Cali. Passes Constitutional Amendment Banning Gay Marriage

I’m sometimes surprised (though I probably shouldn’t be) by how much traction social conservative issues can get in solidly blue states and among traditionally blue demographics. For instance, last night California voters adopted an amendment to their state constitution defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, in effect overturning that hugely controversial and shoddily reasoned ruling from the California Supreme Court earlier this year.  If the exit polls are correct (a big, big if), blacks and latinos provided the margin of victory for the measure, while a majority of whites voted against it.  The measure passed despite the fact that supporters were massively outspent in the closing days of the campaign by a consortium of heavy hitters like Google.

On the merits of such marriage provisions, I’m ambivalent: I like the fact that they check the illegitimate policy ambitions that certain courts try to conceal under the guise of interpreting constitutional provisions, but I think amendments that reserve the issue of the definition of marriage to state legislatures are preferable to outright constitutional bans.  (Indeed, as a policy matter I’d like to see governments gradually get out of the marriage business altogether, but that’s another post).  But the political success of such amendments across states with very different political dispositions shows the continuing appeal of some of those social wedge issues.

I Don’t Believe It. For All the Good Republicans Who Lost Last Night…

With 99 percent of precincts reporting in Alaska, Ted Stevens is ahead in his bit for reelection.

God damn it.

In other Senate news, it looks like Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) might just hang on, though 25 percent of the vote there has yet to be counted. And Norm Coleman has a 757 vote lead over Al Franken.

Come on Gordon and Norm, hold the line at 56.

 

Update:  Recount on in Minnesota. AP retracts their call for Coleman.

Doh!

After I “projected” Dan Greear as the winner in the WV Attorney General contest last night, Darrell McGraw came back and won it.

Bad news for my WV vote analysis skills, much worse news for the people of West Virginia.

Live Blog of Election Night 2008

I’ve been meaning to give live-blogging a go for quite a while now, but haven’t really had a good opportunity to do it.  But it’s perfect for this election night. You should see a widget below from Cover it Livc (the gold standard of live-blogging services).  My coverage starts at 6:30pm.  If you’re not familiar with how live-blogging works I’ll be posting many, many short updates over the course of the night.  I’ll mostly post on the federal races, but I’ll look to the results from the few competitive West Virginia contests as well.  I think it will be fun to read; I’m sure it will be fun, and a bit challenging, to write.

By default, the widget makes an audio “click” when I post an update, and of course you can scroll to catch up on anything you missed. So don’t feel compelled to stare at your computer screen all night.  You know, instead of staring at your TV screen all night.  

 

No Leaked Exit Poll Data Yet, But Something Interesting From Colorado

Out in Colorado, it appears that more than half of registered voters voted before Election Day.  The results from those votes haven’t been released yet, of course, but the partisan breakdown of early voters has been:

Democrats: 33.44%

Republicans: 32.64%

Independents: 24.71%

Now, it’s possible that Republicans are overrepresented among early voters compared to all voters (though the conventional wisdom says pretty much the opposite). It’s also entirely possible that those party ID numbers will hold true for the entire Colorado electorate but Obama will win independents and take more GOP votes than McCain takes from Dems, giving Obama a decent margin of victory (say, at least three points).  But from this number taken alone it looks like things are setting up for a pretty close contest out there.  And, just maybe, if GOP’ers are underrepresented among early voters…

But I’m getting way, way ahead of myself.

Now where the hell are those exit poll numbers?

2:54pm Update:  Regarding the exit poll numbers and the usual sources that leak them, at this point it looks like no one has nothin’.

6:04pm Update: Gawker claims to have the first state-by-state exit poll data out there. Not worth too much, I’m sure, but if it’s worth anything at all it looks pretty decent for McCain, assuming GOP voters are indeed underrepresented in the numbers : PA Obama +4, VA Obama +2, NC McCain +2, FL Obama +1, OH Obama +1. (Hat tip: The Corner.)

An Election Day/Night Guide, and Predictions

All times Eastern:

Pre-6:00pm

Two things:

1.  If you haven’t already, vote.  (Personally, I prefer that spirit of engaging in a grand democratic tradition that you only really get on Election Day to early voting, but to each his own.)

2. Watch the exit polls, but don’t expect them to be terribly accurate.  Exit polling has undersampled Republican voters in recent elections --in 2004, the exits showed John Kerry performing 5.5 points better nationally than he actually did--  and the same will almost certainly be true again this time around.  Still, they’re something, and I’ll be periodically posting the numbers here as they leak to the net.  

6:00pm

Polls close in most of Indiana, and the first counting of votes cast on the day starts.  (CNN has a good interactive chart of poll closing times for all the states available here.)

7:00pm

Polls in Virginia and Georgia, the rest of Indiana, and most of Florida close. 

7:30pm

By this time we should have a decent chunk of the vote from Indiana in. If the race looks tight, it will probably signal a bad night for McCain nationally.  But if he’s up by at least five points or so, it could be the first piece of evidence that pre-election polls seriously underestimated his strength.

Polls in Ohio and North Carolina close.  As do polls in the Great State of West Virginia.

8:00pm

Should have a good sense of how Indiana will go at this point, and enough data (votes and exit poll numbers) from Virginia to reasonably guess how tight the race will be there.  If Obama is on track for a blowout nationally, we’ll probably get the first confirmation around this time with a call of Virginia for Obama, an Obama lead in Indiana, and a fairly tight race in Georgia.

Polls close in Missouri and Pennsylvania, in the rest of Florida, and in a number of other states.

8:30pm

We’ll likely know whether McCain has a plausible chance of winning at this point: he’ll need to have Indiana and Georgia in his column, be up in Virginia, and be up or very close in North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida.

9:00pm 

If Obama’s going to win by more than 5 points or so, we’ll know.  See the above states (except PA, where the heavily Democratic Philadelphia area vote will  come in first and obscure the state of the contest there).

Polls close in Colorado and most of the rest of the middle part of the country.

9:30pm

If the race is still close, look for some very important calls between now and 10:00pm.

Bonus:  If the contest is tight in New Hampshire (last polls close at 8:00) that may or may not tell us a lot about the race nationally, but it will tell us that the pollsters screwed the pooch once again there this year (after Hillary’s shocking win in the Democratic primary).

10:00pm

Polls close in Nevada.

10:30pm

We should know or basically know whether McCain has won the in-play Eastern red states (IN, VA, NC) and swing states (OH, FL, MO) he needs.  If he has, he’ll still need to take either (1) PA or (2) both Colorado and Nevada.

(By the way, here’s CNN’s electoral map calculator.)

 

 

Predictions

By midnight Obama turns Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado blue, winning at least 273 electoral votes and the Presidency.  McCain holds IN, VA, NC, OH, FL, and MO, though mostly by quite slim (2-3 point) margins.  Nevada is extremely close, and remains too close to call into Wednesday.  Obama takes PA by about 4 points. Obama wins the national popular vote by a spread of about 3.5 points.

Other predictions:

- Sen. Norm Coleman holds off Al Franken in Minnesota.

- Dems fall short of capturing 60 seats in the Senate.

- McCain wins West Virginia by double digits.

 

Stay tuned for coverage throughout the day tomorrow, and frequent blogging tomorrow night.

 

[11/04 Update: Made a few cursory grammar, etc. corrections]

Is There Reason for Hope?

Mason-Dixon released a new series of polls this weekend, with results from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Colorado, and Nevada.  The polls were conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday.  They show McCain ever so slightly ahead in Ohio and North Carolina, and within striking distance (ie. within the margin of error) in all the rest.

So if the race has tightened further over the last few days, and the McCain/RNC turnout machine can somehow match the Obama/DNC operation, and the undecideds break for McCain, and maybe there’s a Bradley effect of one or two points in a couple of the states… 

What? After all, this is the election where we’re supposed to believe in the power of hope, isn’t it?

(By the way, stay tuned for my electoral predictions and a concise guide to watching the election night results, both coming up tomorrow.)

For the McCain-Palin Ticket

It occurs to me that while I have posted a fair amount in the last few months about developments in the presidential contest  I haven’t actually written much about the merits of the choice.  This has been partly because I think my view on the matter is pretty obvious from my usual posts, and partly because I doubt that there are many “persuadables” in my readership.  But with the election now only days away, I’ve come to think that if only out of a decent respect for the opinions of my fellow men (to steal and misuse a phrase) I should offer some brief explanation of why I will vote the way I will on Tuesday.

Let me begin by saying that I’ve never been an unabashed fan of John McCain, and have not become an unabashed fan of Sarah Palin during her brief time on the national stage.  Before this election cycle really kicked off, all the way back in early 2007, I cheered McCain for his regular opposition to Congressional pork giveaways but otherwise had a fairly low opinion of his policy views.  I found his fervent attacks on our most important political rights, in the guise of pushing campaign finance “reform,” appalling, and his supposedly “maverick” set of policy positions more like evidence of an incoherent (or non-existent) political philosophy.  His obvious love of being feted by the media and appearing on the 60 Minutes and The Daily Show to attack his GOP colleagues certainly didn’t help either.  My view softened a great deal after he risked his presidential campaign by supporting the surge of troops into Iraq, and by the time my favorite candidate, Rudy Giuliani, was knocked out of the GOP primaries I was ready to back McCain as the least worst of the remaining Republican candidates.  However, I still have more than a few doubts about his philosophy of governance and his judgment.

As for Palin, my previously expressed opinion of her unreadiness to be President if something were to happen to McCain hasn’t been changed by her post-nomination performance.  Moreover, we’ve learned that she apparently matches, or even surpasses, McCain in a troubling mental characteristic: both seem to think that having populist conservative political instincts is a substitute for having conservative policy ideas.   (It is bracing to think that in McCain and Palin Republicans have probably chosen two candidates who have read and thought less about the proper role of government in society than any other ticket in the past 50 years.)

But with all those flaws, and many others, voting for McCain-Palin over Obama-Biden is, to my mind, the clearly correct decision.

Now, dear reader, you may think that’s simply because my “conservative” views  --particularly on economic issues and on the makeup of the federal courts-- are more consistent with John McCain’s policy stances (even though those stances aren’t backed by a coherent political philosophy).  And it’s true: My profound disagreements with the policies Obama has exposed would alone be enough to get me to hold my nose and vote for McCain.  (Although, let us not forget that some foolish self-proclaimed conservatives, see eg. Christopher Buckley, have said they intend to vote for Obama in the hope that he won’t actually pursue the policies he’s said he’s going to pursue.)  But even for many non-conservatives, voting against Obama is the logical decision.  For the outcome of the presidential race won’t just determine who controls the Presidency, but whether Democrats will take control of the entire policymaking apparatus of the federal government.  Over the past two years, the policy ambitions of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other “loud and proud” liberal Democrats in the Congressional leadership have been checked by a GOP President.  What will happen if that check is removed?  The likely answer is fairly clear. And, for most any non-hardcore leftist Democrat, undesirable.

It could be argued that Obama, as President and political leader of the Democratic Party, would curb the policy ambitions of Congressional Democrats, if only in the interest of furthering his chances of winning reelection in what will remain a basically center-right nation.  The problem is that we have no evidence whatsoever from Obama’s political past that he is inclined or able to stand up to members of his own party.  Indeed, the most remarkable thing about Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate is how consistently he avoided taking leadership positions on controversial matters.  I see little reason to think that Obama would drop that risk-averse political style, and taking on a Democratic Congress would require deliberately taking major political risks, risks that (at least in the short term) very well might not payoff.  Barack Obama is just not a fellow who is temperamentally inclined to force those kinds of confrontations.

Over the past forty years there have been three periods where one party has controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress: 1976-1980 (Democrats), 1992-1994 (Democrats), and 2002-2006 (Republicans).  A vote for Obama is not just a vote for Obama, but a vote for a new period total Democratic control of high-level federal policymaking.  Popular opinion says that things didn’t go so well in Washington during those periods, and if Obama does prevail things likely won’t go much better this time around.   

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Despite his recent conviction on seven felony counts in federal court, polls showing him losing to his Democratic challenger, and the assurance from the Senate Republican Leader that there’s a “100 percent” chance he’ll be expelled if he is somehow reelected, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has not only refused to resign but is fighting as hard as ever to return to the Senate.  Asked why he continues on, Stevens responded “The state needs me.”

If Stevens weren’t so obviously engrossed by self-importance and lust for power, watching the downfall of one of the most powerful people in American politics might have a tragic aspect to it.

As it stands, it will be satisfying to watch him lose next Tuesday.  And hopefully, his power-addicted counterpart representing Alaska in the House, master of log-rolling Republican Don Young, will be dismissed by Alaska voters as well.  Bad for the GOP, you say?  In the very short term, perhaps.  But further out, better for the GOP, the Senate, Alaska, and the country.