...and then there is HOPE !

because voters "tampered" with this election.

(put the word "tampered" at the back of your mind, we'll get to it in a minute).

In analyzing this election, for historical context we cannot go back to 2004, there was no primary contest in Ohio.

While it was not a presidential year, 2006 offers a better baseline for comparison. Both republicans & democrats had contests, Blackwell-vs-Petro and Strickland-vs-Others.

I managed to find these voter turnout numbers on SOS site for 2006 & 2008 respectively :

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/ElectionsVoter/results2006.aspx?Section=1682

http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enr/f?p=152:11:0

Take a red county like Wayne, Poli said they cast 16,477 Dem ballots on Tuesday. In 2006, they cast 5,172 dem ballots.

So on Tuesday, they cast more than triple the number of dem ballots from 2006. That is a 220% increase in the number of dem ballots from 2006, think about that for a second.

Next, in the 2006 primary Wayne county cast a total of 14,458 ballots (D + R + I), on Tue they cast 32,104 ballots (D + R + I). Again, an astronomical 120% increase, by the standards of election Math.

The numbers are even more skewed when you look at REDDER than RED counties like Butler & Warren.

So something motivated voters (democrats, independents & republicans) to overwhelmingly vote and they voted democratic. Whether it is because they saw a viable female or black candidate for the first time, or because they hate Hillary, or because they can't stand the idea of Barack being the president, or because voting for Hillary gives McCain a fighting chance in November.

No matter what their reasons were, positive or negative for Hillary or Barack, the state as a whole behaved contrary to its equilibrium behavior, in essence Ohio gave up its natural flavor.

The absence of a republican primary stacked the deck so heavily in the democratic column that Ohio failed to capture the essence of the nation. Had Romney stuck around for another two primaries, McCain would not have had the mathematical certainty that he did on Tue and Ohio would have had a more natural Dem primary.

Looking at the next three primaries - Wyoming(18) Mississippi(40) & Pennsylvania(158). Barack is expected to win both WY & MS, if he does 10-8 and 23-17 respectively, he will net +8 effectively canceling Hillary's gain on Tue.

Then comes PA on April 22nd, similar to Ohio in many respects, EXCEPT voters CANNOT TAMPER with the election, like they did in Ohio. It is a closed primary, so PA will have a more natural democratic primary than Ohio did. With 6 weeks to campaign, Barack is likely to net a few more delegates in PA.

Coming back to Ohio, among those who voted D on Tue:

- the Rs will return to their base in Nov (except VJ pointed out somewhere that they are now forced to sift thru dem literature before Nov and for many years to come :-) )

- The Ds will stay with the who ever the nominee is

- Having chosen to take a D ballot in the dem primary, many Is could vote D in the general election.

So there is still HOPE, for the nation and for Ohio, that decision 2008 is not McCain !

(please ignore, it didn't work)

thanks for going back and looking at the 2006; I didn't even think about doing that.

http://wp2.medina-gazette.com/2008/03/06/news/voter-reports-ballot-mishap/



So he crossed over just to f**k up our primary and he even admits it !

I knew you can't depend on the rethugs to make peace with other nations, now you can't even count on them to have a decent primary election.

:D

Ohio, tell the nation....

in my neck of the woods, SW Ohio, Montgomery Co.

I'm a poll worker and HEARD people request a Dem ballot "just this one time" so they could use some strategy. After informing those voters that they could vote for Dems ONLY, they told us it was OK because they just wanted to vote for president.

And in the Republican stronghold of Greene Co. it was the same. (Think Wright-Patterson Air Force base and lots of conservatives.)

This article in the "Dayton Daily News" confirms what we heard, Democrats outdrew Republicans in Greene for the first time since the 1930s.

snip ...

The large number of Democratic ballots surprised Marilyn Reed, chair of the county GOP but she noted that only 16,000 voted in the contested Democratic county commission race. "That tells me some people were only interested in the presidential race," she said.

snip ...

Link:
http://tinyurl.com/2bvosn


More of the same in Butler Co. (Blue collar workers, some rural areas) Butler County turns blue: More Democrats fill out ballots than Republicans.

snip ...

"Usually Republicans outnumber Democrats by 2 to 1," in the county, said Betty McGary, elections board director. "We won't know exactly how many switched over until we are able to certify results as official."

snip ...

Of the ballots requested Tuesday, March 4, 48,991 were for Democrat, and 39,747 for Republican, according to the elections board.

Before the primary, there were 45,711 registered Republicans and 21,640 Democrats.


snip ...

Link:
http://tinyurl.com/2ybrrj

It's difficult for me to believe that all those voters, who previously were Repubs, suddenly had an epiphany and wanted to vote for Dems. Difficult, indeed.

:eyes:

somebody figured out the math early.

I suspect some dems voted in the R primary in 2006 to get Blackwell nominated so they could torpedo any chances for the Rs in the general election. But only some, because Ted still had to win the primary.

elections have been getting "stolen," John Adams would say, since he lost to Jefferson.

<<Democrats outdrew Republicans in Greene for the first time since the 1930s.<<

I had kind of a similar experience Tuesday. While I was getting my ballot a woman came up to the table. They asked her what party she was declaring. She was silent for a minute and then asked if it mattered. They told her she could ask for either a Republican or Democratic ballot. She thought for a half-second more and then took the Democratic.

Reading Max's post, my initial thought was that maybe Ohio should revisit the idea of open primaries. I don't like the notion of people coming in just to muck things up, which is what they do under the guise of "making a point" or "sending a message."

what business did I have to be voting Democratic, married to a high profile R. I wonder what the rest of that clueless's day was like.

She had no business making a comment like that. In fact, that could be construed as intimidation, which (last I looked) is unlawful under the voting rights act.

We'll have to compare battle scars some day.

;)

it's a breath of fresh air. (I was escaping from GD-P.)

I'll bet that forum would welcome your well-thought-out posts, Max.

time to get some sanity back. I was starting to get a bit "edgy," perhaps fatigued.

mdm luckily had the time and go back in and research some cold numbers. Where else is it going on?

Google 'Stop Hillary Express' and you'll find that it started in 2007. Republicans have been encouraged to come out en masse in all state primaries to vote for Obama to oust Hillary; therefore, it is my opinion that all the states' numbers are skewed and not accurate. I thought I read somewhere that it happened to Kerry in 2004. The strategy switched to voting for HRC recently because of the strong feelings on both sides to keep the fight going.

You're right - it works both ways.

I strongly suspect we will have new voting laws for the next Presidential election. Gov Strickland has already mentioned that he will be drafting legislation (I think he said drafting it) to get rid of caucuses.

or are you referring to legislation for the DNC ?

And I remember being unhappy that he didn't get the nomination!

it didn't matter whether you voted in the primary, Kerry had the nomination. It was similar to McCain's presumtive nominee status.

this blood bath we're currently immersed in.

I was for Edwards as well, and was so disappointed when it all wrapped up that night.

it would appear, in Wayne County. I posted your numbers in the local paper, and some people are obviously UPSET.

involved that wouldn't make sense to people who dont live here. Basically the numbers you gave us, I posted on one thread, and a heated discussion insued on a different thread, because of people's confusion over why a favored R didn't beat the incumbent who has high negatives for a variety of reasons (also an R). In retrospect, they are mad at this poor guy (candidate for a County office) who they expected to win, and because if he had "crossed," to become a Dem, he could have absolutely beat the "unfavorable" guy in a two-way race in the general election. But, of course, that's arm chair quarterbacking, because noone could have predicted the cross-over surge. Also, I've heard the MSM media denying it today: "You can't prove people's motives." But I heard it from a friend at work and my own mother, that people were indeed unabashedly stating their reasons for crossing over at the polls, with no moral compunction or consciousness whatsover. I'll keep you posted.

If Hillary v Barack was decided on super Tue and if Romney had won several primaries and if it was a heated contest of - McCain v Romney v Huckabee, then the challenger in your county race may have easily won.

However there is some twisted merit to what they are saying, if the challenger had declared himself as a D and run on the D ballot they would not have had a contest until Nov. And it may have been an easy win in Nov if most voters in the county dislike the incumbent.

But then again, if you are an R and you ran as a D in the primary, you have the job of informing everyone in your RED county that you really are an R...it gets confusing.

I have ever read.

Clinton won Ohio? 12,000 registered Dems produce 28,000 votes

There's an active poster in the thread who refutes the arguments with a typical cut-and-paste, but there really is some good stuff within that thread.

And be sure to read this:

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/03/rushing-to-reas.html

Go and check the exit polls. In Wisconsin, Republicans made up 9 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Obama won them 72-28 over Clinton. Just as tellingly, 14 percent of primary voters said they were "conservative," and Obama won them 59-40, a bigger margin than he won with liberals or moderates. Tactical voters who said Obama stood a better chance of winning in November? They went for him 87-13.

Now, look at Ohio. Once again 9 percent of voters were Republicans, but Obama and Clinton split them evenly, 49-49. Once again, 14 percent of voters were "conservatives," and Obama and Clinton split them 48-48. (Obama did better with them than he did with liberals and moderates.) Those tactical voters who thought Obama could win gave him a 80-18 victory, a margin twelve points smaller than the margin in Wisconsin.

It's a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters, up from 15 percent in the Kerry-Edwards primary) went against Obama. For the first time since Super Tuesday, they were Clinton's best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.

Ohio didn't wind up being very close, but Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. If the exits are right, about 252,000 of those voters were Republicans, and about 618,000 were conservatives. Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.

the roads and sidewalks were icy & treacherous around cleveland, another urban stronghold for Obama.

Akron (summit county) went for Hillary 69,000 to 55,000.

One thing is for sure, the Non-Partisans did not want to sit on the sidelines.

A lawyer friend of mine voted for Hillary while her husband, also a lawyer, voted for Obama.

Exercising her fine legal mind she convinced both of us that having this contest continue into April and beyond is actually a good thing for the party.

The continued historic choice between the two keeps McCain off the air, even Rush is forced to talk about them everyday to hold the interest of his audience.

But you can count on Repubs to introduce war related bills in the senate, that create talking points & attack points for McCain before Nov.

... and I'm looking for the silver lining. I do think that Clinton's negative turn worked as hoped in the three-week timeframe, but isn't a sustainable strategy. Ed Rendell did an awful job for Clinton this weekend, pushing the "electoral votes and popular votes don't matter, only big states matter" meme. When this kind of talk first started coming from the Clinton campaign, Obama set fire and racked up 11 straight post-Super Tuesday wins.

One thing is for certain: this election is historic, intense, and has surprised us at every turn. It is likely to do so a few more times.

(Have I mentioned that, despite all the DU griping and back-and-forth, as a political junkie I am just loving this shit?)

(loving this shit, that is)

I noticed that the last 10 times I flicked over to Fox News guess what they were talking about ?

Yep ! the dem primary and how the party lords are cheating poor Hillary out of her delegates from FL & MI. Charlie Crist is going to have to take responsibility for this screw up somewhere.

Keep doing that for a few more weeks Fox News and most of your viewers won't even remember who McCain is :-)

They have a closed primary, but you can change your party affiliation to D by Mon the 24th.

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20080322_ap_afterprimaryrepublicanslookingtowinbackpartyswitchers.html