Election Day Aftermath
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 11/5/08 @ 3:16 am - Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, Featured, Uncategorized
Obama, as expected, won going away but the surprise to me was that he won Indiana. I think his victory here speaks volumes about the effort put forth by all the campaign volunteers from voter registration to get out the vote. An amazing accomplishment and something very few people thought possible before (and even after) the primary.
Wins by both Mitch Daniels and Obama was another turn of events I didn’t anticipate 6 months ago. There’s definitely some strange dynamics there. I know there will be a boatload of people harping about the ineffective JLT campaign but I think this race was lost when the Democrats capitulated during the property tax debate. Once HB1001 passed, this race was over.
I was also surprised by the margin of victory that Congressman Mark Souder won by as I really expected Montagano to outperform Hayhurst. Let’s take a look at the other races I highlighted yesterday as ones to watch:
1. Can Gary Snyder break the Republican stranglehold on Huntington politics and win a seat on the county council?
The answer was a resounding NO. Gary Snyder ran a spirited campaign but obviously didn’t connect with enough voters to win.
2. How many seats will Democrats gain in the state legislature? I posted my thoughts on the top tier races back in mid July.
Results aren’t in on some of the races as of the time I started writing this. It does look like three of the races I highlighted could be victories for the Democrats.
3. How will the township assessor referendum turn out? Are voters ready to do away with township government?
Well two of the townships voted to eliminate their assessor but Wayne township voted no.
4. Will Democrats Susan Hoot and/or Kevin Knuth win a seat on the Allen County council?
Both Hoot and Knuth came up short as the Republicans, including Bob Armstrong (no, not that Bob Armstrong), won.
5. How will the FWCS races play out? Will the Code Blue Schools candidates carry the day or will the status quo win out?
The status quo scored a resounding victory as all 3 Code Blue Schools candidates were defeated by large margins.
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30 Responses to “Election Day Aftermath”
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Montagano mistakes
1. Spent a lot of money saying he was pro-life and pro-gun. Voters don’t care as much about social issues when they are worried about the economy.
2. Should have hammered Souder on the bailout.
3. Kept talking about helping the middle-class. Define “help” and “middle-class”.
In the dictionary, next to the word “incumbent” they should just insert a picture of Souder. Talk about illustrating the power of incumbency. How Montagano could get only 40% (barely more than some of Souder’s fringe opponents in the past) is beyond me. Montagano performed closer to Parra than he did to Hayhurst and it was in the midst of a Democratic Tsunami.
I think it is safe (and a little bit sad) to say that Souder will be our congressman until he, and he alone, decides he does not want to be.
Green Jeans,
Montagano was closer to Parra in terms of candidate quality than he was to Hayhurst. When he goes out there and says “I’m pro-gun and pro-life”, he is saying “Please like me.” Hayhurst could have won this.
I hate to disagree with the guy who gave us the slogan “give me liberty or give me cancer,” but here it goes.
I agree with Robert on number 2, he should have hammered Souder more on the bailout. But the only reason he got to 40% was because he said he was pro-life and pro-gun. He doesn’t say that, he has no chance. And I don’t blame him for not defining “help” and “middle class.” Souder never defined his policies.
Bob, I am going to have to disagree with you. Hayhurst would not have won this. Montagano spent 1.4million and lost. Hayhurst would have done better but would not have won based on how everything went yesterday.
On an unrelated note. If people would have voted yesterday on a 350 million school proposal, it would have likely been defeated 2 to 1. However, all 3 “code blue” candidates were crushed in their races? How is this reconciled. very strange to say the least.
I agree that Souder is probably our Congressman for eternity. I suppose a strategic gerrymander could oust him but that’s not likely.
Anything could happen in the future but right now it’s hard to imagine a better scenario over a 4 year period for Democrats and yet Souder still won both races quite easily.
I wonder if any serious Democrat will ever bother to challenge him again?
Montagano sounded like he was trying to young Obama.
Cumtwa for Congress. You heard it here first.
I think Montagano made so many errors and blew himself up. It was a race for him to loose and he figured a way to do it.
1- He claimed he was “pro everything” that would make you a member of the middle to far right of the GOP. That would let people thinking two things. First being why is he a Democrat? Second, this has got to be smoke he is blowing out of his ears.
2- In his ads he brought nothing new to the table at all. He kept beating up on things many of us who think Souder should have gone already know. So what ideas is he bringing?
3- He is hardly known in the area and then to watch a Souder ad that he is 27 years old, he moved to the area to run, has no current employment, Dad bought him his house, and Dad paid the property taxes on the house. That pretty well seals the deal be it totally fact or not.
4- If Souder believes 52% of the vote is some kind of landslide victory then he is sadly wrong. Larsen spent nearly zero compared to the others and grabbed 5% of the vote. Montagano obtained 43% of the vote and few people in Allen County knew who the guy was until 60 days ago.
I could have voted for Mr. Larsen over Souder, as a protest vote (based on knowing Larsen’s chances of winning was nearly zero). But to think about someone like Montagano winning and joining the far left Liberals in the house was to much of risk for me.
J.Q, call it what you will but 52% of the vote in a 3 person race, in a year that Indiana turns BLUE and there is a Presidential landslide……. is a HUGE victory, period. Souder can call it a landslide, a butt kicking, a referendum on his brilliance or whatever he wants to call it.
Montagano spent close to 1.5 million and did just a little bit better than Maria Parra who spent about 200 bucks and ran off the debate stage crying. At the end of the day, Parra and Montagano both had it handed to them by Souder.
Where does Montagano go from here? Bristol town council? Or will he pull a Kelty and view his defeat as a launching pad for a higher office, like Senator?
It appears as if Montagano’s strategy was to ride Obama coat tails that did not exist in Indiana. The fact there were no Obama coat tails is the real story. Montagano ducked direct debates except the big televised one at the end thinking he could ride the Obama wave into office. Frankly I was surprised he showed for the concession speech given his previous behavior. He was as ill-defined as Obama himself, heck even the JG couldn’t bring themselves to prop him up with an endorsement. Throughout the District Mike should have picked up that his strategy might be flawed if he happened to notice the number of Mitch for Governor signs in yards right next to Obama-Biden signs (there were quite a few).
At the end of the day, the election was a referendum on George Bush and his administration, not Republicans in general. If it were Rebublicans, you’d have gotten a super-majority in the Senate, and 30-40 seats in the House. The Republicans who got picked off were, in my opinion, of two types, 1) successfully defined by their opponents as aligned with George Bush, and 2) so moderate/ineffective that voters just replaced them with REAL liberals (Shays, Sununu, Dole…).
There will be those attempting to create an echo chamber saying, “Conservatism lost”. They will be wrong. Conservatism was never tried.
Green Jeans,
I will support, President Elect Obama.
Yet, please stick to the facts, first of all this was not a presidental landslide.
And second, I do not believe in over-spending or trying to buy a political position no matter what level of politics.
Thirdly, I did not vote for Souder.
I think you owe me an apology for calling me always an idiot…on a past post. Be careful.
Obama wins by a landslide in these places.
International Headlines:
China Daily
Sify, India
Pravada, Russia
Guaidian.co.UK
Fred,
I will disagree with many of your points- but this one really stands out:
“Montagano ducked direct debates except the big televised one at the end thinking he could ride the Obama wave into office.”
Montagano did no “ducking”. In fact, he had trouble getting Souder to agree to ANY debates.
And as a closing point:
yes. conservatism was tried- in the primary….and it LOST!!!
Fred, Wasnt Palin a conservatism Hail Mary?
Bobett, How was Obama’s victory not a landslide?
7 Million vote margin and nearly 200 electoral vote margin? It was not Reaganesque but it certainly was an earth movement of some sort.
Kevin,
You have some disappointed folks in Elkhart and Kendallville who disagree with you. People who attended events where both candidates were to show and debate, answer questions, and only Souder showed, or Montagano showed late, stayed long enough to answer a question, and left almost immediately.
I stand by my earlier comment regarding the results of the general election.
Consider the facts, turnout nationally this year was DOWN, not up. DOWN by more than five million votes from 2004 (117M+ in 2008 to 123M+ in 2004). Somebody did not bother to vote this year. Who was it?
According to CNN, it turns out that 2008 participation by Democrats was 7-points higher than Republicans. There was a modest 3% increase nationally in Democrat voter registration this year from 2004’s tallies, while Republicans dropped turnout by at least 15% this year from 2004.
So those eight million Republicans who thought there was no reason to vote helped get Obama elected President. It all came down to turnout, the independents, and the undecided voter, in that order. (Thanks to DJ for some of the data)
Mr. Green Jeans,
I guess Sarah Palin could be viewed as a Hail Mary, but to save the McCain campaign she would have not only had to throw the pass, but run down the field, catch it, and score. That’s a lot to ask of anyone, wouldn’t you say.
As I said in my earlier post, 8M Republicans that voted in 2004, didn’t show in 2008. If they did, McCain would have won by 1M votes. The question we have to ask is, why didn’t they show?
Fred & Mary Green Jeans the ball has been passed,
It’s up to you & your party to make the touch-down!Good Luck We are all counting on your Change
I’m sure we will come together and make it a Touch-down.
Hail Mary!
Perhaps Knuth does not understand politics. The death knell of conservatism would have been a McCain victory, where Republican congressmen would have to get behind and support McCain’s centrist to liberal policies. Now, they have nothing to lose by being obstructionists and I expect a resurrgence. Bush I named Quayle as a bow to conservatives, it turned out that Bush himself was not a conservative, Clinton beat him, had a democratically controlled congress, which led to the biggest conservative revolution in modern history (sound familiar?).
I still think Palin was a net gain. I know my parents and others who love her and may not have voted for McCain without Palin. I think everybody realizes that the press unfairly tried to destroy Palin. I had a liberal friend who came into my office every day and would trumpet something Palin said, straight from an MSNBC soundbite. Finally, I said to her that when Palin said something as dumb as FDR was President during the stock market crash of 1929 and comforted Americans on tv, which is what Biden said, to come find me. Needless to say, I stopped hearing about stupid things that Palin said. I think the only way McCain prevents this race from being a complete runaway, was naming Palin as VP.
Well all is good for a while.
Amazing how we come together and then free each other.
I say, Freedom is at each door.
Read your Constitution & Our Bill of Rights.
yeah Keith….I don’t understand politics…that’s it.
The question is this: If a conservative could not win a primary, how could they win a general election?
If only we understand the Constitution then,
maybe we will all come together.
Obama took Indiana only because of a rejection of Bush and econ. Look at the amount of money Obama spent here over McCain. Look at the number of times he visited Indiana over McCain. Obama used one of the largest (even best ground programs ever seen in the state)ground operations ever seen in the state… Yet, with the most perfect of perfect storms Obama just slipped out a win. Hardly makes Indiana a blue state! If he had won by 10 points or more then maybe something could be said.
I just wonder how long all of these people that supported him will be there waiting four years or more for the things he said he would deliver? I wonder how the far left is going to take it if Obama moves toward the center like he acted after the being named his party’s canidate? I wonder how the center is going to act if he moves back to the far left? The biggest side show may not be the GOP but watching Obama try to walk the plank between the far left and center left!
Time will tell the truth.
God Bless America.
Certainly the evangelical conservative vote would allow the Republican Party to exploit its numbers for another 4 years in power in exchange for a contrived sense of belonging and a continued promise of a pro-life plank. Or so the GOP thought. The truth is, a split of evangelical Christians from the Republican Party was as inevitable as the realization that no meaningful progress has been made toward securing a right to life, and that the policies of the GOP over at least the last 6 years have promoted Pharisaic as opposed to Christian ideals, however loosely defined. For all of us who recovered from the ‘God is a Republican’ disorder, better late then never. For all the rest left pissed or wondering what just happened- its called democracy. God Bless America!
One final thought. There is a small chance that Souder could lose his seat due to redistricting, depending on which party gets to gerrymander the Congressional districts after the 2010 census.
Fred,
Not sure where you got that data but it’s incorrect. In 2004 there was 121,480,019 votes in the Presidential race. This year we’ve already recorded 121,536,284 votes and that’s with ~2% still outstanding.
Again, I think your analysis is incorrect. In 2004 CNN showed the party ID breakdown at 37%R/37%D/26%I. In 2008 that breakdown became 39/32/29. The Republican votes didn’t stay home - they stopped being Republican. 2% went to the Democrats and the other 3% were Independents which Obama won 52-44.
Jeff,
The data I used was Voting age population (United States Election Project for Nov. 2004): 221,256,931. Estimated number of voters in the 2004 election was 122,294,978. The source was the Federal Election Commission, 2004 Official Presidential Election Results, Feb. 11, 2005, and the early results of the 2008 election as of 4 Nov 08.
Jeff,
As of a few minutes ago, the vote totals for this years general election is 120,558,547. I suggest there will be more dithering up until the FEC makes it official in Feb ‘09. I am with you on doing the analysis and certainly want to get it right. I suggest we wait until the dust settles and dissect the results with the final numbers, wherever they end up.
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