California is about 40 percent Democratic and 33 percent Republican. L.A. is about 50 percent Democrat and 25 percent Republican. That is the way it is.
Both sides decided to drive the turn out down to just he Democrat and Republican bases. Davis spent millions telling the center not to vote for Simon. And Simon spent millions telling the center not to vote for DAvis. The center listened to both of them and took their combined advice.
The center did not vote. In the 2000 Election over 10 million Californians voted. This year just over 6 million voted. Four million people who voted in 2000 did not vote in 2002. That is what dual negative campaigns always do.
When both sides go negative... the vote goes down to the bases. There are more people in the Democratic base than Repubican base.
If you are surprised that more people didn't vote for either candidate than voted for the winner, then you are indeed lacking in common sense. There is a ton of evidence to show what would happen on election day. And it happened just like all the evidence said it would.
Davis knew going in to this race that the center was lost for him. He could not get it. What he tried to do was keep Simon from getting it and he accomplished it. Simon did nothing to try to get the independent voters, so he didn't. All Simon did was drive a few Democrats away from Davis. Simon supporters are shocked that Yellow Dog democrats will vote for a Yellow Dog. They should not be.
As I posted just after the primary, the only way for Simon to win was to ignore Davis and campaign on how Simon would fix the state's problems if elected.
I works like this. A candidate for reelection is a falure. He can't promise success, becuase he has a record of failure. All he can do is claim the other candidate is a failure too. That was the Davis position. If the opposition candidate only talks about how he will fix things the voters are faced with the following. They know one candidate has failed. He says his opponent will fail too. The opponent however claims that if they elect him, he will succeed. Which will independent voters go with? Enough independent voters always go with the candidate that is NOT THROWING MUDD and is PROPOSING FIXES to elect him.
Had Simon done that, he would have gotten at least a million of those independents who did not voter. That would have made the election 3.9 milion Simon 3.6 million Davis.
Davis spent the entire election telling independent voters not to vote for Simon. They did not. Simon spent the entire campaign telling independent voters not to vote for Davis. They did not. They were both very effective, Four million independents took their adivce didn't vote for either candidate.
Tons of Simon suporters on FR did all they could to further the Davis strategy. That was, see to it independents did not have a reason to vote FOR anyone. They were happy trashing Davis. But that will not win an election.
This election proved that there was nothing to be gained by trashing Davis. Davis was already trashed more than any poor Republican could trash him. All it would have taken is for the Republicans to give reasons for independents to vote for the Republicans. They never did it.
Nationaly the Democrats never gave anyone a reason to vote for them. A lot of people didn't. Bush gave people reasons to vote Republican. Lots of them did.