Self the loser wrote in last week's SNLC:
'It's also still unfortunately the case that too many Americans treat voting for POTUS like high school. After all, who's more "popular" or "likeable" in high school: the class brain, or the class clown?
Here in MO, for POTUS, no one really expects the class brain to win. The Jason Kander effect may be making that race closer than it would have been, but I intuitively doubt that it will be enough to pull MO into the HRC column. I will be thrilled as all-get-out if Jason Kander actually pulls off the MO-Sen upset, of course. But that would imply some degree of ticket-splitting, and indicating that there may be limits to Kander's coattails with respect to other MO Democratic candidates and offices.'
Now, much to just about every sane person's shock, we've seen just how stupid, bigoted and hate-soaked too many Republican voters are, particularly the alt.right bloc. In a sense, this wasn't really a total surprise in MO, as indicated at the MO Secretary of State's page. Drumpf won handily, by 19%, about 531K votes, This post from Jason Kander at the MO SOS's website noted:
".... the unofficial voter turnout in yesterday’s general election was 66.55 percent. More than 2.8 million registered Missouri voters turned out to the polls."
If you do the back-calculations, that means that the total actual number of registered voters is about 4.2 million. So 1.4 million registered MO voters could have shown up, but didn't. Interestingly, looking at the two major cities (and major Democratic strongholds):
(A) The official St. Louis city results showed pretty close to the same overall % as the state, 67.58%, with 129,826 out of 192,114 registered city voters showing up. 62,188 STL city voters didn't show, at least on the day.
(B) More of a surprise, and not in a good way, were the Kansas City, MO voter data, which showed a notably lower % turnout, 55.75%, with 124,412 out of 243,143 registered KC, MO voters showing up. There, 118,731 voters didn't show at the ballot box. This is in spite of the fact that Kander is from KC, MO.
Even if all those people in just STL city and KC, MO had shown up (186,600 more voters) and all voted Democratic (very unlikely in any case, of course, that all of them would have voted D), that would not have been enough to put HRC and TIm Kaine in the win column, not even close. (Remember the 531K margin for Drumpf.) However, if you look at the statewide results for MO-Sen, Kander vs. Blunt:
Kander: 1,283,222
Blunt: 1,370,240
The difference here is 87,018 votes. The % margins in each major city were:
STL city:
Kander: 81.69%
Blunt: 14.92%
KC, MO:
Kander: 77.59%
Blunt: 18.80%
So continuing this pointless theoretical exercise, if the same percentages held with those STL city and KC, MO voters who didn't show up:
STL city:
Kander: 81.69% x 62,188 = 50,801
Blunt: 14.92% = 9.278
KC, MO:
Kander: 77.59% x 124,412 = 96,531
Blunt: 18.80% x 124,412 = 23,389
Adding these theoretical numbers into the unofficial tally above for the whole state:
Kander: 1,283,222 + 50,801 + 96,531 = 1,430,554
Blunt: 1,370,240 + 9,278 + 23,389 = 1,402,907
Of course, these hypothetical calculations assume (like too many overly upbeat Rec List diaries before last Tuesday) a lot of variables going our way, i.e. if only those no-show city voters had shown up and voted all for Kander, all MO Democrats, and HRC. Note that the total number of registered voters who didn't show was around 1,400,000. That number of STL city and KC, MO no-shows, 186,600, is about 13.28% of all MO no-shows.
There is one apparent unfactored wrinkle in all this in MO, again per the MO SOS site:
"Not included in the unofficial turnout numbers are provisional and overseas absentee ballots, which will be tallied when the election is certified. According to state law, final results will be certified approximately four weeks after Election Day."
It would be curious if those votes would be enough to flip the MO-Sen seat, although given current karma, I wouldn't bet on it. Overall, though, in the context of MO, Kander did remarkably well, and was remarkably close to pulling up the upset. Of course, remarkably close isn't good enough. So it goes.
WIth that, time for the standard SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week, besides the obvious......