Gatekeepers No More
August 27, 2010 by Mike · Leave a Comment
A friend of ours recently asked us what seemed to be a simple question. Why isn’t Rob Portman doing better? The straightforward answer is of course that the candidate in question is a former Bush Administration official, running in a tough State, who has given the voters little or no reason to support him over the incumbent. In fact, the only reason he is the Republican standard bearer is because the establishment crew of the Party chose him.
If that sounds familiar, perhaps it should. Because it is, so far, the story of the 2010 election cycle for Republicans. Unexciting candidates, selected by unexciting establishment types, who have little or nothing to say that an energized base and an invigorated set of conservatives wants to hear.
Spurred by our friend’s question, we took a look at some of the races so far. A disturbing pattern has emerged in some places. One in which the choice of the Republican establishment has either lost or survived a primary by such a modest margin as to be considered immediately vulnerable should they win in this cycle.
Let’s just take a quick look:
Texas. Despite having a Tea Party candidate implode in the last 10 days of the election, Governor Perry, the incumbent, managed only 51.1% of the vote.
Thoughts on Massachusetts’ Special Election
February 11, 2010 by Mike · Leave a Comment
I wanted to offer a few thoughts about the recent election in Massachusetts.
First, let’s look at numbers. Senator-elect Brown received about 1,168,107 votes, or just a shade more than 52% of votes cast. Attorney General Coakley received about 1,058,682 votes, or about 47% of votes cast. Turnout, at 54% statewide, was just a bit heavier than expected.
To put the election in some sort of historical perspective, in 2008 Senator McCain received about 60,000 fewer votes than Senator-elect Brown (about 1,108,654), and Senator Obama received about 730,000 more (around 1,904,097). In 2006, Senator Kennedy won with about 1,500,000 votes. That same year, Governor Patrick won with about 1,234,000 votes, and Attorney General Coakley won with about 1,546,000. In 2004, President Bush lost Massachusetts, receiving about 1,070,000 votes (out of about 3 million cast). In 2002, Senator Kerry received about 1.6 million votes, while Governor Romney won his election with 1.09 million votes.
What does all that mean? Well, there are a couple interesting numbers in there. Most interesting, Senator-elect Brown seems to have gotten more votes than any Republican candidate in the last 4 or 5 cycles. I think that is more than any Republican candidate has won since Reagan in 1984 (who got a little more than 1.3 million). In a special election, that is quite a performance. The other interesting item is that Attorney General Coakley lost almost 500,000 votes, or about one-third of her support from the last time she ran statewide. Absent performance issues (and there have been none), that suggests that larger forces were at play. Read more