Month: November 2010

Shocking as it may be to see an expression of optimism from me, I’m gonna do exactly that regarding Minnesota’s political future for Democrats.  Particularly now, less than a week after the DFL supermajorities were transformed into Republican majorities in the state legislature, this may seem counterintuitive, but having crunched the numbers over the past five days, I feel as though the condition of the state’s politics is less troublesome that it may look from an outsider’s perspective.

Bad news first.  The DFL got vaporized in the legislative races.  This is effectively the fourth wave election out of five with the current legislative district lines and to an extent, should have been predicted.  Back in 2002, after months of feuding over redistricting between the DFL Senate, the Republican House, and the Independence Party Governor, the stalemate was broken when the process was handed over to a nonpartisan panel of judges.  They drew up a genuinely competitive map that proved to be very volatile to the political mood of the time.  In 2002, shortly after the Wellstone memorial debacle, the GOP scored a supermajority in the House and came within two seats of taking over the Senate.  In 2004, in a generally neutral political climate, Democrats shocked everybody and gained 13 seats, one short of a majority.  In 2006, a Democratic tsunami hit Minnesota and they ended up with massive and unsustainable gains deep into red territory.  With just the House up in 2008 and the wind still at the their back, Democrats gained a few more seats.  

We were overdue for a correction in 2010, but it was largely than even I suspected.  Looking at the breakdown of legislative races, however, it really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise.  With the current district lines, the vast majority of terrain in rural and suburban Minnesota consists of districts that fall somewhere between the range of 52-48% DFL advantage and 52-48% GOP advantage.  Just the slightest of breezes is enough to trigger dramatic change, and this year’s Republican tide was far more than just a slight breeze.  As a result, there were few surprises among the legislators that were felled, and as usually happens in wave elections, just about all the close races went to the party on the winning side of the wave.  

The unfortunate and obvious downside is that the Republicans will now commandeer redistricting.  Dayton, likely the next Governor, will veto anything too overreaching, provided Pawlenty doesn’t follow through with his “martial law” gambit while the Republicans delay a recount.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result is another nonpartisan judge-drawn redistricting plan, most likely resulting in another 10 years of dramatic swings from left to right and back in Minnesota’s local politics.  Sadly, however, we blew our chance to get rid of Michele Bachmann as the new legislature will never agree to a map that doesn’t keep her safe in her exurban cocoon.

So what gives me cause for optimism?  There were four statewide races in Minnesota this year and the Democrats won all of them, even with a weak-performing Mark Dayton at the top of the ticket.  Three of the four races were close, and frankly I’m surprised the DFL held onto both the Secretary of State’s office and especially the Auditor, but they stayed in the Democratic fold because population centers Hennepin and Ramsey Counties continue to harden for Democrats.  I’ve always considered second-ring Hennepin County suburbs Bloomington and Minnetonka to be Minnesota’s bellwethers.  If the DFL candidate wins them, they win the state.  All four statewide DFL candidates were victorious there in a year where conventional wisdom was they’d lean Republican.  When Democrats are winning Hennepin County by more than 15 points and Ramsey County by more than 25 points, as occurred this year in every statewide race, it’s a herculean lift for Republicans to make up that much elsewhere.

Aside from Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, two other places stand out as cause for Democratic optimism.  The first is suburban Dakota County in the southeastern metro area and the third most populous county in Minnesota.  It’s historically been a swing county, became more Republican than the statewide average last decade, but now seems to be slowly moving back to the center.  Republicans did win here in 2010, but by nowhere near the size of the margins they did back in 2002.  In the close Mondale vs. Coleman Senate race, Coleman won Dakota County by 16 points.  In a similar close race this year, Emmer was only able to win Dakota County by 9 points, which is comparable to what both Pawlenty scored in his 2006 re-election and what Coleman beat Franken by in the 2008 Senate race.  Largely due to the rising ethnic diversity in Dakota County, it now seems as if the Republican ceiling in the county is a nine-point victory, and in the other three statewide races, the Democrat won there in the Attorney General’s race, and the Republicans were victorious in the other two with four-point margins.  It’s almost impossible to win statewide in Minnesota as a Republican if you’re only winning Dakota County by four points.

Next on my list of causes for optimism is Rochester, now Minnesota’s third largest city.  It’s a city that is historically the Republican stronghold of the state but in the past 10 years, demographics have been pushing it to the left.  It’s population is exploding with young educated professionals as well as ethnic minorities, and is now pretty close to being a 50-50 town.  Now old-school GOP moderates can still do very well here, even among the newcomers, but as the Republican Party continues its deranged march to either social conservatism or economic Know-Nothingism, Rochester won’t be around for the ride, at least not with the numbers it has been historically.  Tim Pawlenty represented this decade’s high-water mark for Republicans in Olmsted County, winning the county by 17 points in 2006.  Emmer won it by 10 points.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, but in a Republican year, I would have expected Emmer to overperform Pawlenty’s numbers in a Democratic year.  Furthermore, I haven’t yet crunched the numbers exclusive to the city of Rochester, which is typically several points less Republican than Olmsted County at large.  Based on the numbers I’ve seen in Greater Olmsted County, I’m betting the city of Rochester itself was no better than a five-point win for Emmer.  And like Dakota County in the last paragraph, if a Republican is winning Rochester by only five points, an inside straight is required to come up with the votes in the rest of the state necessary to win a statewide election.

Exurbia continues to be a big problem for Democrats in Minnesota, but less of a problem than I anticipated it to be in 2002 and 2004 when it looked as though the growth in exurban Minnesota would be endless and the raw numbers of new Republicans would ultimately swamp Democrats.  Since 2004, however, the housing bubble has burst and the blistering growth rates in these Twin Cities collar counties have slowed.  And with the slowed population growth has come a stalled Republican insurgency.  Emmer is the perfect exurban candidate if there ever was one.  He’s from the heart of Michele Bachmann country out in Wright County and espouses the “we got ours…to tell with the rest of the state” ethos articulately.  Yet he didn’t overperform Pawlenty in these areas, at least not by much.  And the Republican margins in the other three statewide offices were on par with traditional voting patterns even in a strong Republican year.  Unless these counties become even more Republican and restore their growth rates from the early part of the decade, the GOP’s ability to win statewide races will be diminished.

Outstate Minnesota was pretty much split again this year, although leaning towards Republicans perhaps a little more than usual.  The 2000 election was the ugliest showing outstate Minnesota gave Democrats in my lifetime, with Bush burying Gore in counties where Democrats frequently win by double-digit margins.  Nowhere did we see Democratic candidates perform that poorly in 2010, and if Democrats are performing generally on par with recent trendlines this year, it bodes well that rural Minnesota is not gonna undergo the same rightward transformation that rural Missouri did anytime soon.

I can’t finish the diary with commenting on the state of affairs in northeastern Minnesota, one place where I maintain some pessimism.  As I feared, a perfect storm finished off Jim Oberstar.  His district has been slowly trending Republican for a generation now but has still been virtually impossible for a Republican to win even in the most perfect situation up until now.  With that said, Oberstar underperformed all four statewide DFL candidates in the 8th district, all of whom won the district.  In Dayton’s case, his victory is the direct result of overperformance in northeastern Minnesota.  With MN-08’s growth zones becoming more Republican by the day and it’s Democratic strongholds losing population, it’s not a good sign for the Democrats’ prospects in snuffing out Oberstar’s successor Chip Cravaack.  The great white hope is legislator Tony Sertich, but he’s a native Iron Ranger who will run with the baggage of the Minnesota Legislature and is a native Iron Ranger which isn’t gonna be an asset in the south side of the district.  State Senator Tony Lourey from further south in the district might be a better bet, at  least demographically.  Either way, it’s an almost certainty that the district will inherit even more Republican areas after redistricting, so it could well take a Democratic wave to install another Democrat in the Congressional seat, and his or her hold on the seat will most likely be far tenuous than was Oberstar’s.  

Generally speaking, the Democratic Party looks poised to have the upper hand in Minnesota, although by far narrower margins than in its 1970s and 1980s heyday.  But interestingly, as the state becomes less lopsided in its Democratic advantage, it’s strangely harder for a Republican to win a statewide election than it was back in the days when Dave Durenberger and Rudy Boschwitz were winning handily.  In the very long-term, if my predictions of a political realignment almost exclusively on generational and ethnic lines comes to pass, then all bets are off and majority white Minnesota could very well turn crimson red.  For the foreseeable future, however, I like my odds running as a Democrat in Minnesota much more than I would running as a Republican.

The Hill is reporting that John Cornyn will likely seek to stay on for another term as head of the NRSC. That of course raises the question of who will lead our senate campaign committee next cycle. It’s not just that I think Bob Menendez did an ineffectual job as DSCC chair – the guy is also up for re-election in 2012, and it’s hard to balance both jobs. (Click here to see who else is up.)

So who should lead the DSCC?

UPDATE: In comments, TheGradyDem passes along a link from Politico, in which a whole host of Dems say they aren’t interested in the job.

LATER UPDATE: Chuck Schumer doesn’t sound particularly interested…

With the election over, I thought I’d take a stab at what a bipartisan incumbent protection map might look like in Virginia. The plan is to protect all 11 incumbents; the only district that would likely be competitive in an open seat situation under this map is VA-10.

Click for huge.

VA-01 (Rob Wittman – R) – Hasn’t changed a whole lot; takes in some more of Prince William, loses part of Stafford/Spotsylvania, and adds the two Eastern Shore counties (they were in VA-01 prior to the 2000 map).

VA-02 (Scott Rigell – R) – Snakes up the shore to take in some Republican territory (Poquoson, parts of York and Gloucester), picks up the VA-01 bit of Hampton, and loses the Eastern Shore. Should move the needle to the Republicans by a couple points.

VA-03 (Bobby Scott – D) – Takes Petersburg out of VA-04, mostly unchanged. 62% black.

VA-04 (Randy Forbes – R) – Also not changed a whole lot, aside from losing Petersburg, which should flip the district to McCain.

VA-05 (Robert Hurt – R) – Removes Charlottesville and most of Albemarle, adds the rest of Bedford, Lynchburg, and Amherst. Should be no trouble at all for the Republicans to hold now.

VA-06 (Bob Goodlatte – R) – Snakes up from Roanoke, where Goodlatte lives, through the Shenandoah Valley, and pulls in Charlottesville and Albemarle and some outer NoVa counties. Shouldn’t endanger Goodlatte.

VA-07 (Eric Cantor – R) – Actually a little less ridiculous now, it’s a solidly-Republican suburban Richmond/Fredericksburg area district. Still should be solidly Republican.

VA-08 (Jim Moran – D) – Remains solidly Dem; continues to hold the trifecta of Alexandria, Arlington, and Falls Church, but goes west instead of south. Maybe a couple points less Democratic, but still a safe D district.

VA-09 (Morgan Griffith – R) – Not much changed here; added Salem, Martinsville, and some more of Roanoke County. Safe R.

VA-10 (Frank Wolf – R) – Added almost all of Shenandoah County, and removes some parts of Fairfax. Retains the most Republican parts of Fairfax. Safe for Wolf, should lean Republican in an open seat, unless it’s a particularly good Dem year.

VA-11 (Gerry Connolly – D) – Replaces the Republican PW County parts with the solidly-Dem SE PW County. Should be a pretty safe Dem seat.

Bob Dold!

This is the first part of three posts analyzing the Democratic Party’s struggles during the 1920s, when it lost three consecutive presidential elections by landslide margins.

The second part can be found here.

A Regional Party Limited to the South

The biggest presidential landslides are two elections you’ve probably never heard of: the 1920  presidential election, and the 1924 presidential election.

More below.

In the 1920 presidential election, Democratic candidate James M. Cox lost by 26.2% to Republican candidate Warren G. Harding. Four years later, Democratic candidate John Davis would get barely more than one-fourth the vote in another landslide defeat. These two elections constitute the biggest victories in the popular vote in the history of American presidential elections.

In the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s victory, Democratic strategists liked to boast that the Republican Party was becoming a regional party restricted to the South. This meme has become less popular in light of Republican gains during the 2010 mid-terms, in which Republicans did quite outside the South (especially in the Midwest).

Yet during the 1920s, the Democratic Party really was a regional, Southern-based party that had great difficulty competing outside the South. It was a party that was completely unrecognizable today: a proudly racist, white supremacist organization in which its two main constituencies refused to back the same candidate not for one, not for two, but for three consecutive elections.

The story begins with World War I and President Woodrow Wilson.

— Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

As we all know, Republicans very, very narrowly fell short of taking the governorship of Oregon. Oregonians instead opted to send former Gov. John Kitzhaber back to the governor’s mansion over Republican Chris Dudley, best known for playing basketball.

Republicans also came extremely close to capturing slim majorities in both the State House and the State Senate. The State House is now evenly split, while it appears Democrats will hang onto a majority of one or two in the Senate.

If Republicans had garnered just another point in the statewide popular vote, it seems likely they would have flipped both houses of the Oregon state legislature and installed Chris Dudley as governor, giving them a trifecta in the Beaver State. As a left-leaning independent and an Oregonian expat, let me just take a moment to editorialize by way of gagging.

With redistricting coming up, Republicans could have taken control and gerrymandered Oregon, provided they could agree on a map (otherwise, Secy. Kate Brown, Oregon’s Democratic secretary of state, would have been constitutionally empowered to draw one up – which, as it is, puts considerable pressure on Republicans to compromise with Democrats). Here’s one they might have liked.

I’ve done what any self-respecting, all-powerful Republican trifecta would do, and I’ve just handed Democrats the Willamette River Valley while giving Republicans two seats in the rest of the state.

There should be little controversy about the Portland metropolitan area. The new OR-01 I’ve drawn would have been, if Republicans had won and drew this map, one of the most Democratic districts in the entire country; Rep. Blumenauer’s Republican opponent, Delia Lopez, picked up three percent of the vote in the portion of Multnomah County in Blumenauer’s district, currently OR-03. Note: I spent so much time playing around with the district lines that some of the district numbers are mixed up.

OR-01 here includes some of the most liberal parts of Clackamas County, including Milwaukee. Rep. Blumenauer would thrive here, obviously.

As for OR-05, it includes most of Portland’s western suburbs, as well as some of the most swingy parts of Clackamas County. It’d probably be a Democratic district, but an Oregonian answer to Reps. Reichert or Tiberi might be able to flip it in a good year.

I originally had OR-05 reaching up into Columbia County to encompass St. Helens and Scappoose, but I decided against it. They were instead awarded to OR-04, which thus holds the entire Oregon Coast. OR-04 also reaches inland to western Washington, Yamhill, and Polk counties. It’s almost entirely rural, and despite Astoria and a few other lean Democratic cities in northwestern Oregon, it would be safely Republican.

The reason OR-04 would be safely Republican is simple: Eugene has been gerrymandered into a district with the lean Democratic cities of the Willamette River Valley, including the capital of Salem and its suburbs. Conservative Albany is left to OR-04. Because of the way OR-03 is drawn, it would be a pretty safe Democratic district, especially considering the surging Latino population in and around Salem.

OR-02, currently Rep. Walden’s district, remains safely Republican, soaking up the swingy population centers of Bend, Medford, Ashland, and Hood River with the entirety of hard-right eastern Oregon, as well as most of fairly conservative central and southern Oregon.

In plain speech, OR-02 and OR-04 would be safely Republican, while OR-01, OR-03, and OR-05 would be Democratic. Definitely a good thing Republicans didn’t manage to take over Salem this year.

BONUS: Just for kicks, here’s a picture of the way I originally gerrymandered OR-03:

I decided Bend would be fine in OR-02 and it would be best to keep the district more compact and inclusive of the Salem suburbs, not just the I-5 corridor down the Willamette River Valley. The way this district is drawn would force OR-03 to spill into Clackamas County. While it’s funny (and hideous), I decided it wasn’t practical.

Update: A few more counties have added results, Harris’s deficit has grown to 36,800 votes. This was a result of 85,000 new votes in Orange, 17k in Riverside, and 35.5k in San Francisco. I’ve subtracted these from the “unprocessed” totals, and the new projection says Harris stands to gain 1,500 in the remaining ballots uncounted.

However, there is a time gap between the ballots outstanding estimate and the number of votes counting – more likely than not, we’re overestimating the number of Orange, San Diego, and Riverside ballots outstanding – which of course means that Harris has more upside potential in the remaining ballots.  We’ll keep a close eye on the situation and will update accordingly as more data are released tomorrow.

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As of last update, San Francisco DA Kamala Harris (D) is trailing Los Angeles County DA Steve Cooley by 22,817 votes out of 7,659,341 counted so far.

According to the Unprocessed Ballot Report (PDF), there are still 2,342,664 ballots uncounted. Sidenote: Don’t you love Debra Bowen and what she’s done with the SoS’s office? Susan Bysiewicz, take notes!

What does this mean?

Well, we can analyze the relative composition of the remaining outstanding ballots, and the news isn’t the best for Harris.

Harris’ statewide weighted average performance for the unprocessed ballots (weighted by the number of votes outstanding) is 45.55% to Cooley’s 45.95%. This is actually a notch down from the 45.64% Harris has received in all counties so far.

This is mostly due to a large number of outstanding ballots in San Diego and Orange Counties. While LA, SF, Alameda, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa will help to offset this, they will be offset by Riverside, San Bern, and also possibly death-by-thousand-cuts in the various counties in the Central Valley.

From this – provided we assume that unprocessed ballots break down the same as the counties they are from thus far – we can estimate that Harris is on pace to fall another 9,486 votes behind Cooley.

For Harris to overcome her 23k deficit, we can also say that Harris will need to do 0.69% better among the uncounted ballots than she has thus far.

Here are the top 12 counties that will pad Cooley’s margin:

And where we estimate Harris to get an advantage:

The 34 counties we haven’t listed are expected to lose Harris another 23,531 votes, margin-wise.

Again, this analysis is fraught with assumptions, but gives us a useful picture of where things stand. We’re not taking into account any macro influences – such as the possibility of provisional ballots skewing Democratic – here, and given the sheer number of outstanding ballots – 23% of the total cast – much remains uncertain.  

On Tuesday night we were all (including me) counting Jim Costa amongst the casualties of the 2010 GOP wave. After all he was trailing Republican challenger Andy Vidak by 1823 votes with 100% of precincts reporting.

Fortunately that judgement seems to have been  premature. 🙂

Below the fold for all the details…….

CA-20 comprises part of Fresno and Kern counties and all of Kings.

Whilst votes cast in district on election day have all been counted there are still a large number of vote by mail, provisional and “other” ballots to be counted. Other ballots include ballots that are damaged, ballots that could not be machine read and ballots diverted by optical scanners for further review.

Of course some of these have been processed and counted since Tuesday and as of the close of counting on friday Costa has narrowed the gap to only 1091 votes!

Here is how I think the remaining votes will shape out.

Firstly Fresno County.

Fresno thus far has voted 60/40 in favour of Costa and it has about 80000 votes left to count. The number of 20th District votes left in Fresno is approximately 16000. If these break for Costa as the votes counted have thus far then that is a net gain for Costa of about 3200 votes.

Secondly Kern County.

Kern has thus far split 62/38 in favour of Costa and it has about 65000 votes to count. About 13000 of these are in the 20th. If they shape out the way votes counted thus far have then Costa stands to gain about another 2500 votes.

Lastly Kings County.

Kings is all in the 20th and has voted thus far 70/30 in favour of Vidak. However Kings has only another 500 odd votes to count which would give Vidak a gain of only 200 votes.

So…..

-1100 (current Vidak lead)

-200 (Kings gain to Vidak)

+3200 (Fresno Gain to Costa)

+2500 (Kern Gain to Costa)

That leaves Costa in front when all is said, done and counted by about 4400 votes. Assume my numbers are overly optimistic. (They are approximate for ease of calculation but otherwise no heroic or unrealistic assumptions have been made.)

Then Costa should have an ample lead to win.

Your thoughts at this seemingly great news?  

I was originally typing this as a comment in the open thread, but saw it grow and grow to the point that I decided to write a diary comparing my predictions to the actual results. Overall, my predictions statewide were pretty much spot-on. I may have been off by a few percentage points in the statewide races, but not too shabby. The district races and ballot measures, on the other hand, some were way off due to lack of polling and information. Without further Apu, here goes.

Governor – Likely to Strong Brown; Brown by 14.33% in my number predictions – (Brown by 11.9%) – pretty close though a little less than I was hoping for with the way voters were pissed at Whitman running ads nonstop

Lt. Gov. – Lean Newsom – (Newsom by 10.4%) – looks like I underestimated Newsom, especially with a rare moderate and Hispanic Republican who was also the quasi-incumbent. Being associated with “16%” Arnold likely turned out to be the drag I predicted

Attorney General – Toss-Up – (Still not yet called with Cooley leading by 0.3%) – right on the mark here, regardless of whether it ends up being Harris (please!) or Cooley; I’m a nervous wreck watching this one seesaw back and forth!

Secretary of State – Solid Bowen – (Bowen by 15.8%) – little less than predicted but still good

Treasurer – Solid Lockyer – (Lockyer by 19.7%) – almost on the mark

Controller – Strong to Solid Chiang – (Chiang by 18.1%) – almost on the mark here too

Insurance Commissioner – Likely to Strong Jones – (Jones by 12.6%) – another one that was reasonably on target

School Superintendent – Toss-Up – (Torlakson by 9.4%) – didn’t have much information so I just threw a prediction out there

The ballot measures I was mostly WAY off; they were mostly shots in the dark due to a dearth of information about how they were faring, because 19, 23, and 25 stole the show. Maybe from now on I’ll just give my recommendations.

Prop 19 – Lean Yes – (No by 8%)

Prop 20 – Toss-up/lean No – (Yes by 22.8%)

Prop 21 – Toss-up – (No by 16.8%)

Prop 22 – Toss-up/lean No – (Yes by 22%)

Prop 23 – Likely No – (No by 22.4%) – wow, this of all ballot measures was where I was actually close!

Prop 24 – Toss-up – (No by 17.2%)

Prop 25 – Likely Yes – (Yes by 9.4%) – then again, with this, 19, and 23 gobbling up all the airtime, it should have been easier to predict these than the other 6

Prop 26 – Toss-up – (Yes by 4.6%) – not too shabby for a ballot measure that received little attention

Prop 27 – Toss-up – (No by 19.2%)

U.S. Senate – Lean Boxer; Boxer by 6.67% – (Boxer by 9.4%) – I knew all along that Boxer would put up a helluva fight and win similar to 1998.

CA-03 – Toss-Up/Tilt Lungren; Lungren by 3.75% – (Lungren by 7.9%) – a little off, but I knew it was still a fight, and putting resources into this race may have helped us downticket in AD-05

CA-11 – Lean McNerney; McNerney by 2.75% – (McNerney by 0.3%; by 421 votes with thousands more still to be counted) – closer than predicted

CA-18 – Likely Cardoza; Cardoza by 10.75% – (Cardoza by 15%) – better than predicted

CA-20 – Lean Costa; Costa by 2.75% – (Vidak by 0.2% pending absentee ballot counts)

CA-44 – Lean to Likely Calvert; Calvert by 13.17% – (Calvert by 11%) – another bull’s-eye; a shame we didn’t invest more here after 2008

CA-45 – Likely Bono Mack; Bono Mack by 15% – (Bono Mack by 10.1%) – a little less than predicted but hey, I’m not complaining!

CA-47 – Lean Sanchez; Sanchez by 8.25% – (Sanchez by 8.7%) – pretty close to the mark here

SD-12 – Toss-up/tilt Caballero – (Cannella (R) by 6%) – have to look into this one a bit more deeply

SD-34 – Likely Correa – (Correa (D) by 27%) – guess I took his near-loss in 2006 a bit too seriously

AD-05 – Toss-up – (Pan (D) by 2.8%) – one of those toss-ups that is great to see…one that breaks our way!

AD-10 – Toss-up/tilt Huber – (Huber (D) by 7.8%) – similar to Correa

AD-15 – Tilt/lean Buchanan – (Buchanan (D) by 5%) – another bull’s-eye

AD-30 – Lean Valadao – (Valadao (R) by 24.6%) – way off here. I guess from now on, anybody but a Florez or a Parra! Not sure if Dean Florez plans on running for CA-20 if Vidak does win or when Costa retires (if he does hold on this year).

AD-33 – Lean Achadjian – (Achadjian (R) by 21.2%) – looks like I was right in saying we have a long way to go in the southern Central Coast outside Santa Barbara.

AD-36 – Lean to Likely Knight – (Knight (R) by 15.8%) – should have gone with police officer Watkins in the primary

AD-68 – Lean Mansoor – (Mansoor (R) by 11.8%) – Nguyen was a great candidate, but we still have a lot of work to do to win in OC outside Santa Ana/Anaheim.

AD-70 – Lean to Likely Wagner – (Wagner (R) by 20.9%) – I thought a close race in this district with Fox’s stronger-than-average campaign and Wagner’s presence (or lack thereof) seemed too good to be true. While Obama won this Newport Beach-centric district, we still have work to do to build up the D bench here.

And finally, some races that were not on my radar screen but from what I had heard may have been in trouble should have been paid more attention:

AD-35 – (Williams (D) by 8%) – This is a very Democratic area; what happened? Was turnout here very low too? The Dem numbers in Santa Barbara seem much smaller than usual; usually SB is about on par with California as a whole. A California political neophyte who only saw these election results would think Santa Barbara was a swing county, rather than being a bellwether for how the state goes.

AD-53/54 – (Butler (D) by 7%/Lowenthal (D) by 13%) – Was turnout in the normally Democratic South Bay L.A., despite fellow South Bayers Bowen and Chiang winning in landslides at the top of the ticket, depressed too?