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Showing posts with label Voting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Voting. Show all posts

Monday, May 05, 2014

The Challenge of the 2014 Elections

Take a look at this graphic.








































It's from a brilliant analysis of exactly what the Democrats need to do in order to win the 2014 elections. Sasha Issenberg illustrates the numbers and demographics behind presidential year elections and mid term elections, boiling it down to a simple question: Can the Democrats mobilize the "unreliable" voters to succeed in the 2014 election? If they can, they hold the Senate and part of me is thinking that all the hysteria right now over SHELLACKING PART TWO is simply a fear tactic to mobilize the troops.

Another interesting part of the article is this.

Add it all up, and the Democrats’ midterm conundrum comes to look like an actuarial one. “If twenty years ago, you said the midterm electorate is older, I would have said, ‘Yahoo! Glad to hear it,’ ” says Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “But now the Roosevelt seniors are dead and the Reagan seniors are voting.” Increasingly, those older voters are backing the same side: In 2000, Al Gore won the youngest and eldest bands of the electorate by slight margins; in 2012, the over-50 vote broke for Mitt Romney by 12 points. 

There are also simply more of those older voters overall. Since Obama’s first appearance on a presidential ballot, the population of Americans over the age of 55 has increased by nearly 13 million. By 2022, it will have increased by another nine million. People tend to grow more conservative as they age, but as a cohort, Generation X—whose oldest members will soon reach their fifties—is appreciably more conservative than the Millennials who follow them. “When the Millennials are fifty-five, they’re going to vote more Democratic,” Lake says, not exactly cautioning patience. “That’s thirty years away.”

This ties in to what I have been saying about how much the electorate is going to change over the next 20-30 years. Imagine what will happen when we have "Obama seniors" and the Reagan seniors are gone.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Election Day

I've had a few emails with requests to talk about today's election. I had planned on putting something anyway to encourage people to vote in off years like this so that's up first.

GO VOTE.

Turnout is so low in the odd years but these elections are where local issues (see: things that really affect your life) are of paramount importance. School Boards, City Council, Mayoral races...all of these matter so your vote counts and more so than usual because of the low turnout.

As far as Virginia and New Jersey goes, it looks like Terry McAuliffe will beat Ken Cuccinelli and Chris Christie will beat Barbara Buono so no surprises really in either of those states. If McAullife does win, the GOP can say goodbye to Virginia which pretty much puts national elections out of reach. Unless, of course, they nominate Christie which would make 2016 more competitive. What to do...what to do...pick a guy who can win a national election (and who would be good president, in my view) but isn't "pure" or pick someone like Cruz, who fulfills their porn fantasies and will win exactly five states and maybe not even his home state if Hilary runs.

Decisions decisions...

Thursday, November 08, 2012

What Needs To Done?

If there is one thing that has left a very bad taste in my mouth about the election this year, it's the low voter turnout. As of this post, we are over 10 million short of the last election. I realize that 2008 was an historic election but I feel an enormous amount of dismay at the fact that out of the 210 million or so people that are eligible to vote, only 120 million voted (130 in the last election).

Folks, this sucks. What needs to be done to get those extra 90 million people in the voting booth?