vote for Charlie Crist, and the Florida race for U.S. Senate just got real interesting again.
Major hat tip to Peter Schorsch, who alerted me to the story. I’ve been offline editing a video project, and totally missed it. But here’s the bottom line: according to Politico’s Ben Smith, who got former President Bill Clinton’s spokesman Matt McKenna on the record confirming the conversations took place … the former president confronted Meek during that big campaign swing through Florida last week with the fact that he isn’t going to win the U.S. Senate race. So Clinton, via his top aide Doug Band, began the careful process of brokering a deal for Meek to withdraw from the race. Read more
Qpoll has Sink up 4, but race volatile
Florida gubernatorial candidates: Rick Scott, Alex Sink
I’ll bet the Quinnipiac people wish they released their polls on time after getting themselves stuck with a sentence like this:
“Although the governor’s race remains very close, CFO Alex Sink has had a good week,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. …
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WTF Has Barack Obama Done So Far?
