Barbara Boxer Got More Votes than Ten Tea Party Senate Candidates Combined

[Emillereid]

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
http://www.thenation.com/print/blog/155790/barbara-boxer-got-more-votes-ten-tea-party-senate-candidates-combined



Barbara Boxer Got More Votes than Ten Tea Party Senate Candidates Combined
Jon Wiener | November 3, 2010

California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer defeated challenger Carly Fiorina by a ten-point margin on Tuesday, winning a total of 3.7 million votes, more than the combined vote total of ten Tea Party senate candidates.

The Tea Party Senate candidates made big news, but they ran mostly in small states. Also, several lost.

Christine O’Donnell got a lot of publicity in the nation, but only 122,000 votes in Delaware. Boxer got more than that in Long Beach.

Joe Miller in Alaska got only 68,000 votes. Sharron Angle in Nevada got only 321,000 votes.

O’Donnell, Miller and Angle lost their elections—along with Linda McMahon in Connecticut—but even the Tea Party candidates who won didn’t get very many votes compared to Boxer. Rand Paul in Kentucky was elected with 752,000 votes; Boxer got five times that many. She got twenty times more than Tea Party winner John Hoeven in North Dakota, ten times more than Mike Crapo in Idaho.

<snip>

For the record, the ten Tea Party Senate candidates (as identified by Fox News <1>) whose total votes were less than Boxer’s (3,686,000): Joe Miller, Alaska (68,000), Christine O’Donnell, Delaware (123,000), John Hoeven, North Dakota (178,000), Mike Crapo, Idaho (310,000), Sharron Angle, Nevada (321,000), Mike Lee, Utah (360,000), John Boozman, Arkansas (432,000), Linda McMahon, Connecticut (453,000), Jerry Moran, Kansas (571,000), and Dino Rossi, Washington state (708,000 with some uncounted at this hour).
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I've been thinking about this all day -- for all the fuss about the teabaggers and GOP win in the HOuse -- the fact of the matter is that California (the 8th largest economy in the world) got bluer. Don't we count for something or are we just chopped liver.

Anybody have a good source for the final votes in all the races? I feel like doing the math and seeing just how few votes brought about this seachange.

[B2G]

1. Um, California is a big state

Geography lesson for the day.

[David Zephyr]

2. Thanks for the perspective.

Barbara Boxer!

[DrToast]

3. And yet her vote counts just as much as one of them

Horseshit.

[Emillereid]

4. Exactly!

[joshcryer]

5. Yep, this is fucking bullshit right here. Our "representative" democracy is hardly such.

[AJH032]

10. that's why the Senate exists

it was established to "protect" the smaller states from large state control.

[DrToast]

11. That's why the Senate is a fucking disaster.

[hedgehog]

6. Forget about amending Senate Rules, time to start amending

how the Senate is elected!

[onenote]

13. uh, no.

you'd have to amend how the constitution is amended to get the small states to give up the power that comes from the fact that every state gets the same number of senators. And, of course, you aren't going to get the small states to go along with amending how the constitution is amended.

So, you can put this idea in the trash and move on.

[Bitwit1234]

7. But if you go back and look where republicans won

the totals were obscene..in some of he republican states only about 10,000 people voted and they only beat the Democrat by 500 or so votes. The map looks red but it is very very deceiving. A few people are holding the majority of us hostage.

[Emillereid]

8. As soon as I can get all the results I plan on doing some number crunching!

[joshcryer]

9. Look forward to that.

[onenote]

12. one of the sillier statistical arguments ever

Using the same logic, one could argue that bagger Linda McMahon got 3x as many votes as Democratic lion Patrick Leahy.

[hedgehog]

14. And if I'm consistent, I have to say that that is as wrong as what

the OP mentioned. Either this is a government by the people (however right or wrong they may be) or it isn't. 1 Person, 1 Vote, no matter where you live.