After he and I looked at the same Washington Post exit poll, Comrade Geboski suggested that I was wrong to think that Scwarzenegger won the female vote (which he did). He then writes:
> "Look at the exit poll data, sent on the list yesterday. There is a gender
>gap on the recall vote--for the non-party affiliated ("independent"). There
>were still a lot of women voting for Arnold, but the gap would have knocked
>down the recall--if the Democrats could have gotten their party vote
>together."
The recall WON among women, despite the gender gap, and let's remember that around 400,000 "no" voters on question 1 had to have voted for Republicans to make the numbers come out. Possibly, better Democratic turnout could have beaten the recall AMONG WOMEN but Arnold would almost certainly have won question 2 AMONG WOMEN, as the L. A. Times poll tends to confirm.
Comrade Geboski writes:
>>"What won for Arnold and the Repugs was truly impressive Republican
solidarity. They got their vote out (it all but matched the Dems, who lead
in actual registered voters) and, when they voted, they voted party line
(88-12 on the recall)."
I am surprised that there were 12% "no" votes among Republicans.
C. Geboski continues:
>>"The recall vote data show that, if the Dems had pulled out more voters,
or if the party stood for something enough so that their own members
wouldn't defect from them, or both, then the recall would have failed and
Arnold would be irrelevant."
Let's remember that the recall and Arnie both won among union households. The defection was massive in '03 and it was on top of massive defection in '02. Gray Davis and the California Democrats managed to completely reverse a gubernatorial mandate in five years.
Com. G. says:
>>"The exit poll data don't show breakdowns for candidates by sex, only for
the recall. And if the party affiliation data were broken out--well, I
suspect that you would see a large gender gap in the Gropenfuhrer vote."
There was a gap, but it was obvious even from the Washington Post poll that Arnold had to have won women. Now the LA Times confirms for us that there was a gender gap and that Arnold crushed Bustamante among female voters by ten points.
Next:
>>>"Also, the Gropenfuhrer had huge negatives (45%) for a "winning"
candidate. Of course. Davis and Bustamante were over the top that's over the
top. But I still wonder whether Arnold could have won a real November
election over a long campaign one-on-one against a Democratic challenger.
>>>A very important thing to keep in mind: This was not a gubernatorial
election. It was a referendum on Davis and a truly mad process for filling
the vacant seat.
>>>All this assumes that the Repugs would not have stolen a close vote,
which I strongly suspect they were set up to do."
Three myths in one! First, Arnold ran as a front-runner the whole time (clearly his polling was very good). That basically means you shut up, smile at the cameras, sit on your positives and figure that the best strategy is to lose votes slowly because there is not enough time for the trend to hurt you. A frontrunner strategy always makes the candidate appear weaker over time. In fact, it killed Al Gore.
Second, this election was a LANDSLIDE WIN for the Republicans - LANDSLIDE WIN. If this had been a gubernatorial process and Arnold had won the primary, McClintock would not have been in the race. If you think that Bustamante was going to make up 25-30 points if the race had been longer, well...think that, but it's a myth.
Finally, it's wasn't a mad process. It was a rational, legal process that other California governors have survived many times. We have such a process in Washington state and I, for one, wish all states had it. Again, either you generate turnout in elections or you get turnout in recalls. (Also, California history suggests that it was much more likely that Democrats would have been the ones to use dirty tricks in a close vote.)
I think Democrats who do not take the California election seriously (as they do not) are setting themselves up for an absolute beating on par with Labor's victory over the Tories in England. Gray Davis was a typical triangulating, "centrist" Democrat who thought life was great because Republicans tend to be dominated by their ideological base. He beat two TERRIBLE Republican candidates, but now we see the potential of a traingulating Republican. We've already seen that potential in New York state, New York City and New Jersey - not to mention neo-libertarian Jesse Ventura in Minnesota. Those were all "blue" states, kids.
While DLC Democrats are fretting about the possibility of liberals' polarizing the electorate, Republicans are waking up to the fact that, after working hard for decades to polarize the electorate in their direction, they may now have the greater claim to the "center". It's a prospect I find very disturbing.
peace,
boddi