This will summarize some stuff from election day, from a local, state and national perspective. I also crunched some national numbers and will report some of Nate Silver's stuff.
More below the fold.
- Some National Numbers:
I've heard many talk about this election being a "refutiation" of President Obama's "liberal overreach". Yes, we did lose many seats from Congressional Districts that the President won in 2008. But the fact remains that a minimum of 34 Democratic losses came from Congressional Districts that John McCain won in 2008:
FL-2, FL-24, IN-8, IN-9, MD-1, NM-2, NY-13, NY-29, OH-6, OH-16, OH-18, PA-3, PA-10, VA-5, VA-9, AL-2, AL-5, AR-1, AR-2, AZ-1, AZ-5, GA-8, ID-1, MO-4, MS-1, MS-4, ND, TX-17, WV-1, SD, SC-5, TN-4, TN-6,TN-8
- Enthusiasm Gap: this was real, but mostly in swing states according to Nate Silver. He had an interesting way of measuring this: he recorded the percentage of the vote that the President got in 2008 vs. the percentage of 2010 voters who said that they voted for him in 2008. Silver attributes this, in part, to the excellent GOTV operation in 2008.
- State numbers: I live in Illinois and thought that we would "split" the top statewide races. Giannaoulias lost a gut wrenching heartbreaker whereas Quinn barely won the governor's race.
Quinn (D) 1,721,812 46.6%
Brady (R) 1,702,399 46.1%
Cohen (I) 134,219 3.6%
Whitney (G) 99,625 2.7%
Green (L) 34,293 0.9%
Kirk (R) 1,765,594 48.2%
Giannoulias (D) 1,694,093 46.3%
Jones (G) 116,685 3.2%
Labno (L) 86,325 2.4%
Note that both Giannoulias and Quinn used the President in a positive way. My guess: Kirk, while a serial liar, isn't quite the extremist that Brady was. Kirk had some strength in the "collar counties" around Chicago and my guess is that some (especially pro-choice women) couldn't swallow Brady's extremist anti-choice positions.
- Local: I did walk routes for all of our candidates and gave money to: Quinn, Giannoulias, DK Hirner (hopeless challenger against GOP golden boy Aaron Schock in IL-18), the Illinois Coordinated Campaign and to Jehan Gordon (IL House 92)
Gordon's campaign was a sweet story. Though her district was normally Democratic, Aaron Schock made a name there by winning in an upset in 2004 and again in 2006.
The Republicans really went after Ms. Gordon in a personal way, both this time and last:
She won 53 percent of the vote in 2008. This time the Republicans ran a city counsel person against her.
The result: Gordon won BIG 62-38; THAT was sweet. Basically, she developed a reputation of being a very hard worker and paying close attention to her constituents.
5. My election day activities I had a physical therapy appointment and went to the polls as an official poll watcher at 10 am. I was working for both the Peoria County Democrats and the Jehan Gordon campaign. What I did: I kept a list of people we wanted to see at the polls and crossed them off as they voted; I also recorded people who weren't on our list. Every so often a Gordon worker would get my list and give me a new one; they would then send out a worker to knock on doors to get our people to the polls.
Based on our list, I "estimated" we were winning 55-45 at our precinct and therefore felt pretty good.
There wasn't much controversy at the polls; the election judges (half Democrat, half Republican) tolerated no nonsense.
Note: around here, people openly used signs such as "President Obama needs you to vote" to get people to the polls. There is a subset of the population that doesn't like him, but many of us still do.
An amusing sight: a woman (late 20's to early 30's) showed up in boots, black tights and in a very tight, very short black spandex dress. She needed some help working the machines...I wonder who she voted for. :-)
Humorous Update I forgot to mention this tidbit about Gordon's opponent. On election day, the Illinois polls close at 7 pm. At 9:30 pm, Gordon's opponent was STILL airing commercials. :-)