Swing State Project

A tale of two candidacies.

Marty Ozinga (IL-11): $1.4 million spent, 34.5% of the vote won.

Carl Mumpower (NC-11): $128,000 spent, 35.8% of the vote won.

Texas went for McCain, big whoop. But the real story is in the margins. George W. Bush carried Texas over John Kerry by a 61%-38% margin. Four years later John McCain has carried the Lone Star state by a comparatively weak 55%-44%. The gap has shrunk by 12% points in the democrats favor.

Here’s the quick scorecard post election day:

US Senate: Cornyn 55%-43%, no change

US House: Dems – 1 for 20 R – 12 D

State Senate: Dems +1 for 18 R – 12 D and 1 outstanding (R defense)

State House: Dems +3 for 75 R – 74 D and 1 outstanding (R defense)

Dallas County moves to hard democratic, from weak democratic

Harris County (Houston) emerges as a purple county from solid republican

Tarrant County (Fort Worth) reflects the state as a whole

Bexar County (San Antonio) has a slight democratic lean

Travis County (Austin) is a liberal bastion of democrats

U.S. Senate

Rick Noriega was underfunded in his campaign. That is the first thing to say in “what went wrong.” However, I have seen some people suggesting that we could have recruited better. Considering the depth of our bench and how well (or poorly) seasoned it is in Texas, I disagree. The results form the senate race almost matched the presidential results, so this was in no way a vote of confidence for Sen. Cornyn. So, where can Rep. Noriega go from here? I have heard rumors that he is interested in more of an executive position. The obvious positions that emerge are Lt. Governor and Harris County Judge (more on that later).

U.S. House

I lost my Congressman. It sucks. More importantly, the loss of Nick Lampson is a body blow for NASA in the next congress as there are no diehard supporters of NASA in the U.S. House who hold any seniority. I’m hoping Rep. Lampson gets an appointment by the administration relating to space and aeronautics. A statewide run is not in his future because in all honesty, his campaign teams from both 2006 an 2008 were not run as the well oiled machines that several other successful campaigns have been.

A quick note on Chet Edwards won re-election against a tier 4 for opponent by a 53%-45% margin. This is a reminder, he will never be safe in the current TX-17 and it is imperative why we need to take control of the state house.

My condolences to Larry Joe Doehrty and Michael Skelly. Both were great candidates but could not overcome their districts’ PVIs, where the dial only moved a few percentage points in their favor.

Pete Sessions won re-election by the exact same margin he did in 2006 and Kenny Marchant lost several points this time around. Keep your eyes on these two, TX-24 and TX-32 may have life in them.

State Senate

WENDY DAIVS (D) WON SD-10!!!! This district is completely confined within Tarrant County and was held by cigar chomper Kim Brimer (R). Brimer spent most of the spring and summer suing Wendy to try and keep her off the ballot, he failed at least three times. I interned for Wendy last spring, and I am so proud of her, she also has the potential and background to go statewide if she wants to. There are more US Congressional district in Texas than there are state senate seats, so I doubt the Congress will be in her future. More importantly, the filibuster line for the Texas Senate was 11 members. There are now at least 12 Democrats. Good news.

Meanwhile, the special election in SD-17 will be finalized in December. Fmr Congressman Chris Bell (D) will finish off Fmr Judge Joan Huffman (R) then. A Republican spoiler filed as a democrat in the special and took 13% of the vote. Her total combined with Bell’s would have been well over 50%. If we win this come December Dems will be at 13 Senators and +2 overall. We’re not done.

State House

We lost three of our own seats, including two incumbents and one open seat. Juan Garcia (D) was elected against a corrupt R in 2006 and Dan Barrett (D) was elected in a special in late 2007. The open seat was in rural areas near College Station (home of Texas A&M). Garcia and Barrett were great guys but they both have a future somewhere in Texas politics if they really want it.

Alright, post-mortem over, we picked up six seats so far. The winners are as follows:

HD-52 (Williamson County, Round Rock) – Maldonado (D) wins an open seat 48.6%-47.4%

HD-78 (El Paso) – Joe Moody (D) wins open seat 51.5%-45.1%

HD-96 (Tarrant County) – Chris Turner beats hard right ideologue Bill Zedler 51.2%-46.6%

HD-101 (Dallas County, Mesquite) Robert Mikos (D) wins open seat 50.6%-49.3%

HD-102 (Dallas) – Carol Kent (D) beats long time incumbent Tony Goolsby 53.0%-47.0%

HD-133 (Harris) – Kristi Thibaut (D) beats Jim Murphy 50.6%-49.4%

Overall theme of the winners? Public education. Kent and Maldonado both have experience in public schools and all the rest had public education as part of their platform. Miklos and Thibaut were both surprising wins even though they were both expected to be close. Moody is 25 years old so expect to hear more from him later on. Chris Turner’s win over Zedler is a victory against partisanship, for those familiar with Virginia politics Zedler was sort of our equivalent to Cuccinnelli. Kent and Moody should be safe from here out due to how their districts are changing in democrats favor.

Meanwhile, Dallas dems have been on such a rise, a candidate who was little more than a name on the ballot may have pulled off an upset pending the recount. Bob Romano (D) is 29 votes behind immigrant hater and school voucher supporter Linda Harper-Brown in Dallas County’s HD-105. If Romano pulls this one out the House becomes a 75-75 tie. Expect Romano to face a stiff primary challenge in 2010 should he win.

Final Result? The odds of Tom Craddick remaining speaker are extremely slim. Expect a new Speaker who will allow members to bring forward legislation that is important to their districts. It’s a good day for Democracy in the Texas House.

Dallas County

Dems won everything by large margins at a county level. Obama finished just shy of 60% and so did many of the judges. Embattled Sheriff Lupe Valdez (Female, Minority, Lesbian) finished with 55%

Harris County

Houston, we have liftoff. All but three, maybe four judges got over the finish line. They are the first democrats elected county wide in Harris county since the early 90s. Joining them are our new County Attorney Vince Ryan (D), County Clerk Loren Jackson (D), and (most importantly) the lead democratic vote getter Houston City Councilman and now, Sheriff-elect, Adrian Garcia. We were 5,000 votes short in winning District Attorney and finished behind in decent margins for County Judge and Tax-Assessor/Collector. All offices should be held by Democrats within 6-8 years.

Tarrant County

No gains, but Tarrant held margins exactly even as the state as a whole. Want to take the state’s temperature? Watch Fort Worth.

Bexar County

A few judges gained in San Antonio, but nothing drastic. This county remains fairly non partisan.

Travis County

Obama won 67% in this Austin based county. Everything else followed.

A Few Other Notes

Galveston Counties is becoming more of a white flight county with margins diminishing. This is very bad news for Galveston where most offices are held by Dems. Dems barely held the open Sheriff seat 50.5%-49.5% against an underfunded, under-qualified republican. I can only hope that it is due to Democrats leaving the island from Hurricane Ike.

Democrats won their first Judge on the 1st Court of Appeals, a 14 county court that includes Harris and Galveston county then stretches out towards Austin. Congratulations Judge Jim Sharp.

Fort Bend County, home of Sugarland is moving Democratic with several 53-47 wins for the republicans. Not bad.

Fort Bend County Commissioner Place 1 has moved to the Democrats. It’s just a low level County Commissioner but I thought you all would like to know due to who won it. Netroots hero and original Dean Dozen candidate, Richard Morrison.

The Future

It’s good. Houston Mayor will be an open seat in 2009 due to term limits and I have only heard Democratic names mentioned.

The state house is 1 or 2 Dems behind from switching over and we got 1 cycle to do it. We did New York’s Senate, time for our House.

Governor. Dems started winning Harris County and that’s the greenlight. Houston Mayor Bill White should be ready to go for us. All eyes are now on Hutchison and what she chooses to do. All of Texas’ Republican politicians are in a holding position, waiting on her and what she chooses to do. Rick Perry has no term limits and wants to keep his job. As for the other offices, Former Comptroller John Sharp is supposably looking at the Senate seat and Noriega may be eyeing Lt. Gov.

Time will tell, but we’re looking good.

Updates

Some more information:

Quickly, I was horribly wrong about Denton county. It went from +40 Bush, to +26 McCain. I am thrilled by this news and personally I am determined to flip this county even if I have to take it over myself, I just graduated from Denton’s University of North Texas, so it is a bit of a vested interest.

1) Bell County. We had a good state house race here, lost it by the same margin Obama did. Very promising change in margins. Perhaps we can try again next year.

2) Major movement in Cameron County (Brownsville)

3) Several Valley districts moved Dem between 10%-20%

4) Nueces County (Corpus Christi) is still red (surprising) but less so by 10%.

5) There is a slow creep democratically across Ron Paul’s TX-14 (Corpus to Galveston). My guess is this is more of an immigration line more than anything consisting of Mexican immigrants moving north.

Back in August of 2007, when primary season was heating up, we asked you guys to look deep into the future, ponder a potential Obama presidency, and think about whom Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich might appoint to replace his state’s junior senator.

Well, that scenario has now come to pass (and the unpopular Blago has managed to hang on to his office). Speculation is already running wild. Here are some of the names under consideration:

Valerie Jarrett (real estate executive & Obama adviser)

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)

Rep. Danny Davis (IL-07)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)

AG Lisa Madigan

Comptroller Dan Hynes

Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias

IL Dept. of Veterans Affairs Dir. Tammy Duckworth

Blago himself (barf)

I’m sure there are other names out there as well. So whom do you think Blago might appoint? And whom do you think he should appoint? (Note that this seat is up for re-election in 2010.)

UPDATE by Crisitunity: We also discussed this in June. Other African-American names we discussed there were Senate President Emil Jones (too old and too tied to Blago), Secretary of State Jesse White (too old, but probably a good 2-year placeholder), State Senator James Claybourne (too Downstate), and ex-Senator Carol Mosely-Braun (not too good at getting re-elected).

Of the squeaker races, Virginia’s 5th and Maryland’s 1st are looking increasingly good for us, but this one keeps getting worse. With 71% of the vote counted, the results now look like this:

Darcy Burner (D): 118,253 (48.90%)

Dave Reichert (R): 123,585 (51.10%)

More ominously, Reichert has pulled ahead in King County, where Burner had been leading until now. Looks like Sheriff Dave will ride again.

Well, I don’t know who else to include in the tags, but this thread is about people who lost races–even if by landslides–who we think have real potential to do something awesome.

Scott Kleeb: obviously, the netroots darling of this cycle.  With his coming so close in NE-03 last time, I think he should have run again there, rather than get in over his head running for the Senate seat against a non-crappy (and quite tough) candidate.  It seems that the fact that Adrian Smith sucked hasn’t yet resonated into netroots consciousness the way Bill Sali’s antics have, and thus it was passed around that Kleeb’s overperformance in NE-03 meant that he could similarly overperform in all of Nebraska.  But he seems like he’s got a future ahead of him, and I think we’d love to see him back.

Gary Trauner: I think I’ve mentioned several times that he’s my favorite candidate, and not only that, he’s almost singlehandedly built a semblance of a Democratic bench in Wyoming (of all places!).  His name’s been tossed around as a gubernatorial candidate, since (to paraphrase someone) Wyomingites are more comfortable sending a Democrat to Cheyenne than to DC.

Nancy Boyda: a nearly heart-breaking loss, from the person who I’ve heard got DCCC money in 2004 and lost badly, then refused it in 2006 (mostly) and won a surprise victory, and then refused it again in 2008 and lost narrowly.  I remember seeing one of her announcements in her capacity as a Representative, and she seemed like a quite hard-working person who really wanted to serve her constituents.

Jon Powers: three words: Jack ****ing Davis.  Will we see more of him?  He can’t really high-tail back to New York immediately either, so this one is really in the air.

Alice Kryzan: How good of a candidate was she?  Will we see more of her?  Would we like to?  I have little to no information about her.

Chris Rothfuss: the Democratic Senate candidate against Mike Enzi of Wyoming, this college instructor with chemical engineering and diplomacy experiences was in WAYYYYYY over his head.  But as my mother mentioned, this guy’s got presidential-level potential, and I hope he gets somewhere.  I was very receptive to his appeal for more scientists in Congress, and while we just got one more recently (Bill Foster), there’s no question that we need more.

Don Cazayoux: Unfortunately, Michael Jackson Wanted to Be Where Don Cazayoux Is, and made everyone not Happy by running as an independent and not Beating It.  This caused this One Day of Cazayoux’s Life, this past Tuesday, to be Bad, because the district’s African-American voters were torn by the question of Black or White, and caused a rare election-day Thriller for Republicans this year as Bill Cassidy succeeded in letting himself say “This Seat Is Mine”.  So Farewell Our Summer Love, LA-06, but let’s not Cry over it, because Cazayoux might Wanna Be Startin’ Something since he’s still got quite a bit of potential.  Will You Be There for him?

Nick Lampson: A comeback kid swept back out of office, by extremely unfriendly turf that nearly elected Snelly Dracula-Gibbr Shelly Sekula-Gibbs in write-in ballots.  Will he be back for another round once we can tip Texas’s districting a bit closer back to sanity?

Larry LaRocco: does this guy have anything else he can do?  Will he wait until Risch really screws it up?  Or can he do something else?  Or is Walt Minnick the way of the future, with apologies to poor LaRocco who worked his butt off on one of the best Senate campaigns this year?  (Speaking of which, what’s Larry Grant doing?)

Larry Craig: Hmm, I think we’d love to have him around!  (What about other Idahoans named Larry?  Is there something that really curses them to political problems?)

Debbie Cook: Seems like a quite awesome candidate…can we get her to run again in 2010?

Dan Seals: Will he be running again?  Or is third time seriously not going to be the charm?  What else could he do?

Elwyn Tinklenberg: How about our favorite light rail champion?  How about another run against the House Anti-American Activities Committee’s lone member?

Tom Allen: I’ve heard that he kept the campaign relatively placid in order to position himself to run for governor.

Rick Noriega: Rumor has it that Hutchison wants the governorship.  Is Noriega our man for the job?  He ran a decent (though, according to people around here it seems, not quite stellar) campaign even though it was a serious uphill battle.

Who else do we want to see again?

Last night, Hans Cole-Man was leading Al Franken by 477 votes. Of course, for the dickface that is Norm Coleman, that margin was good enough to ask Al Franken to waive the mandatory recount requirement and just call it day right there.

But the Minnesota Secretary of State has been updating its final results tally during the day, and Cole-Man’s lead keeps getting smaller:

   9:15 AM  

   Coleman: 1,211,520

   Franken: 1,211,077

   10:15 AM  

   Coleman: 1,211,525

   Franken: 1,211,088

   1:20 PM  

   Coleman: 1,211,527

   Franken: 1,211,190

And right now?

   Coleman: 1,211,542

   Franken: 1,211,306

236 votes. I think we’ll wait for all the ballots to be properly counted before we declare your victory, Norm. You dickface.

(Bumped.)

A favorite reference for election junkies like those of us who inhabit this site is, of course, presidential results by congressional district. Unfortunately, most states don’t publish this data,  but it’s reliably churned out by a firm called Polidata every four years. It’s a difficult task, though, because it usually involves crunching data on a precinct level (and also figuring out what the hell to do with absentee ballots), so Polidata typically releases its findings some time in March after a presidential races.

But the good news is that, working together, we can come up with some preliminary data for at least some states. There are at least three types of states where we can get this data relatively easily:

1) States with just one at-large district (duh), like Montana.

2) States which actually publish presidential results by CD, such as Virginia.

3) States where district lines follow county lines or, in New England, township lines (or at least follow them closely), like Iowa.

Where we need help (at this stage) is in figuring out which states fall into the second and third categories. I know California also releases results by CD, but I believe a few other states do as well. And Arkansas and West Virginia follow county lines, but some other states probably do, too.

Also, let’s use this thread for brainstorming about other ways we might try to figure out presidential results by CD (short of acquiring detailed precinct-by-precinct data). Please share your thoughts in comments.

UPDATE: Jeffmd observes that some states offer easy-to-use precinct data, so where available, that might be an option as well. If you’re aware of any states which provide this information, please let us know that as well.

UPDATE 2: I’ve created a public Google Docs spreadsheet that we can use to compile a list of data sources. Please feel free to input any helpful information you’re aware of. Note that we’re not looking for the actual numbers just yet – rather, we want to know where we can find the numbers (and what format – ie, CD, county, precinct, etc. – we should be looking for). And if you are adding a URL, please use TinyURL.

Here are some handy links for those of you following the still undecided races for Congress and the Electoral College.

[UPDATE1: Added CA-04]

[UPDATE2: Added CA-44 and AK-AL.  Added current margins]

AK-Sen [Mark Begich (D) vs. Ted Stevens (R)]:

Margin: Stevens +3,257 11/7 3:41 PM EDT

http://www.elections.alaska.go…

[Charlie Brown (D) vs. Tom McClintock (R)]:

Margin: McClintock +709 11/7 3:27 PM EDT

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns…

CA-44 [Bill Hedrick (D) vs. Ken Calvert (R)]:

Margin: Calvert +5,264 11/7 3:28 PM EDT

http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns…

GA-Sen [Jim Martin (D) vs. Saxby Chambliss (R)]:

Margin: Chambliss .2% below 50% 11/7 3:33 PM EDT

http://sos.georgia.gov/electio…

MD-01 [Frank Kratovil (D) vs. Andy Harris (R)]:

Margin: Kratovil +2,003 11/7 3:25 PM EDT

http://www.elections.state.md….

MN-Sen [Al Franken (D) vs. Norm Coleman (R)]:

Margin: Coleman +239 11/7 3:24 PM EDT

http://electionresults.sos.sta…

MO-Pres:

Margin: McCAin +5,859 11/7 3:39 PM EDT

http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrmaps/…

NE-02-Pres:

Margin: McCain +569 11/7 3:26 PM EDT

http://www.sos.ne.gov/elec/200…

OH-15: [Mary Jo Kilroy (D) vs. Steve Stivers (R)]:

Margin: Stivers +146 11/7 3:21 PM EDT

http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pl…

VA-05 [Tom Periello (D) vs. Virgil Goode (R)]:

Margin: Periello +745 11/7 3:18 PM EDT

https://www.voterinfo.sbe.virg…

WA-08 [Darcy Burner (D) vs. Dave Reichart (R)]:

Margin: Reichard +5,332 11/7 3:22 PM EDT

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/W…

Last night, the tally in MD-01 was as follows:

Frank Kratovil (D): 160,780

Andy Harris (R): 159,787

A few more votes were added to that tally, bringing Kratovil’s lead down to 915 votes.

Well, a fresh batch of votes are in, and Kratovil’s lead has grown:

Frank Kratovil (D): 167,101

Andy Harris (R): 165,230

That still means that there are about 12,000 (or so) votes left to be counted by my best estimate, but this one is looking good.

(H/T: Chad)