News from the Votemaster

Exit Polls Showed Expected Results

The exit polls didn't show any huge surprises. Men preferred Romney, with 52% of them voting for him, while 55% of the women voted for Obama. Romney got 59% of the white vote but Obama got the black vote (93%), Latino vote (71%), and Asian vote (73%). As has been noted before, as the white vote drops to 70% and below, this is going to be the end of the Republican Party unless it can start appealing to women and minorities.

Young voters, 18-29, gave 60% of their votes to Obama but seniors went for Romney with 56% of their votes. The split by education was nonlinear. Noncollege voters went for Obama with 51% of the vote and people with postgraduate degrees were even more strongly Democratic (55%), but voters with a college degree went for Romney, with 51% voting for him. Voters making under $50,000 went for the Democrat but those making more than that went for the Republican. 56% of married voters supported Romney but 62% of unmarried voters went for Obama.

How Can the Republicans Win Elections Again?

Lots of advice for the Republicans is being offered. Here is what Chris Cillizza suggests.

• Run on what you are for, not what you are against
• Make inroads with Latinos, possibly by helping Obama pass an immigration reform bill
• Run a ground game as good as the Democrats have done
• Avoid disastrous candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock
• Pray that Obama puts John Kerry in the cabinet and Scott Brown wins his seat

Republicans Openly Lobbying for Kerry as Secretary of State

It is rumored that President Obama plans to nominate U.N. ambassador Susan Rice as Hillary Clinton's successor as Secretary of State. Since there is a history of black women named Rice running the State Dept., you might think her confirmation would be a formality. No way. Senate Republicans are talking about a comment she made shortly after Ambassador Stevens was killed in Libya and acting like she is a new Benedict Arnold. They are openly praising Sen. John Kerry to the moon as a better appointee. Apparently he improved drastically since 2004, since he wasn't getting many kudos from them then. What they really mean, of course, is "We don't give a hoot who the Secretary of State is, but we would sure like a special election for a Senate seat in Massachusetts since we think Scott Brown could win it." But saying this out loud is considered gauche in Senate circles.

Michael Bloomberg To Become a Political Force

The Citizens United decision seems to have unleashed right-wing billionaires, who spent millions of dollars helping Republican candidates. That balance may change a little now as New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, starts to ramp up his political spending. He dropped $9 million on some House races this year and is suggesting that is only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg. After his third term as mayor is finished next year, Bloomberg plans to get more involved in funding political campaigns of people he agrees with. His major issues are gun control and climate change. With an estimated wealth of $22 billion and far more political acumen than most billionaires (who gave $300 million to Karl Rove and got nothing in return), Bloomberg could be a real force taking down candidates supported by the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg used to be a Republican but is now an independent, but given that he wants to help candidates who support gun control and want to stop climate change, much of his money is likely to go to Democrats in the future. If he were to spend 10 percent of his fortune, that is, $2 billion, on 1000 House races, he could put $2 million into each race. That is a lot of money for a House race and could significantly alter the composition of the House.

Jerry Moran Expected to Lead NRSC

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), is currently the only candidate to lead the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2014 and many Republican senators are privately grumbling about him. He has been in the Senate less than 2 years and is not an especially good fundraiser. Republicans will be defending only 13 seats in 2014, all but one (in Maine) are easy victories, so he doesn't have to do any work there. The grumbling is that the Democrats are defending 20 seats, some of them very vulnerable. The fear among some Republicans is that tea party candidates will win primaries in these states and then lose battles they could have won and Moran will not be able to recruit establishment candidates strong enough to prevent this. The most vulnerable Democrats are as follows, but there could always be surprises in other races as well.

State	Incumbent	Party	Danger
Alaska	Mark Begich	Dem	High
Arkansas	Mark Pryor	Dem	Medium
Louisiana	Mary Landrieu	Dem	High
Montana	Max Baucus	Dem	Medium
North Carolina	Kay Hagan	Dem	High
South Dakota	Tim Johnson	Dem	High

Two other Democratic senators, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), are potentially vulnerable since they are from swing states, but female Democrats did so well in New Hampshire last week and Warner is a multimillionaire capable of putting whatever it takes into his campaign in a now-purple state, they are probably not high-priority Republican targets any more.

Final Senate Results

Here are the final Senate results, except for Arizona, where 600,000 of the 3 million ballots have not yet been counted. The races are sorted in descending order of the Democratic margin, so you can see where the close races were.

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Independent	I %	D - R
Vermont	Bernie Sanders	71.1%	John MacGovern	24.8%			46.3%
New York	Kirsten Gillibrand	71.9%	Wendy Long	26.7%			45.2%
Delaware	Tom Carper	66.4%	Kevin Wade	29.0%			37.4%
Minnesota	Amy Klobuchar	65.3%	Kurt Bills	30.6%			34.7%
Rhode Island	Sheldon Whitehouse	64.8%	Barry Hinckley	35.2%			29.6%
Maryland	Ben Cardin	55.3%	Dan Bongino	26.6%			28.7%
Hawaii	Maizie Hirono	62.6%	Linda Lingle	37.4%			25.2%
West Virginia	Joe Manchin	60.5%	John Raese	36.5%			24.0%
California	Dianne Feinstein	61.4%	Elizabeth Emken	38.6%			22.8%
Michigan	Debbie Stabenow	58.8%	Pete Hoekstra	38.0%			20.8%
Washington	Maria Cantwell	60.2%	Michael Baumgartner	39.8%			20.4%
New Jersey	Bob Menendez	58.5%	Joseph Kyrillos	39.8%			18.7%
Missouri	Claire McCaskill	54.7%	Todd Akin	39.2%			15.5%
Florida	Bill Nelson	55.2%	Connie McGillicuddy	42.2%			13.0%
Connecticut	Chris Murphy	55.2%	Linda McMahon	43.2%			12.0%
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey	53.6%	Tom Smith	44.7%			8.9%
Massachusetts	Elizabeth Warren	53.7%	Scott Brown	46.3%			7.4%
Indiana	Joe Donnelly	49.9%	Richard Mourdock	44.3%			5.6%
New Mexico	Martin Heinrich	51.0%	Heather Wilson	45.4%			5.6%
Wisconsin	Tammy Baldwin	51.5%	Tommy Thompson	45.9%			5.6%
Ohio	Sherrod Brown	50.3%	Josh Mandel	45.1%			5.2%
Virginia	Tim Kaine	52.5%	George Allen	47.5%			5.0%
Montana	Jon Tester	48.7%	Denny Rehberg	44.8%			3.9%
North Dakota	Heidi Heitkamp	50.5%	Rick Berg	49.5%			1.0%
Nevada	Shelley Berkley	44.7%	Dean Heller	45.9%			-1.2%
Arizona	Richard Carmona	45.8%	Jeff Flake	49.8%			-4.0%
Texas	Paul Sadler	40.5%	Ted Cruz	56.6%			-16.1%
Nebraska	Bob Kerrey	41.8%	Deb Fischer	58.2%			-16.4%
Mississippi	Albert Gore	40.3%	Roger Wicker	57.4%			-17.1%
Maine	Cynthia Dill	13.2%	Charlie Summers	30.7%	Angus King	52.8%	-17.5%
Tennessee	Mark Clayton	40.4%	Bob Corker	64.9%			-24.5%
Utah	Scott Howell	30.2%	Orrin Hatch	65.2%			-35.0%
Wyoming	Tim Chesnut	21.6%	John Barrasso	75.9%			-54.3%

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---The Votemaster