News from the Votemaster

Election Results

President Barack Obama was reelected President with a strong majority in the electoral college although not quite as big as in 2008. If he wins Florida, where he is currently leading, but where the final results are not in (because the vote counters got tired and went to bed instead of finishing the job last night), he will have won every state this year that he won in 2008 except Indiana and North Carolina. Those two are deep red states that Republicans nearly always win. They simply have reverted to the norm (although North Carolina was close: Romney's margin was only 3 points). Noteworthy is that Obama appears to have won all the swing states except North Carolina. If Florida stays blue, Obama will have 332 electoral votes (vs. 365 in 2008). If Florida becomes red in the end, Obama will still have hit 300 EVs, with a total of 303. Either way, a solid victory. None of the media are reporting anything about NE-02, which Obama won last time, so let us assume Romney won all five of Nebraska's electoral votes.

All the talk about one candidate winning the electoral college and the other winning the popular vote was off base. Obama won the popular vote handily, with a margin of about 2.5 million votes, although the exact total is not known yet. This represents a percentage of 50.1%, to Romney's 48.4%. If it holds, he will have won by 1.7%, slightly more than the average of the national polls was predicting. In 2008, Obama got 53% of the popular vote,so Obama's victory was smaller this time. That is not entirely surprising, since Obama had far more money than McCain did in 2008 but in 2012 the Romney campaign plus various billionaire-funded superPACs had more money than Obama. Money matters, but it is not everything.

Takeaways

Here are some of our takeways, in no particular order.

• It's not just the economy, stupid. It's the whole package
• Abandoning large constitutencies, like women, Latinos, and young voters is not a winning formula
• The partisan identification in 2008 was not a freak accident. There are more Democrats than Republicans
• The candidate matters: on paper Rick Perry and Mitt Romney were great, but the real men weren't
• Nominating a sneering plutocrat who likes firing people and writes off half the country is not a wise move
• If you can't release your tax returns because they are full of poison, don't run for President
• There aren't enough billionaires to buy the election
• Don't talk about gay marriage unless you are supporting it
• And above all, don't talk about rape except maybe if you are proposing to castrate rapists

Whither the Republican Party?

Whenever a party loses an election big time, there is a lot of wailing and the pulling of hair. Although the popular vote was close, the Republicans lost nearly all the swing states, including New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. They probably lost Florida, and almost lost North Carolina. It is true that some of the races were close, but in politics a win is a win and a loss is a loss. With the loss of Virginia and close call in North Carolina, the party's base has shrunk to the Deep South (except for Florida), and big, empty states in the Great Plains and Mountain West where the buffalo once roamed but the electoral votes never did and still don't.

As we mentioned many times this year, the traditionally blue states--the ones Democrats have won five times in a row--are worth 242 EVs. Obama won every one of them. None were even close. Not even Wisconsin, where Obama had a 7-point margin even with a Wisconsite on the opposing ticket. Romney made a last-ditch effort to win Pennsylvania, but came up short. The blue team won by 5 points. So next time around, we can talk about the 242 EVs that the Democrats have won six times in a row. Rick Santorum or Marco Rubio aren't going to make a dent here, probably not Paul Ryan, either. Chris Christie might.

But something new has been added to the mix. New Mexico is now dark blue, so make that 247. Obama also won Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire by margins of 6, 5, and 5 points, respectively. If they get added to the Democratic base, it becomes 263. If the Democrats have a floor of 263 EVs in 2016, the Republicans have to win all of Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. All of them. Moving farther to the right, as seems entirely possible, is probably not the ticket to win these big, diverse swing states.

Despite the fact that it is unmentionable, we are going to mention the 800-pound gorilla wandering around the polling place: race. There are certainly white voters in Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Florida who didn't vote for Obama due to his color but are otherwise not fundamentally opposed to a Democrat. All of the 2016 likely Democratic nominees--Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and Martin O'Malley--are lilly white. Even senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (who will be under pressure from the left to audition for the role of Howard Dean), is 31/32 white. The racist voters might well vote for a Democrat in 2016, unless the nominee is a woman, which opens a different can of worms.

Demographically, the Republican Party's base is angry, old white men. That is no formula for future victories. Democrats did well with women, Latinos, and young people. Unless the Republicans stop trying to repeal both Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut, they are not going to improve their standing with women. If Obama makes a big effort at passing immigration reform and either gets it or has it go down on a party-line vote in the House, the Republicans can write off Latinos for a generation. As to young people, political identities are set early. Twenty somethings who have now voted for the Democrats twice aren't going to be easy to peal away unless the Republicans can pull an elephant out of the hat.

The Blame Game Starts Today

Republicans will begin the Great Scapegoat Hunt today. It is like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey except it uses an elephant instead of a donkey and a 6-inch nail instead of a pin, and you have to drive it all the way in. Actually, we did this yesterday though to beat the crowds. Here is the tea party version and here is what Karl Rove is thinking.

How Did We Do?

Yesterday, we predicted Obama would win 303 electoral votes. He won either 303 or 332, depending how Florida ultimately turns out. The map showed North Carolina as a tie (although the blog said Romney would carry it, which he narrowly did). Other than these two states, we called all the winners correctly, for a score of either 48 of 50, 49 of 50, or 48 of 49, depending on how you want to score (or not score) North Carolina. All the talk from the Republicans about how skewed the polls were turned out to be--in the now famous word of Joe Biden--malarkey. More about how individual pollsters did later this week.

About Last Night

It looks like we're too popular for our own good. Up until yesterday, this site had been getting about a quarter of a million visits a day and had been handling that easily with one server, which was running at about 5% of capacity. To prepare for election night, a second server was added and all seemed fine. To make a long story short, there were 2 million visits yesterday and the servers couldn't handle the load. They were pumping out 200 million bits/sec, but that wasn't enough capacity. It was also impossible to update the blog and map because it was impossible to log in. Eventually I started to do the updates on a different server, but the lines were so clogged that it was impossible to transfer the updated map and other files to the servers. The result was not a very good election night experience, with slow and erratic service. After the networks declared Obama the winner, people started going to bed and we were able to resume normal operation. Our apologies for the mess.

There is much more to say. But not today. Come back tomorrow for more thoughts.

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03:30 a.m. EST

Time for a break and some sleep now. Back later in the day with a wrap-up.

03:20 a.m. EST

CNN has called the Nevada Senate race for Sen. Dean Heller (R=NV). The only open race now is North Dakota, where Heidi Heitkamp is a 3,000-vote lead.

02:50 a.m. EST

Women sweep up Hampshire. The voters of New Hampshire elected women to occupy the governor's mansion and to fill both House seats. Together with the the two women senators, Women have all the top jobs in New Hampshire.

Same-sex marriage was approved in Maine as well as Maryland and maybe in Washington state. An anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment lost in Minnesota.

02:35 a.m. EST

Mitch McConnell issued a very aggressive statement telling the President to come with a plan to avoid the fiscal cliff and then promising to look at it very critically. In other words, he promised more gridlock. Note: McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 and is afraid of being tea partied if he compromises,

Women did very well in the Senate. There will be new women senators in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. Women are departing in Maine and Texas though. Still it is a net gain. If Heidi Heitkamp or Shelley Berkley win, that will add to the number of women in the Senate.

02:30 a.m. EST

Voters in Colorado and Washington have approved legalizing marijuana for all uses, not just medical ones.

01:55 a.m. EST

Three Senate races are still open. In Montana, where Jon Tester has a 9-point lead but only 41% of the votes have been counted.. In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp has a 3,000 vote lead with 91% of the votes counted. Finally, in Nevada, Dean Heller is ahead by 7,000 votes with 91% of the votes counted.

01:30 a.m. EST

Obama gave his victory speech. It was classic Obama and the audience went wild.

CNN has projected that Tammy Baldwin will win the Wisconsin Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI). She will be the first openly gay senator. It will be interesting to see if any other senators come out of the closet net.

01:00 a.m. EST

Romney gave a concession speech. It was short and sweet, emphasizing how important it will be for Obama to reach across the aisle. Romney's toast now. The rest of the day Republicans will be blaming him personally what they see as a national disaster worse than Hurricane Sandy.

The story is not over yet in the Senate. Four states still hang in the balance:

• Wisconsin - Tammy Baldwin (D) vs. Tommy Thompson (R)
• Montana - Jon Tester (D) vs. Denny Rehberg (R)
• Nevada - Shelley Berkley (D) vs. Dean Heller (R)
• North Dakota - Heidi Heitkamp (D) vs. Rick Berg (R)

00:48 a.m. EST

Some results about ballot initiatives on marijuana.

• Arkansas - No on legalizing medical marijuana
• Massachusetts - Yes on legalizing medical marijuana
• Colorado - Yes on legalizing marijuana
• Oregon - No on legalizing marijuana

Additionally, Maryland, voted to legalize same-sex marriage.

Here is the current state of the Senate races.

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Ind	I %	Pct reporting
Arizona	Richard Carmona	45%	Jeff Flake	51%			60% reporting
California	Dianne Feinstein*	57%	Elizabeth Emken	43%			28% reporting
Connecticut	Chris Murphy	53%	Linda McMahon	45%			60% reporting
Delaware	Tom Carper*	66%	Kevin Wade	29%			96% reporting
Florida	Bill Nelson*	55%	Connie McGillicuddy	42%			89% reporting
Hawaii	Maizie Hirono		Linda Lingle				No results yet
Indiana	Joe Donnelly	40%	Richard Mourdock	44%			91% reporting
Maine	Cynthia Dill	14%	Charlie Summers	29%	Angus King	54%	49% reporting
Maryland	Ben Cardin*	54%	Dan Bongino	28%			82% reporting
Massachusetts	Elizabeth Warren	53%	Scott Brown*	47%			85% reporting
Michigan	Debbie Stabenow*	57%	Pete Hoekstra	40%			55% reporting
Minnesota	Amy Klobuchar*	64%	Kurt Bills	32%			57% reporting
Mississippi	Albert Gore	40%	Roger Wicker*	57%			76% reporting
Missouri	Claire McCaskill*	54%	Todd Akin	40%			90% reporting
Montana	Jon Tester*	51%	Denny Rehberg	44%			19% reporting
Nebraska	Bob Kerrey	41%	Deb Fischer	59%			85% reporting
Nevada	Shelley Berkley	46%	Dean Heller*	46%			78% reporting
New Jersey	Bob Menendez*	59%	Joseph Kyrillos	39%			83% reporting
New Mexico	Martin Heinrich	51%	Heather Wilson	45%			74% reporting
New York	Kirsten Gillibrand*	71%	Wendy Long	28%			63% reporting
North Dakota	Heidi Heitkamp	51%	Rick Berg	49%			89% reporting
Ohio	Sherrod Brown*	50%	Josh Mandel	46%			81% reporting
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	54%	Tom Smith	44%			88% reporting
Rhode Island	Sheldon Whitehouse*	65%	Barry Hinckley	35%			82% reporting
Tennessee	Mark Clayton	65%	Bob Corker*	30%			87% reporting
Texas	Paul Sadler	40%	Ted Cruz	57%			88% reporting
Utah	Scott Howell	31%	Orrin Hatch*	65%			55% reporting
Vermont	Bernie Sanders*	71%	John MacGovern	25%			78% reporting
Virginia	Tim Kaine	52%	George Allen	48%			88% reporting
Washington	Maria Cantwell*	59%	Michael Baumgartner	41%			55% reporting
West Virginia	Joe Manchin*	61%	John Raese	36%			88% reporting
Wisconsin	Tammy Baldwin	51%	Tommy Thompson	47%			71% reporting
Wyoming	Tim Chesnut	22%	John Barrasso*	76%			89% reporting

00:00 a.m. EST

Now that everyone is in bed, the servers are back up. At this moment, Colorado, Virgina, and Florida are still undecided, but Obama is leading in all of them. If he wins them all, then the electoral map is the same as 2008 except with Indiana and North Carolina. I'll start looking at the Senate next.

11:17 p.p. EST

CNN has called Ohio for Obama and with that the election. So Obama has been reelected, the Democrats will keep the Senate and the Republicans will keep the House. A year and $6 billion later and we are back where we started.

The next issue is dealing with the fiscal cliff. If the Republicans continue to obstruct, we have a problem. A newly reelected President won't easily let the opposition dictate terms.

10:16 p.p. EST

Claire McCaskill won MO. The Democrats will definitely keep the Senate. With both Mourdock and Akin losing, the tea party will have some explaining to do.

9:47 p.p. EST

CNN projects wins for Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Joe Donnelly (IN). No way GOP can win Senate now.

9:20 p.p. EST

Servers are hopeless.

9:15 p.p. EST

CNN projects Republicans to keep the House.

8:18 PM EST

The servers are totally overloaded. This may not work. I'm trying but not hopeful.

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---The Votemaster