What Will Happen On Election Day

October 27, 2010

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Although I’m not much of a rah-rah political person, I do enjoy following things from an analytical viewpoint.  Here are my thoughts on what will happen on election day and beyond.

Christine O’Donnell will lose the race for the Senate in Delaware and return to her coven.  (That’s a joke – I don’t really think she is a witch).  There is some speculation that she may also cost the GOP the Pennsylvania race.  The logic is that O’Donnell has been quite visible in the Philadelphia market (grab a map, for those who aren’t familiar with the area) and that Democrats may be playing a winning game by saying that Pat Toomey is another Tea Party candidate … with the implied message that Toomey = O’Donnell.  It’s possible that this is not the reason that Joe Sestak has been making up substantial ground … Evan, any thoughts?

Marco Rubio leads a three way race in the Florida Senate race.  Former governor Charlie Crist is in the race as an independent.  You’d think Crist would be in a unique position to paint his opponents (Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek) as being the anti-Crist  …

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid continues his battle royale with Sharron Angle.  The compact nature of Nevada’s media market make it fairly inexpensive to run ads that reach a high percentage of constituents.  A loss by Reid would force the Democrats to choose a new leader.

In Alaska, incumbent Lisa Murkowski (a Republican) is running as an independent and has been polling roughly even with GOP candidate  Joe Miller (with both candidates comfortable ahead of Democrat Scott McAdams).  With Alaska lagging several hours behind Iowa,  I’ll be going to bed about the time the polls close up north.  At some point in the evening, the number of write-in votes that were cast (i.e. that someone marked the circle for write-in) will be known … but not who they were cast for.  If the write-in totals are high enough to put the winner in doubt, then the write-in votes will be tallied – and wrangled over in court.  The Democrats will probably laugh all the way to the bank, as they see Republicans spend millions of dollars deciding which conservative should represent Alaska.

In South Carolina, Republican Jim DeMint will score a decisive win over Democrate Alvin Greene.  Greene scored a stunning victory in the Democratic primary, despite having done negligible campaigning – leading to some accusations of fraud.  Greene was later indicted on a felony obscenity charge.  The real question to me – why didn’t another Democrat jump into the race and make it a three way contest?  As it stands, Greene is getting roughly 20% support in the polls.

In the governor’s races, Jerry Brown is starting to distance himself from former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who has spent around $150 million (wow!) of her own money into her campaign.  Whitman’s campaign has been sidetracked by the revelation that she once employed an illegal alien as a made (and the allegations that the Whitman family were aware of this and did nothing). 

In Illinois, my former landlord (Bill Brady) is running a close race with incumbent Pat Quinn, who got his gig when Blago was forced out in the midst of a corruption scandal.  I don’t know Brady personally. but we had (legal) free cable when his management company got the rent checks, and had to pay for cable when another company replaced them.  Sure, it was only $17 (around 2000) and only a couple dozen channels, but nonetheless was a pretty sweet deal.

What do I see happening on the grand scale?  I see the GOP taking back the House and the Democrats probably retaining  slim majority in the Senate – quite possibly 51-49.  I also see the end of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s tenure on the Supreme Court.  Ginsburg doesn’t want to be replaced by a conservative, and will likely retire while Obama is still choosing justices rather than risk dying in office and having President Palin choose her replacement.  What’s one likely characteristic of the Justice that will replace Ginsburg?  Youth.

Speaking of Ginsburg … time for a bit of trivia. Whom did she replace on the Supreme Court?  Byron “Whizzer” White, the former NFL star.  White took the term student-athlete to the highest level – leading the NFL in rushing in 1938 and 1940 being awarded two bronze stars for his service in World War II – and then embarking upon a legal career which took him to the peak of his profession.  You may agree or disagree with his opinions, but it’s hard to argue that he didn’t live an amazing life.  Whizzer died in 2002 at the age of 84.

3 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. Evan @40Tech
    Oct 27, 2010 @ 12:56:20

    Politics leaves a distaste in my mouth, so I can’t give you much in the way of insight. I do know that some of Sestak’s ads, touting Toomey’s Wall Street ties, have seemed pretty effective, so that could be part of it. One of the ads talked about some of the protective Wall Street legislation Tommey pushed before the crash, and then spliced in footage of him (Toomey) saying that he didn’t think corporations should pay any taxes at all.

    I haven’t done the research yet, so I take most ads like that with a grain of salt. Pretty typical stuff – the Democrat goes nuts putting out the Wall Street background of the Republican candidate, and the Republican tries to push the fear button, calling the Democrat a Socialist (and using – *gasp* – the “L” word), etc. I guess it works, or they wouldn’t do it. Actually, I know it works, at least a little, because look around and you can see and hear people repeating party talking points all the time, even when we’re not in an election cycle. There’s always someone on each side who has gulped down the Kool-Aid pretty hard. Folks need to remember that a candidate is rarely as extreme as he or she is painted to be, and rarely is he or she Hitler or Stalin reincarnate.

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  2. Onij
    Oct 27, 2010 @ 16:37:16

    @Kosmo – i concur. Dems keep Senate, not sure about House. Do you buy into this idea that losing the House benefits the Pres?

    @Evan at40Tech – “hear, hear!”

    Reply

  3. kosmo
    Oct 27, 2010 @ 22:01:46

    Losing the house would benefit Obama as far as having a scapegoat if the situation in the country gets worse over the next two years … but that’s really looking for a silver lining. Better to have success that to experience failure – even failure that you can (try to) blame on others.

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