Hackett kept 59% of DEMs, Schmidt only 26%

[gasperc]

Below is a comparison of votes from Tuesday's special election
and votes from November's general election in 2004.

I divided Tuesday's vote totals with those from November and
called it voter retention%.  What I saw was that Hackett got
anywhere from 47% to 74% of the vote that the Democratic
candidate got in November. While Schmidt only got 23 to 27% of
the votes Portman got in November.  

Without doing a stellar exit poll or interviewing every voter,
it's impossible to know how many votes switched from Portman
to Hackett etc.

But this crude comparison does show how depressed the
Republican vote was on Tuesday OR how inflated the vote was in
November.

Very, very consistent from county to county.
Please kick for others to absorb.


Nov-2004						Aug-2005	
County			vote %		vote retention% from 11/04
Adams	Portman	8,310	72%		Schmidt	1911	23.0%
	Sanders	3,169	28%		Hackett	2101	66.3%

Brown	Portman	13,796	72%		Schmidt	3100	22.5%
	Sanders	5,293	28%		Hackett	3950	74.6%

ClermontPortman	66,158	77%		Schmidt	17320	26.2%
	Sanders	20,210	23%		Hackett	12439	61.5%

HamiltonPortman	89,743	70%		Schmidt	25011	27.9%
	Sanders	38,237	30%		Hackett	23597	61.7%

Pike	Portman	6,047	52%		Schmidt	1559	25.8%
	Sanders	5,578	48%		Hackett	2659	47.7%
							
Scioto	Portman	10,099	56%		schmidt	2638	26.1%
	Sanders	8,004	44%		hackett	4925	61.5%

Warren	Portman	32,949	78%		schmidt	7556	22.9%
	Sanders	9,107	22%		hackett	5420	59.5%


							
Final	Portman	227,102			Schmidt	59095	26.0%
	Sanders	92,767			Hackett	55091	59.4%

					difference	4004	

[jmaier]

1. I'm sadly unimpressed.

I can see why Republicans might be unmotivated to come out for this special election. 1) they had every expectation of winning and 2) they had a pretty unappealing candidate, 3) her loss would hardly derail Republican control in Congress.

Why every one of the Democrats didn't make it to the polls is beyond my understanding. How much more of this administration and its arrogance, incompetence and venality is required before folks at least work up the moxie to go vote?

[gasperc]

3. Indeed, the dead vote should have carried the day

a consultant used to call any% under 30 as the dead vote, even if your candidate was dead you could always count on 30%

and maybe the nearly 40000 people that voted for Sanders but didn't vote for Hackett are dead in some way. They could have easily helped Hackett win.

But the grim numbers are there, nearly 180000 of Portman's voters stayed home or switched to Hackett.
It could mean that the district is as red as ever or that the GOP base has been seriously turned off.

[mattclearing]

2. Out of cycle elections always suffer from low turnout.

But the ratios are interesting.