Holy Batcrap - Markell wins!!

[LynneSin]

Although I'm a bit torn about this. If Biden wins I'm assuming that the loser of this race would end up replacing Biden in the senate and well, Carney is a bit too much like Carper who is becoming a bit like a mini-Joe Lieberman.

But I'm glad to see Delaware went for a change with Jack Markell. And he'll pretty much win it all in November.

[jberryhill]

1. Kind of interesting...

Look at these numbers:

DEMOCRATIC PARTY
KAREN HARTLEY-NAGLE 34879 1115 35994 55 . 4 %
MICHEAL MILLER 21913 480 22393 34 . 5 %
JERRY W. NORTHINGTON 6286 323 6609 10 . 1 %


DEMOCRATIC PARTY
JOHN CARNEY 35165 947 36112 48 . 8 %
JACK MARKELL 36622 1227 37849 51 . 2 %

The columns are machine, absentee, and total.

There were a total of 64,966 votes cast in the race to be sacrificial lamb against Castle.

There were a total of 73,961 votes cast in what is effectively the gubernatorial race for the next term (Lee hasn't a ghost of a chance).

So there about 15% of D primary voters don't care who runs against Castle, or else didn't vote since they are voting Castle in the general anyway.

Even among folks who went to the trouble of obtaining an absentee ballot, there were 2174 absentee ballot votes in the gubernatorial primary, compared to 1918 votes in the congressional primary.

If I had time to sit around with a paper ballot someplace, I'd probably at least figure out a preference instead of undervoting. Wouldn't you?

[cyberpj]

2. Excellent analysis Joe.

[petepillow]

3. I'm actually afraid to even think about what this might imply.

It truly seemed like there was no question that Markell would win, just from the vibe on the street leading up to the election. I really was so confident that he would win, i didn't bother looking at the results until the next day. The fact that it ended up being so close was a surprise, despite the "Shocked" in the headlines the next day. But is it even possible that that large a number of Dem primary voters abstained from voting beyond governor? Do you happen to know what the numbers were for the other races?

[woodsprite]

4. Even if Carney gets appointed, maybe it'll be just a 'placeholder'

for the next election when Beau can run for that seat.