Local campaign workers have been concerned that this election would be affected by what happened in MA. I think they’re nuts, but we’ll see this evening.
Officially, election day is today (Jan 26). In reality, the election has been going on for a bit, since the ballots arrived in our mailboxes a couple of weeks ago.
The issues are Initiatives 66 and 67. For a quickie summary, see http://voteyesfororegon.org/wi…
Measures 66 & 67 raise the $10 corporate minimum for the first time since 1931, and increase the marginal tax rate on the richest Oregonians (those who make more than $250,000 a year).
Since all ballots must be in official Oregon vote boxes by 8pm today (I just dropped off ours at the library), we don’t suffer from the Washington time lag. (WA state accepts ballots postmarked by election day.)
Results should be known tonight/tomorrow morning, but the latest polling had the initiatives winning by a reasonable margin.
Initiative 66 raises the marginal tax rate on >$250k gross income
Initiative 67 raises the corporate minimum from $10 to $150
The poll assumes a current OR party registration of
D 47%
R 36%
I 17%
It’s a Tim Hibbitts poll, which is pretty much the gold standard for polling in Oregon.
Both measures were leading in the Hibbitts poll by 49/38. I fully expect that margin has closed a bit in these past few days, but that’s normal for a closely fought initiative campaign, especially when voters are asked to raise taxes.
Results should appear this evening, starting sometime after 8pm Pacific time at the OR SoS website at http://www.sos.state.or.us/ele… .
Updated thought – the Oregon “anti-tax” ads were more focused on the business tax (67) as opposed to the increase in taxes on >250k income (66). That’s reflected in the slight margin difference (66 is winning by a bit more than 67). But the difference in margins is less than 1%.
Second updated thought – no effect from the MA special. Yes, the Hibbitts poll suggests that a solid majority believe that we’re going in the wrong direction, but that anger didn’t affect the outcome of this election. (the MA Senate special election happened between this poll and the election)
Third updated thought (Wed 6:30 am PST) made a mistake in my vote watching – when county data says “100%”, it means 100% of those votes tabulated and counted.
(It takes a bit of time even for computers to check signatures on envelopes, open them up, before the optical scan ballots can be fed to the computer readers. Ballots are in a “secrecy” envelope, inserted into a signed mailing envelope, so there are two envelopes to open for each ballot.)
Votes that have come in late that day (e.g. from official collection stations at county libraries) aren’t yet all counted. The margins may still fluctuate a bit as those votes are counted today. (I think some counties sent their tabulaters home for the night.)
However, my eyeballing suggests that we’re now at about 97-98% counted, but maybe 3/4 of the outstanding ballots are from Multnomah Co, so the margin could grow back a bit.
Current results from the OR SoS
66 (raise the marginal rate on incomes > 250k)
yes 53.69%
no 46.31%
67 (raise the min bus tax from $10)
yes 53.03%
no 46.97%
In 2008 the Partisan break down was
36% D
27% R
37% I
If this poll is correct in its breakdown them I guess in adds to the evidence that non presidential years are base years.
I do wonder though if Oregons mail in ballots will help keep Democrat turnout up; considering Democrats aren’t excited and having to mail in a ballot is easier then driving to a polling station.
I do hope 66 and 67 pass cause it will provide some beef to the idea that when raising taxes are tied to spending voters prefer spending.
No other races?
… just postmarked by today? I hate it when you have to wait a week for the results to trickle in.
http://www.oregonlive.com/
I gotta say, the turnout is astonishing, almost 1 million votes out of 2 million total registrants, and they haven’t even finished counting yet! We’re looking at 1.2M votes by the time they’re done.
Only 1.8M votes were cast for President in 2008, and these are only two ballot initiatives!
Link for the actual “unofficial” official results
http://egov.sos.state.or.us/di…
Both initiatives are winning by an 8 or 9 point margin, pretty much as expected. Yes, it’s slightly smaller than the poll margin (about 11%), but that’s normal too. For whatever reason, late deciders are less enthused about new taxes.
It appears that Multnomah Co (most of the city of Portland) has reported completely, so the margin is unlikely to grow at this point.
If you were to judge this as just a Dem v. Rep issue, the results would be fairly pleasing. Only a handful of counties more “no” than McCain, and only five more “no” (percentage-wise) than for Bush in 2004. And the only notable bad number is insignificant: Sherman Co. had 12% more Nos than Bushes, but its vote share is 0.06%.