2010 Election Thread - Results

Tea Party?s rise could undercut mainstream GOP

You'd have to be completely daffy or your brother to think that the GOP is going to sweep back into power so easily or at all with the teabaggers running the show. So yeah, it's not some 'delusion' or even a prediction without underlying reasons. Personally I think the delusions here is that the GOP is going to be taking over the house or the senate. But that's just me. If they continue to hitch their wagon to the crazy train they're not going anywhere.

But gooo on, keep ****ing that chicken.

 

Isn't that sort of what Push Polling is?

 

The questions were loaded like in push polling, yes... but this was more of a choose your own adventure to find how they were going to pitch her candidacy rather than an actual poll, whereas I thought push polling was still actual polling, it's just highly dishonest polling.

 

Oh look: Americans may give health care law a chance.

Guess that plank's starting to go away and the teabaggers have truly begun to lose ground. And this was before they all lost their damn minds.

I'm not saying it's a done deal that opinion is definitely changing for the better, but if this trend does continue I foresee a bleak, grey November for the Republican'ts. To be fair, I'm not totally on-board with the healthcare reform bill, myself, but it's better than the alternative:

[image=http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/3792/repubchart.jpg]

Of course I'm being facetious with using the Republican't 'plan' but it's not far off from their proposal.

 

Apparently Rand Paul and other Tea Parties wish to repeal the 17th Amendment.

These guys are great PR for the GOP, I tell ya!

Peace,

V-03

 

That's libertarian freedom for you. What a bunch of ****waffles.

 

You realize that if we didn't have direct election of senators, we wouldn't have extremely ideological candidates like Rand Paul running for office? The whole direct election thing causes a lot of the partisanship and focus on money in the Senate.

Regardless, I see no evidence that Rand Paul supports anything like that. I see a handful of shaky articles that say, "Some tea partiers want to repeal the 17th Amendment, and Rand Paul is supported by tea partiers," but that's an essentially meaningless connection, especially in such a disparate movement.

 

You also realize that if we nuked Kentucky from orbit that we wouldn't risk having those whackadoodles vote him in, either? Or that if the American education system wasn't run by a bunch of politicians feeding our kids crap stew that we wouldn't have that as well? Or that if we cordoned off the south and put its citizens in concentration camps that we also wouldn't risk any Rand Pauls? I like this game of how to screw over the south. It's fun. I don't have a problem with senators being directly voted upon by citizens, but I do have a problem with the people of the United States for being so damn dumb as to allow that schmuck even a chance at victory at all.

 

Few fun new election results thus far. Alabama is having a fairly crazy primary finish today, with some background info here, and the results from today.

Additionally, the race is still on in New Mexico for the governor's seat, which will be the interesting one.
The current Lieutenant Governor, Diane Denish, won the primary for the Democrats. She got her current office on the same ticket as Bill Richardson in 2006, with 68.8% of the vote.
On the flip side of the coin, the leader in the GOP is Susana Martinez, who has to hold on to at least 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff, and is currently holding at around 50.7% of the vote, with Dona Ana county, where Martinez was district attorney for 13 years, has yet to report any results.
If Martinez wins the nomination, for those that care about it, that New Mexico will have it's first female governor for sure, and apparently only the 3rd time where both candidates have been female, so it would seem the gender thing can't be an issue. But that will get it some attention. The most recent polling for the likely match-up from Rasmussen has 43-42 with Denish leading, and Survey USA has Martinez up 49-43. If anyone else has been reading fivethirtyeight.com's analysis of how the different pollsters compare, then you'll already know why I'm very confused about why Rasmussen is the one projecting better results for the Democrat right now.


In other news, for some amazing reason in the lead-up to the California primary next year, for a state that's about to go completely bankrupt someone has decided that the Whitman campaign's lead issue for the governor's race should, apparently, be abortion.


EDIT: I'm having to infer this, but it's seeming that in New Mexico I was wrong in that there's no run-off requirement, so a win is a win there.

 

New Mexico's going to have its first female governor; so will between 0 and 7 other states (Oklahoma, South Carolina, California, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota).

Right now, 23 states have had female governors and 27 have not. Come January, the balance will have likely flipped.

 

Looks like in recent polls, Rand Paul's huge lead is dropping off quickly.

 

Arizona has not had a man as governor since Clinton was just starting his second term, back in 1997. Fife Symington resigned, Jane Hull took over and we've had a female governor ever since. I'd settle for a governor that didn't have the same base name (Jane/Janet/Jan).

 

Reality: Oops

Does this lady really expect us to buy that load of crap? Yes, it's a Kos article, however they do state their source. I'm guessing the mainstream Republican'ts don't know how to use the internets or anything. Amazing.

 

Wow. Just... wow. That's nigh unspinable.

 

You guys are being hugely unfair. One of the chemicals used at the factory where he worked has been shown to have a modest association with an increased risk of lung disease. Which totally justifies everything.

Oh, wait.

I'm really shocked that no one is discussing the most important result from yesterday, though. Dale Peterson, Republican candidate for Agricultural Commissioner of Alabama, lost his primary bid.

 

It's not unfair to bash a woman who stated it the way she did in a way that insinuated her father had been there. Anyway, that poor sap in Alabama lost, aww...guess he'll just have to play with his rifle all by himself now.

Gallup Poll shows largest Republican lead ever

And as a user on fark pointed out:

So, I'm not too worried about this poll. And polls are crap anyway, just thought I'd share some 'bad' news.

 

Honestly, I think that shift is going to more mean that some surprising elections may shift, rather than having an effect on the notable elections. High profile elections bring out the fringes because they can get nation-wide support to focus on those elections when they don't have the needed support just in a specific region.

 

It's too early to say the GOP is doing bad in Arizona or Nevada, since it's pre-primary. We don't even know who's going to be running yet. Lowden, the woman who took flack for the chickens for healthcare comments, has lost the momentum and is now statistically tied with one of her opponents. Also, Reid hasn't polled about 45% against anyone this year. He's got a lot of money, but he's by no means out of the woods yet.

Meanwhile, my home state of Virginia has yet to elect a women to statewide office. And I can count our former Congresswomen on one hand. I wonder if it's the political culture, or just chance that makes the difference.

 

FiveThirtyEight has several reviews, but tomorrow will be a big election day with 12 states voting (including my own, California). In California, it looks like the race is about to begin as the GOP candidates for governor and Senate, having been forced to run to the right to secure the nominations have given up ground in the center and will now have from now til November to try to regain that.

 

California will be interesting, especially since the California GOP looks likely to be taken over by female CEO's: Meg Whithman (eBay) for Governor and Carly Fiorina (HP, of "demon sheep" fame) for Senator Barbara Boxer's seat.

But the Democratic primary in Arkansas will be the most interesting race to follow tonight, last time I checked Blanche Lincoln was behind her progressive challenger by 4 percentage points, and that's with Bill Clinton's support.

 

Even more interesting is the potential for Orly Taitz, queen of the Birthers, to become an official Republican Party nominee in California. This will be worse than even Rand Paul in Kentucky or Susan Angle in Nevada (another Tea Party candidate that may win tonight. Her positions include turning Yucca Mountain into a giant nuclear power plant, and abolishing Social Security, among other gems). I guess now we'll see just how radical the Republican Party has truly become.

 

Her positions include turning Yucca Mountain into a giant nuclear power plant

I don't know about her other positions, but because the storage aspect of Yucca has been quashed, I thought the proposal here was to reprocess fuel and use it in a series of smaller nuclear power plants within the complex to help end dependence on fossil fuels. France, Japan, and other nuclear power rich countries already do this.

You know, JW, I would have thought that you would have supported such a plan. On one hand, there is criticism against BP and "how could this spill happen?" and on the other, we have criticism about forward thinking energy. As the joke was repeated in the Arizona press over this issue- "more people died at Chappaquiddick than Three Mile Island."

 

So far, Orly Taitz is being smashed in the poll, by far more than I expected since her campaigning didn't say who she was, so you had to know who she was in the first place to know she's unhinged. Right now, with about 1/8th of the vote in, Orly Taitz is losing by a 50% margin.

In other news, it would seem that California has just disbarred third parties, if my reading of the law is correct.

 

Prop 14 doesn't mean third parties are barred from elections. It means there's going to be an jungle primary with all candidates, and the top two from there will go on to the general election. This should make it easier for moderates to get elected. Instead of pandering to the left or right to win the party nomination, and then running back to the middle, a candidate can just be a centrist the whole time. Since there's way too much of a partisan divide in California, this is a good thing.

I may be wrong on this but it should also make it easier for third party candidates to actually get votes. Normally, a third party candidate is nominated at a pointless convention in a room somewhere and then fails to achieve any modicum of success after that. Under this system, they'll be competing with a half dozen other people, and they'll be doing good if they get 15% of the vote. In a free for all like this, truly weird candidates like David Duke and Jean-Marie Le Pen can get to the second round and be one of the two remaining candidates. But don't worry, they'll never be actually elected.

 

Nikki Haley (the Indian-American woman running for Mark Sanford's seat as Governor of South Carolina, endorsed by Romney and Palin, recently called a "raghead" and "adulterous" by some really dirty politics) got 49%, but forced to go into a runoff. She has denied the affair allegations, which seemed suspiciously tied to the other campaigns to begin with, and said she would resign as Governor if they were proven. Runoff on June 22nd.

Blanche Lincoln very surprisingly beat Lt. Gov. Halter in the Arkansas Democratic primary. Political analysts say that her getting very tough on Financial Reform (the bank bailout was a big issue in Halter's campaign) helped her, as well as Bill Clinton appearances and Obama robocalls (no idea why Obama stuck with her), and her campaign seeming more "grassroots" in the end because of Halter's Big Labor support from out of state. She also seems to have won thanks to strong African-American support.

Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO, "demon sheep" ads) won the GOP nomination, to challenge Barbara Boxer as Senator of California.

Meg Whitman (former eBay CEO) won the GOP nomination in California for Governor, running against Jerry Brown. Spent over $70 million of her own money for this primary victory.

Sharron Angle has won GOP nomination to challenge Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. She seems to have supported making beer illegal, abolishing Social Security, and has ties to Scientology.

What do you mean?

And what do you think about Jerry Brown's return? I thought that guy was done, but it seems he never did follow convention. Funny how he's kind of the "establishment candidate" this time around.