Election results
I’m too distracted watching election results to write a book review, so I’m going to skip it for tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
So far (it’s 9:11 as I write this), things are looking pretty good for Tim Kaine. With 74.4% of the precincts reporting, he’s ahead by 2.5% of the vote, or about 50,000 votes. The data I’m looking at (from Virginia Interactive, which is having some trouble loading, but seems to have significantly more recent results than the Post) suggest that the Republicans are leading on the other two races. We shall see.
I’m also interested in seeing how the set of Ohio initiatives proposed by Reform Ohio Now does. The Ohio state website has live results, but doesn’t seem to say anywhere what percentage of precincts are reporting, so I don’t know how significant the returns so far are. It looks like they’re all going down by large margins. That’s a shame — I think the partisan gerrymandering of districts is the single factor that has been most destructive of American democracy in recent years.
The Texas anti-same-sex marriage proposal passed easily. I’m shocked.
I’m not planning on staying up late enough to watch the California results come in.
November 8th, 2005 at 11:47 pm
I’m not surprised that the ballot measures are failing. Consensus out here is they were too complicated for most voters to make sense of, and when people don’t understand a ballot measure they usually vote no. It’s too bad, because they are mostly good ideas. The redistricting measure was never ahead in the polls, though.
November 9th, 2005 at 8:03 am
I heard that about the Ohio measures too– too confusing, and too well-advertised-against by Republicans. I think most Americans don’t really understand all the mechanics of voting and distrcting, which is a shame.
The Governator sure got spanked, though! And the Virginia win is also seen as a slap, somewhat, to Bush, because of that last-ditch campaign stop he made on Monday.
November 9th, 2005 at 8:05 am
Well, here’s your natural experiment in Virginia: conservative Reep versus moderate Dem, the Dem wins (Kaine). Conservative Reep versus left Dem, the Reep wins (Bolling). Moderate Reep versus moderate Dem, too close to call Wednesday morning.
I think Poisson’s win, and Roemmelt coming close, is important for Dems to think about how to do well in the exurbs.
November 9th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
David Brin has an interesting take on gerrymandering: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2005/10/american-democracy-more-fragile-than.html.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I’m very happy over here, bathing in the warm glow of a gubernatorial victory while chortling over Arnold’s miserable failure in California. Oh, winning is so nice!
November 9th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
Down down down. They all went down. Ohio is sucking mightily these days.
November 18th, 2005 at 7:11 am
Mark Schmitt has some nice discussion of initiatives here:
http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/11/initiatives_los.htm