Friday, November 9, 2012

2012 Election thoughts - Nevada Congressional Edition

Nevada had four congressional races. Two were competitive and two were pretty easy skates for candidates where their party affiliation dominates their district.

District 1) CD1 is a district dominated be democratic voters and former state legislator & former congresswoman (held CD3 for one term 2008-10) Dina Titus (D) cruised to an easy victory in a seat that should be a gimme for democrats in the coming years.

Titus won in a rout more than doubling up on opponent Chris Edwards 113,377 to 56,357. This race was never really in question and there was little news coming from this race. It's good to have an excellent representative like Dina Titus going back to DC and  repping for her district and Nevada!

District 2) This district in most years should lean republican. It has a good portion of GOP voting rural Nevada and covers the northern urban areas of Reno, Sparks, Carson City, Lake Tahoe and Douglas County.

This was the other gimme race, where incumbent Mark Amodei had little trouble winning 161,915 - 101,594 over an absolute unknown (D) in Sam Koepnick. The only interesting aspect to this races was that Koepnick never accepted any democratic assistance at all. In fact some northern democrats wondered if he was a "planted" candidate who got past a more established democrat in the primary. Once the race started Koepnick was little seen and basically garnered what votes he did get on his supposed democratic party affiliation on the ballot.

The thing to look at here is the final vote numbers: Even though Koepnick was virtually invisible, spent no money, took few if any donations and had almost no advertising, he still managed to garner over 100k votes. I think northern Nevada democrats could look at this result and think that if there was a legitimate viable name recognized candidate, that this district could be won by a democrat.

The key here is the primary. Do not let a repeat of the 2012 primary happen where an unknown entity knocks out a real viable candidate.

District 3) CD3 lies totally within the boundary of Clark County encompassing the southern half of the county, down to Laughlin. This is the quintessential swing district as the voter roles are almost evenly split. This is also a suburban Las Vegas area district, with middle to upper class neighborhoods.

The race matched incumbent Joe Heck (R) (who beat Dina Titus in 2008) vs long time state legislator John Oceguera. This race was another that was (and always should be) tightly contested. Heck came out the winner 136,905 to 116, 385, with two IAP candidates siphoning off 18,367 votes, but not enough to say they factored in the outcome of this race.

This race was one of the two (CD4 being the other) that really got the advertising and mailers going. As this is a swing district targeted by both parties, there was local money and a lot of out of state money in this race, with each camp hammering the other. In the end incumbency might have been a bit much to overcome in a centrist district, where there were a good number of Romney signs in certain neighborhoods.

This district should always be a good fight for whoever wants to take the plunge.

District 4) This is the new district in Nevada, added after redistricting in 2011. This is a lean democratic seat voter registration wise, but it is also the most interesting seat because it encompasses the northern half of Clark County (Las Vegas metro area) and the other half of rural Nevada that CD2 doesn't cover.

This race featured state senator Steven Horsford (D) vs Danny Tarkanian (R). Horsford was behind in polling, but when the voters actually cast ballots, Horsford wound up with a surprising margin of victory (120,096 to 101,136, with two minor party candidates combining for 18,684 votes).

This is the race where pollsters erred the most. I think the Obama coat tails helped dramatically in this race, when African Americans showed up to vote in greater numbers than probably expected and that turn out helped Horsford win.

The rural counties all went republican by good percentages (68.9% to 30.7%) but the rural numbers were small enough that a good result in Clark County carried the day. Consider that Tarkanian won the rurals by 9,901 votes and Horsford won the urban area by 28,861 votes. Horsford will be making his first trip to DC as congressman!!

Rural Nevada is and probably always will be the domain of republican votes, but fortunately Clark County is trending democratic with Washoe County becoming a true battle ground.

2012 Election thoughts - Nevada Senate Edition

The 2012 Nevada Senate race thoughts:

 In the senatorial race between appointed incumbent Dean Heller (R) and challenger, current congresswoman Shelley Berkely (D) came down to the late results from Washoe County (Reno-Sparks area). Early in the evening as numbers came in, Berkely had a nice lead with Clark County (Las Vegas metro area) going to Berkely, but as the evening moved along the voted came in from Washoe County, which has been more Heller territory and it proved to be the difference in this race.

Final numbers: Heller 456,640 Berkely 444,513

The weird thing in this race was that the 3rd party candidate (IAP David Vanderbeek) (48,588), along with Nevada ballot oddity "None of these candidates" (44,907) took enough votes (93,495 total) that had those votes been spread to the two main candidates the outcome might have been different since the margin between Heller and Berkely was only 12,127.

To show how much Clark County can dominate Nevada politics, Berkely lost by only 12,127, yet won only one (Clark County) of Nevada's 17 total counties. It also seemed that Obama coat tails didn't come through for Berkely like she needed, as enough Obama voters crossed over and voted Heller, especially in Washoe County.

Part of this cross over vote could stem from the north south rivalry/split/fear that exists in northern Nevada. Historically the Reno area & Washoe, Carson, Storey, Douglas, Churchill & Lyon counties were the population center in Nevada and they held all the cards economically & politically. Since the 1950's the southern end of Nevada began a population boom and Clark County, with Las Vegas, North Las Vegas & Henderson began a growth spurt that would make it the main population center.

Now in 2012, Clark County holds 70+% of Nevada's population and redistricting has shifted more seats to southern Nevada away from northern and rural Nevada. This political shift should mean more power for southern Nevada in state politics. But this could also be the reason we saw Washoe County voters cross over and support Obama and Heller, as Heller is a northern Nevada guy and it's very possible they wanted one of their own in DC, rather than have two southern Nevada based senators (Harry Reid is from Searchlight/Boulder City/Henderson). And with the recent political power shift, knocking off a northerner might have been too much to risk, as if Heller had lost, when might another northern Nevada candidate hold that senate seat?

Post Election thoughts - presidential edition

Election 2012 is in the books!

Democrats came out faring pretty well over all!

In the presidential race, Obama bested Romney fairly easily 332 (I'm giving Obama the 29 Florida electoral votes since Obama has the lead) to 206. Obama won 27 states to Romney's 23 states, and Obama won the overall popular vote 61,217,568  vs 58,205,105 a 51% - 48% split. (these vote total still subject to change, as not all votes are in yet).

In winning the popular vote, it eliminates the republicans from claiming that Romney, and his polices were more popular and the Obama victory was just a matter of electoral vote totals. Had Obama lost the popular vote it would have been more ammunition for the GOP to continue their recent strategy of obstruction to any type of action President Obama wanted to pursue, as the GOP would make the argument that the majority of voters rejected Obama in favor of Romney.

This win by President Obama totally caught the republicans off guard. My thinking was that the GOP was counting on the much ballyhooed and publicized angst surrounding health care reform and other Obama policies, that Fox News and tea party types opposed with such vocal vigor.

With the noise inside the "conservative bubble" of right wing radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Levin, etc etc.) and the 24 hour propaganda of Fox News, I really think conservatives were blinded in a bubble of their own making and never really looked outside the 365 24/7 static that conservatives listen to. They mistakenly thought that the entire country agreed with their warped thinking, and that there was no way that Obama could win when it came time to cast ballots across the country.

Now the GOP is left to search through the debris of their own political hurricane that was the 2012 election!

Good job to all involved in making a second term for President Obama a reality!!!