"Sometime Around Midnight" - Airborne Toxic Event
Work once again seriously interfering with my web time.
- It's official -- Mitt is at 47%! I continue to obsessively monitor the election results as the final tallies roll in. Obama's lead continues to grow -- it is now 4,360,000 votes, which puts him at 50.85% to Romney's 47.43%. Total turnout is now down by only 2.96%, with 127,424,299 votes cast versus 131,313,820, a decrease of about 3.4 million. Half of that total -- just over 1.7 million votes -- is attributable to voter downturn in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. (Votes are still being counted there, so this could change.) Again, this is probably going to cost Obama about 1 million votes and another 300,000 in margin over Romney. In the swing states Obama outperformed his national vote, with a 3.95% spread versus 3.14% in the non-swing states. For the second election in a row, Virginia almost precisely replicated the national vote percentages -- 51.16% for Obama (versus 50.85% nationally) and 47.28% for Romney (versus 47.43% nationally) -- the closest state to the national results just as it was in 2008.
- One of the things that puzzled me throughout the election season was the smug certainty among right wing commentators and certain pollsters -- yeah I'm looking at you Gallup -- that turnout among black voters would be lower in 2012 than it was in 2008. There was a patronizing sense that surely black voters were disenchanted and disappointed with Obama. (I always felt that this sentiment was much more the province of a certain class of white male liberals.) There were two things that convinced me that the black vote for Obama would be huge once again. First, was the incredible disrespect and hostility directed at Obama by the Republicans from the first day he took office -- this had to stick in the craw of people who had taken pride in a historic first only to see a man who had won a landslide victory treated as less legitimate than George W. Bush after his highly dubious win in 2000 (following which Democrats in Congress worked with him to pass a variety of measures). (This post at TPM captures some of that feeling.) Second, was the outrageous array of voter suppression tactics adopted by Republicans across the country, from voter ID measures to shortening or eliminating early voting. In so doing, the GOP screwed with a right that had been won with the blood of martyrs. Maybe this didn't resonate with the Frank Newports or Karl Roves of the world, but I suspect that most people in the black community are painfully aware of the very real price paid to win access to the ballot. By their actions, the Republicans made clear to blacks that they were deemed less worthy voters -- and by implication less worthy Americans. We know who got the last laugh.
What say you?