On Nov 15, 2010, at 9:21 PM, SA wrote:
> On 11/15/2010 8:44 PM, Doug Henwood quoted:
>
>>
>> In 2008, Obama won 69.5 million votes. So about 29 million Obama voters did not show up in 2010.
>>
>
> First of all, comparing turnout in a midterm election with turnout in a presidential election makes no damn sense at all.
>
> Compare 2006 with 2010. In 2006, 18-29 year olds were 12% of voters; in 2010 they were 11%. In 2006, self-described liberals were 20% of voters; in 2010, they were 20% again. Democrats as a share of the electorate only sightly changed: from 38% to 36%. As this piece shows, the main difference in turnout was that those self-described independents who showed up were much more likely to call themselves conservatives rather than moderates this year; in 2006, self-described independents were more likely to be moderates rather than conservatives:
Langer's no dope. In any case, the whole point of Obamamania was about how he'd mobilized a new generation of voters. I thought that was pretty thin all along, but he lost them. There was some potential for realignment that he let evaporate.
More Langer:
http://abcnews.go.com/story?id=12041739
The Republicans relied on differential turnout. Among Tuesday's voters, 46 percent voted for Obama in 2008, 45 percent for John McCain -- an election Obama won by 53-45 percent. Thirteen percent of Obama voters defected to Republicans for Congress, while 8 percent of McCain voters favored Democrats. And among other voters -- the 8 percent who either didn't vote, or voted for someone else, in 2008 -- Republicans won by 57-36 percent.
...
An interesting challenge for the new Republican leadership of the House will be what to do with the Bush-era tax cuts -- an issue on which voters today were divided. Thirty-nine percent of voters wanted these tax cuts continued for all Americans, but about as many, 37 percent, wanted them continued only for families with incomes under $250,000 a year. The rest, 15 percent favored letting them expire for all.
There's a similar challenge in sorting out priorities on a related issue: While 39 percent said the highest priority for Congress should be reducing the deficit, again about as many, 37 percent, said spending to create jobs should be the highest priority. The rest -- many fewer -- gave top priority to a third choice, cutting taxes.
There were sharp partisan differences here -- among Democrats, 58 percent give priority to spending on jobs; among Republicans and independents, the plurality, 47 percent, favor action on the deficit. And 64 percent of Republicans would continue the tax cuts for all; 51 percent of Democrats, only for less-than $250,000 households. Independents, on this, divide about evenly.
Then there's health care reform: Sixty percent of Democrats want it expanded; 81 percent of Republicans want it repealed, as do 53 percent of independents.
It'll be fun finding middle ground.