Full Results

Detailed CA recall election results are here.

Comments

[Russell Hanneken]

Ned Roscoe, the candidate endorsed by the Libertarian Party, got beat by Angelyne and Gallagher.

[Madog]

Hey, not bad - Larry Flint got 7th place, beating Gary Coleman.

[david f]

a lesson from germany:

beware of electing austrians....

grin.

(oh, whoever wrote about schwarzenegger using the word "bewundern" and not "vereheren" when talking about onkel adolf et al, that's the same word the german-language press used, too. good call)

have a great wednesday, all!

drf

[PLC]

So, in California, over 60% of voters opted for a Republican of one stripe or another. How is this possible? Could California not be as liberal as commonly thought, or did the celebrity factor essentially make this election utterly unique?

[Thorley Winston]

From the Corner, posted by Steve Hayward

It was clear early in the evening, before the polls closed but after all the networks were hinting that their exit polls showed a smashing victory for recall/Arnold, that the Democrats had worked up their talking points: This was really a message to President Bush that he's in trouble. Terry McAuliffe was already road testing this before the polls closed.

My favorite moment of the evening was when Dem uber-apparatchik Bob Mulholland tried out the party line on Brit Hume. With his deadpan delivery, Hume asked: "Let me get this straight: 60 percent of California voters voted for a Republican candidate [Arnold + McClintock], and this is something that should worry President Bush?"

Mulholland: "Yes."

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_10_05_corner-archive.asp#014469

[joe]

Groping women. Terminator movies. Pumping Iron. If this crap can turn out nonvoting men in their 20s, can the return of the flight suit be close behind?

[PLC]

Was the turnout of "nonvoting men in their 20s" a deciding factor in this election? I'd heard that turnout was high, but hadn't read any more details...

[joe]

I'm assuming, based on the huge overall turnout, the fact that young men have the lowest turnout, and the demographic appeal of movies with explosions and half naked warrior women.

[PLC]

Here's an analysis of exit polling data: http://www.msnbc.com/news/977396.asp?0cv=CB10

It appears that Arnold won because his legitimate opponents were viewed so negatively. If you can believe the polls, people were voting against the incumbents, and not for Arnold.

[joe]

Voting against doesn't usually produce high turnouts. Think 1994, when the dissatisfaction with the Democrats didn't turn out lots more Republicans, but did make lots of Democratic voters stay home. One of the lowest turnouts in history.

The exit poll reports PLC linked to are all but useless for the purpose of figuring out if anythign unique happened, because they don't provide anything to compare their results to. It's just "Golly, 88%! Gee whiz, 95%!" without any context. Is that high? Low? Normal?

[thoreau]

Observations of a Poll Worker

I volunteered at the polls near a university campus. I want to use one of the recall-related threads to vent a bit.

Working the polls in a student neighborhood is a nightmare. When people move from year to year, even month to month, the voter rolls are a mess. Provisional voting is frequent. (Provisional voting is when your ballot is sealed in an envelope with your registration information, and the ballot is only counted after the elections office verifies eligibility.) Provisional voting requires paperwork and time that congests the lines. It's a nightmare.

Some students are conscientious about re-registering at new addresses. However, the various organizations that hold registration drives on campus (including College Republicans, Campus Democrats, non-partisan groups, and special interest groups) sometimes flake and fail to submit the voter registration forms that students fill out. Great. We told everyone with registration irregularities to register with us again, since we can guarantee that the elections office will get the forms.

(If I were more paranoid I'd speculate that the people behind these voter registration drives don't want students to vote, so they get people to sign registration cards and then don't submit them. If the elections office gets a provisional ballot from somebody who isn't listed as having registered in the county the ballot won't count. The ballot only counts if the county can verify that the person registered but the name didn't appear on the roster due to a snafu. Eligibility to register isn't enough, since last year the voters wisely rejected a same day registration ballot measure.)

Anyway, the one nice thing about an election with absolutely no local races, just state-wide questions, is that we have a little bit of slack on letting people vote in the place where they were previously registered, even if they have moved. Before any paranoids start screaming "fraud!", the county elections office verifies that nobody appears on more than one precinct roster, and we only let them vote if they appear on our roster. If they don't appear on our roster, they can only vote provisional. Once the elections office sees that this person was marked in at another place, but came to vote provisional at our precinct, the provisional ballot won't count, and the attempted double voter will receive a visit from investigators. Oh, and any time somebody says "I'm on the list here, but I moved to another neighborhood without changing my registration" we make that person do a new registration form for the next election. And we'll be much more stringent during the upcoming local elections.

Anyway, I just felt like coming here to rant.

Final thought:

If people can die for the right to vote, surely we can do better than show up 2 minutes before closing and say "Yeah, man, I think I registered once a while ago but I never voted and I've moved, and now I want to vote here but I don't have any ID to prove that I live here even though my name isn't on the roster. Can I vote?" (The answer is that we let everyone fill out a provisional ballot, but it probably won't be counted in that situation.)

[Don]

PLC,

Some poll info I heard:

After the debate, people polled said they thought McClintock won, but that they would vote for Arnold. That was also my position. Two possible explinations: 1) Arnold was the best chance at beating Cruz 2) While McClintock had better policy positions, and more experience, Arnold, by personality & connections & popularity, likely has more chance of getting things done.

I heard, second hand, that people going through exit polls said they would vote "NO" (throw the recall) rather than let Cruz win.

If these polls are right, the people of California had a shrewd reason for voting the way they did, and a good reason.

Now we just have to recall the legislature--at least those who are Democrats.

[Don]

Joe wrote: "Groping women. Terminator movies. Pumping Iron. If this crap can turn out nonvoting men in their 20s, can the return of the flight suit be close behind?"

Gee, Joe, you have such a low opinion of the Democratic process. I though a Democrat would fully support an election with such high turn out. It is usually the Dems who want a high voter turnout, and they usually want the youngest, dumbest voters they can get.

Given the turn out and the landslide nature of the victory, I'd say that the people of Cali were happy to dump Davis and replace him with Arnold. Even something like 30% of hispanics voted for Arnold (#s subject to change, of course).

[thoreau]

I dealt with the youngest, dumbest voters around. I was a poll worker in a student neighborhood yesterday.

"Man, like, I haven't voted in a while, and I used to live in this precinct, I think, and like I now live downtown, but I lived somewhere in IV when I last registered. I don't have any proof of address and I'm not on the list. Can I vote here?"

I don't care if they vote, I just want them to do their paperwork on time for Christ's sake!

[thoreau]

Clarification: "IV" is the abbreviation for the neighborhood where I worked (Isla Vista).

[Brown Kevin]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
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DATE: 01/19/2004 08:16:46
Nothing's far when one wants to get there.

[Jansson Stephanie]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 03:19:32
Art is vision, not expression.