Posted on 11/10/2006 9:51:00 AM PST by SmithL
California's Republican voters stayed home in droves on election day, as preliminary figures show voter turnout falling well below the state average in some of the most reliably GOP parts of the state.
Although the final totals won't be known for weeks, election day turnout in Fresno, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and SanDiego counties, which all have Republican pluralities, ran as much as 10 percentage points below the state's 44 percent average turnout.
"The turnout in Republican counties was low compared to the turnout in counties where Democrats hold the edge,'' said Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the state Republican Party. "The conservative Republican base didn't show up.''
Without that anticipated flood of votes from places such as Orange County and the Inland Empire, Tuesday was a long night for most of the statewide Republican candidates not named Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"It came as a surprise,'' admitted Stan Devereaux, a spokesman for Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, who lost the lieutenant governor's race to Democratic Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. "We kept looking at the returns through the night and thought we had a chance, but when the returns (from Republican counties) came in, we didn't get the turnout we expected.''
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
{We lost the independents 3:2 and with them went the close elections. In particular, we lost the "security Moms" and Catholics, both mostly due to Iraq and corruption in localized districts.}
Ditto. Notice in the final pre-election polls, the RATS actually ended up doing better than the polls. The late minute undecideds swing to the RATS. As a result, we got zapped.
Parental notification ballot also got zapped in OR. I suspect that the voters in my own state, IL, would vote down such sensible policy.
The failures of these ballots prove that the blue states are hopeless.
ping
So if they stayed home rather than vote for a RINO Gov, they denied their state of a potentially great Lt. Governor (McClintock) and would've been 2010 Governor Candidate.
We had a record turn out locally -- 46%
McClintock is the real deal and they hurt him bigtime.
In conclusion, I think it's hard to mobilize a base that's given up.
Yes but did the Republicans vote Republican after they drew the curtain in the voting booth?
Thank you. That's what I heard, but nothing like cold hard spreadsheet to put kibosh on the arguments. ;~)
I said from the beginning: "Ignore the polls, turnout is the key", turned out it was.
You're welcome.
I should note that the numbers keep changing as the lagging absentee ballots are counted. While those may be counted in the next week, it will probably be a month or more before the numbers are final and certified. Regardless, it gives an indication.
Just a few thousand votes the other way would have made the polls totally wrong.
A large number of independents (it was said) did not even decide on who to vote for until a couple of days before the election, and most broke for the Democrats.
When the GOP wins lets see how accurate the polls are on that one.
"Just a few thousand votes the other way would have made the polls totally wrong".
Geeee, no kidding (rolling eyes). But that MAKES MY POINT, THEY WERE ACCURATE. You can't "BUT IF" it.
You could make that same comment about Pres Bush's election in 2000 (in Florida or a few other states). You could make that same comment about the President's election in 2004 (in Ohio and a few other states). You could say that about ANY election. You could make sports analogies like that (if it wasn't for that home run in the 9th, if it wasn't for that touchdown before halftime, etc). No offense, but that is a stupid comment--nothing personal. "What if's" do NOT refute that FACT that they were accurate.
You also said,
"When the GOP wins lets see how accurate the polls are on that one".
Guess what, we already have. The same RCP poll aggregation was incredibly accurate in 2004 too!! The final RCP collective poll results showed President Bush with a margin of just over a 1% the NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTON. THAT IS EXACTLY what he won by!! EXACTLY the margin. Please look it up.
That poll 'trashing' here is just ridiculous. I just get sick and tired of every poll posted here on FR getting totally trashed--just because Freepers don't happen to like what that poll says. Biases or not (and yes, there are biases--the ONLY poll withOUT a bias is the actual election), polling has gotten incredibly more accurate in the last decade--and as a politician (or even a pundit like we are on here) they are to be ignored, tossed aside, or dismissed 'at your peril'.
All they did was predict a close election and stated who they thought would pull it out.
How did they do in 94?
In 2006?
The polls had the Democrats in a massive win, and then towards the end the inevitable tightening to the margin of error of 3%, in other words, either side could have won it.
Sometimes the weather man gets it right also, but I don't bet the farm on it.
Comparing 2006 to 2002, since '02 was also a gubernatorial election, the turnout in GOP counties in California was generally worse, although the overall turnout percentage also decreased.
Among the 21 counties with over 150k registered voters each, totalling 88.5% of California's 15.8 million registered voters, red(Bush) counties generally had significant turnout percentage losses, while blue(Kerry) counties had minor losses or even modest gains. Blue counties generally had better turnout than red counties in 2006, whereas turnout was more uniform in 2002.
Below is a table of the registration and turnout data for the top 21 counties, as of Nov 12, 2006, sorted by gain in the percentage of voter turnout.
2002 2002 2002 2006 2006 2006 '06-'02 2004 President Reg'd Ballots % Reg'd Ballots % Turnout Red/Blue County Name Voters Cast Turnout Voters Cast Turnout Gain County vote ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sacramento 577156 320222 55.4 624444 254901 40.8 -14.6 even (Kerry, barely) Riverside 649670 309952 47.7 754986 260591 34.5 -13.2 Bush Ventura 391160 199708 51 391077 156283 40 -11 Bush San Bernardino 616402 294151 47.7 751652 276454 36.8 -10.9 Bush San Joaquin 247624 123783 49.9 270356 112965 41.8 -8.1 Bush Alameda 662339 350914 52.9 678765 306810 45.2 -7.7 Kerry Kern 259786 138087 53.1 289233 132106 45.7 -7.4 Bush San Luis Obispo 140659 83903 59.6 155495 81290 52.3 -7.3 Bush Santa Barbara 194672 115488 59.3 183890 96417 52.4 -6.9 Kerry San Mateo 332070 174449 52.5 350427 162810 46.5 -6 Kerry Stanislaus 212642 95175 44.7 207162 81454 39.3 -5.4 Bush Orange 1298892 641784 49.4 1497365 670270 44.8 -4.6 Bush San Francisco 449396 224990 50 418285 190186 45.5 -4.5 Kerry Placer 154130 87059 56.4 177539 93956 52.9 -3.5 Bush Contra Costa 484640 268415 55.3 486441 260155 53.5 -1.8 Kerry San Diego 1411808 683062 48.3 1381835 666650 48.2 -0.1 Bush Fresno 344359 155205 45 331968 154177 46.4 1.4 Bush Los Angeles 3976189 1768369 44.4 3914138 1839366 47 2.6 Kerry Santa Clara 731633 373267 51 749866 404401 53.9 2.9 Kerry Sonoma 232808 124870 53.6 234891 138128 58.8 5.2 Kerry Solano 175819 91280 51.9 163235 98881 60.6 8.7 Kerry ____________________________________________________________________________________ Statewide 15303469 7594228 49.6 15837108 7334443 46.3 -3.3 Kerry
This phenomenon is noticeable especially among the largest counties by voter registration, the top five of which together comprise 52.4% of the state's registered voters. It is very apparent that three of the five largest Bush counties had double-digit depressed turnout compared to 2002 and the large Kerry counties had higher rates of voter turnout compared to large Bush counties in 2006.
Below is a table of the registration and turnout data for the top 21 counties, as of Nov 12, 2006, sorted by the number of registered voters in 2006.
2002 2002 2002 2006 2006 2006 '06-'02 2004 President Reg'd Ballots % Reg'd Ballots % Turnout Red/Blue County Name Voters Cast Turnout Voters Cast Turnout Gain County vote ____________________________________________________________________________________ Los Angeles 3976189 1768369 44.4 3914138 1839366 47 2.6 Kerry Orange 1298892 641784 49.4 1497365 670270 44.8 -4.6 Bush San Diego 1411808 683062 48.3 1381835 666650 48.2 -0.1 Bush Riverside 649670 309952 47.7 754986 260591 34.5 -13.2 Bush San Bernardino 616402 294151 47.7 751652 276454 36.8 -10.9 Bush Santa Clara 731633 373267 51 749866 404401 53.9 2.9 Kerry Alameda 662339 350914 52.9 678765 306810 45.2 -7.7 Kerry Sacramento 577156 320222 55.4 624444 254901 40.8 -14.6 even (Kerry, barely) Contra Costa 484640 268415 55.3 486441 260155 53.5 -1.8 Kerry San Francisco 449396 224990 50 418285 190186 45.5 -4.5 Kerry Ventura 391160 199708 51 391077 156283 40 -11 Bush San Mateo 332070 174449 52.5 350427 162810 46.5 -6 Kerry Fresno 344359 155205 45 331968 154177 46.4 1.4 Bush Kern 259786 138087 53.1 289233 132106 45.7 -7.4 Bush San Joaquin 247624 123783 49.9 270356 112965 41.8 -8.1 Bush Sonoma 232808 124870 53.6 234891 138128 58.8 5.2 Kerry Stanislaus 212642 95175 44.7 207162 81454 39.3 -5.4 Bush Santa Barbara 194672 115488 59.3 183890 96417 52.4 -6.9 Kerry Placer 154130 87059 56.4 177539 93956 52.9 -3.5 Bush Solano 175819 91280 51.9 163235 98881 60.6 8.7 Kerry San Luis Obispo 140659 83903 59.6 155495 81290 52.3 -7.3 Bush ____________________________________________________________________________________ Statewide 15303469 7594228 49.6 15837108 7334443 46.3 -3.3 Kerry
Hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots have not been counted yet, so I'm not sure whether or not these turnout numbers for 2006 reflect those remaining ballots. These remaining ballots are unlikely to influence the outcome of the propositions or statewide offices, since so many people stayed away from the polls.
If turnout had been encouraged in GOP counties, perhaps Secretary of State Bruce McPherson might have overcome his 3% vote deficit to win reelection, State Senator Tom McClintock might have overcome his 4% vote deficit to win Lieutenant Governor, or Prop 90 (restrictions on eminent domain abuse) might have overcome the 5% vote deficit to pass.
These turnout data show that California voters haven't changed their views on conservative values; instead, many voters more likely to vote conservatively simply stayed home.
There were approx 180,000 more votes recorded today. The SoS is now reporting that there are a minimum of 598,268 more ballots to be processed of which 138,000 are from Riverside and San Bernardino alone. (that still excludes several counties that have not yet reported the number of unprocessed ballots). When complete, it looks like San Bernardino will come in with a turnout higher than 2002, and Riverside slightly lower (+/- 3%). In terms of pure voters, both will show a significantly higher amount of votes than 2002 (approx 120,000 votes, combined).
Orange County is now showing a minor decline from 2002 (2.9%), but they also had a huge drive recently that increased registration by 15% from 2002. 2006 actually turned out 55,000 more voters than 2002.
btt
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