Posted on 12/28/2010 8:43:24 AM PST by Moseley
Democrats were apparently under-represented in Delaware’s US Senate race on November 2, 2010, according to CNN exit polls taken on election night.
Voter registration for Delaware’s 2010 election totaled
Democrats: 47 %.
Republicans: 29.4%.
"Other" & Independents: 23.5%
(Voter registration closed on October 9, 2010. Registration totals are as of October 21, 2010.)
http://elections.delaware.gov/services/candidate/regtotals.shtml
However, actual voter turn out according to CNN’s exit poll was:
Democrats: 44%.
Republicans: 30%.
"Other" & Independents: 27%
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010/results/polls/#val=DES01p1
Thus Democrats were under-represented among the actual voters who turned out in the November 2 election.
Only 44% of actual voters were Democrats although 47% of all registered voters are Democrats. Republicans comprised 30% of actual voters while being only 29.4% of registered voters. (Because Democrat registration surged 11.2% between 2008 and 2010, a full 11.2% of Democrat registered voters are recently-registered and probably highly motivated to vote after recently registering.)
If CNN’s exit poll data is accurate, the theory that Christine O’Donnell energized Democrats to turn out and vote – harming Delaware’s “down ballot” races – is clearly false.
Democrats actually voted in numbers significantly less than their proportion among registered voters by 44% to 47%. Republicans voted in a slightly higher proportion than their voter registration by 30% to 29.4%. Therefore, Christine O’Donnell’s presence on the November 2 ballot clearly did not drive Democrats to vote.
Two competing theories are being disputed about the US Senate race between Republican Christine O’Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons. A major debate – perhaps even a healthy debate – is raging within the Republican Party of Delaware about the future of Republicans after the November 2, 2010.
Delaware conservatives generally assert that the failure of the Republican Party to unite after the September 14, 2010, primary and the extraordinary inter-party attacks and strife caused O’Donnell’s loss in the US Senate race.
Delaware moderates or insiders in the Republican Party argue that a massive wave of Democrats was driven to the polls to vote against O’Donnell. In this argument, they claim that hostility uniquely tied to O’Donnell personally – different from her simply being the Republican nominee – energized Democrats to turn out and vote against the Republican ticket. They have even argued that O’Donnell “scared” voters who “thought she was a witch.”
Because O’Donnell and Coons roughly split the Independent / Other vote, while Democrats turned out in lower numbers than their presence on the voter registration rolls, O’Donnell’s candidacy clearly did not energize voters to vote against her.
Instead, the results of the US Senate race are clearly explained by the fact that a whopping 18% of all Republicans voted for the Democrat Chris Coons. The exit polls show that only 82% of those Republicans actually voting cast a ballot for the Republican nominee O’Donnell, 18% of Republicans voting for the Democrat nominee Coons.
Therefore, the exit poll data shows that Republican defections to vote for the Democrat Coons were responsible for the Republican Party losing the US Senate seat from Delaware.
A noticeable surge in voter turn-out apparently came from Delaware’s large Independent voter population, by 27% of actual voters compared with 23.5% of voter registrations.
The large Independent / Other vote was nearly split between Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons. The CNN exit poll showed Coons getting 48% to O’Donnell’s 45% of the Independent vote, while O’Donnell won the Independent vote by 49% to 46%, according to exit polling conducted for Fox News. SEE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYxENilNvU
(Fox news’ graphic shows the reverse of the anchor’s verbal report.)
Within the margin of error, O’Donnell and Coons roughly got equal shares of Independent and Other voters. At the minimum, Coons’ slight advantage among Independents and Other voters was not large enough to explain the election results.
Therefore, only the defection of 18% of Republican voters can explain the loss of the US Senate race in Delaware in 2010.
Some research for this report was helpfully supplied by left-wing commentators “anon” and “Geezer.”
BTW, while you don’t directly mention it in this article, your primary source for this article’s numbers (CNN) said that only 16% of republicans voted for Coons, not 18%. The 18% was from the fox exit poll, which also had a slightly different split for the independents.
Using just the CNN numbers, I showed in the other thread that if that 16% switched from Coons to O’Donnell, the results would have been:
Coons: 159,624 (54%), O’Donnell 137,277 (46%.
I haven’t seen the Fox exit poll partisan breakdown, but if you just took their 18% and used CNN’s breakdown, Coons would still beat O’Donnell easily if that 18% voted for O’Donnell instead of Coons.
Simple fact — with democrats turning out at 1.5 times the republicans, the only way for O’Donnell to win was to sweep the independent vote (she split it), and take a significant number of democrats (she did take 9%, but she needed about 14%).
If Del was the only reason to be p*ssed at the hack Karl Rove I'd agree.
Exit Polls: the surprise in Delaware
By: CNN’s Rebecca Sinderbrand
(CNN) – The thing about Delaware is: it's no Kentucky.
The Tea Party's first Senate loss of the night may be no big surprise - the only question heading into tonight's been how big a victory margin Chris Coons would capture over Christine O'Donnell. But the exit polls lay out the political and demographic roadblocks facing any Tea Party favorite here.
Nearly half the state's voters describe themselves as moderate. Nearly another 1 in 4 call themselves liberal. This is Biden country: 58 percent of Delaware voters say they approve of President Obama’s job performance. And 36 percent say they strongly oppose the Tea Party.
If GOP voters are feeling any buyer's remorse, they may take some solace in one surprising stat: despite pre-election polls that showed longtime Republican Rep. Mike Castle handily beating Coons in a hypothetical matchup, the voters who turned out today said they would still probably have sent Coons to Washington over Castle, backing him 44-43 percent.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/02/exit-polls-the-surprise-in-delaware/
And if Rove and the GOP had endorsed Odonnell, then it would've also increased Dem enthusiasm against her.
Fix: Pick candidates who have to use their valuable advertising time to explain that they are not witches stupid, dumb, a lightweight, ignorant, a quiter, a loser, is not a winning strategy.
Excellent advice for the upcoming 2012 elections.
ODonnell, as goofy as she may be, would've been preferable to what Del wound up with.
What it means in my mind is that Democrat political philosophies are grounded in a larger percentage of the population than actually are represented by Dems in some parts of the Country.
Bingo! In my mind also.
Folks we are experiencing in the last twenty years (since Clinton) a seachange in political outlook in America. Where centralized authoritative government has become perceived as the sugardaddy of our society. We have been saying this over and over (along of course with many others) since Clinton. And the only counter is cold political articulation of what freedom and individual dignity are - assuming responsibility for one's own decisions and moral behavior.
I know Delaware, and it is a perfect example of this change. Oregon, and even California, are also. It is palpable. And I believe furtively planned.
Karl Rove is, as many here concede, is as much the problem as the blatant Waxman type a**holes, supposedly his political opponents. This simply because he is more invested in manipulating and gerrymandering votes than in clarifying the serious ideological struggle that besets us.
Those of this latter manipulative mind we can call shallow, not dumb, but shallow, as is the Left anywhere. Those who intrinsically look to centralized government as sugerdaddy we can call structural Leftists, i.e. those not simply apathetic but who really do advocate Borg-type government.
Christine O'Donnell did not run a poor campaign, simply one that is falling on increasingly deaf ears.
A great great tragedy. The illegals will not improve it. And DC Republicans will not contest it.
This is of course what the Tea Party is all about. God help them for our own human consciousness.
Johnny Suntrade
I don’t think she was as goofy as she was portrayed. She seemed quite likeable, and I think given the current membership of the Senate, she would have been a positive asset as a person, in addition to being a solid conservative.
You are right. The best hope for the future is a take-over of the GOP by the Tea Party people.
And as we saw in Delaware and Alaska, mainstream GOP political criminals would rather have the Democrats win elections than loose control of the GOP to conservative ideologues whose primary loyalty is to America and not the GOP party leadership.
She is not goofy.
Anyone who is not a cynic, who is not opposed to the standards created by western civilization over the past 2000 years, anyone who doesn’t believe in cultural equivalence, murdering babies, disarming citizens, placating America’s enemies, idealizing the insanity of Islam, anyone who believes in the Judaeo-Christian concept of God and who accepts the uniqueness of the American political experiment, is “goofy” and “radical” and “insane” to these sinister fifth columnists who are eating away the guts of a once great nation - from within.
It will be difficult to keep all the "high church" types in line if she runs for President.
Doggone shame, too. Maybe we shouldn't have allowed those people to emigrate to this country.
That's your upper middle class and wealthy store owners, investors, and professionals ~ can't have someone like Christine representing their interests. I can hear them say "Why, what would she know.... at least this guy is a Commie so he knows the words, and thank goodness he doesn't attend a church where they jump and shout".
End of story there.
Of the people who were questioned in the exit polls, 16% who said they were republican said they voted for coons. 81% said they voted for O’Donnell. 3% said either they voted for someone else, or simply refused to answer, which means they could have voted for either candidate.
You are somewhat right, to calculate the total I should have either ignored the 3% and adjusted that 81 and 16 numbers, or I should have added another 3% to O’Donnell (without subtracting from Coons).
Doing either still leaves O’Donnell losing by almost 8%, so it really makes no difference, a fact you keep ignoring while complaining about these “republicans” who betrayed their party.
Of course, all of this is based on believing both the accuracy and truthfulness of the people talking to pollsters after voting.
I’m a Catholic and this bigotry pisses me off. I’d rather have a faithful God bothering evangelical who jumps and shouts than a ‘spirit of vatican II’ go along get along episcopalian.
But I guess that makes me weird. Oh well. Don’t care. You get exactly what it says on the tin.
“Doing either still leaves O’Donnell losing by almost 8%, so it really makes no difference, a fact you keep ignoring while complaining about these “republicans” who betrayed their party.”
Wow, sounds exactly like Grima, no? You really should change your name.
Look, we don’t need backstabbers, and we certainly don’t need folks who stick up for them. I really don’t care about winning elections. I care about doing what’s right.
What good is it to win with a RINO who backstabs you anyways? Not a lick of good and enormously counterproductive. What matters is a representative who does exactly that, represents Conservatives, and isn’t afraid of doing so.
I’m confident that the majority of Americans really *are* conservative which is why it requires so much propaganda for them to think otherwise. You might disagree with me, fine.
I received emails from other RINO traitors on COD. It was useful in learning exactly who the traitors are and what they were saying. Means in the future that I know not to trust these people. COD was an excellent candidate which is why the liberals hated her so much. She represented everything that couldn’t happen.
You do realise that COD was one of the very few single women senators that have ever been nominated? There’s been fewer than the fingers on one hand. She was the first conservative. You think Liberals don’t realise just how frightening she was? It wasn’t a married man or a married woman or a single man. But a stunning, articulate single woman running as a republican. Not only as a republican but one on the right side of the party. In Delaware of all places.
I’m still mystified with how COD came to be in the first place as all the demographics are against her. Yet she’s there anyways.
So it wouldn’t have made a difference if we got closer to 5/5 Republicans on our side instead of 4/5. Here’s how I look at it. Every one on the ‘republican’ side of the aisle who attacks Republicans, isn’t just wasting our resources, but is preventing those resources from being effective. I rate them as punching twice above their weight in the generals. This is why it’s so important to get good turnout and good support from our side of the aisle.
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