My thesis for Scott Brown’s victory is that Republicans voted while a big chunk of the Massachusetts electorate stayed home (1,108,854 votes for McCain, 1,168,107 votes for Brown). In other words, the Brown campaign did not reflect the will of the majority of the normal Massachusetts electorate, but captured a majority of the people who voted on 19 January 2010.
We’ll see how accurate that idea is tomorrow: defeat for radicals like Bill Hudak, Jeff Perry, Sean Bielat, and their supporter Charlie Baker, will suggest that Brown’s Tea Party base took advantage of an off-cycle opportunity. Brown will be more vulnerable in that case. Victory for “Obama is Osama” Hudak and “Columbia State” Perry, by contrast, may be evidence that a fundamental shift in voter preference is underway.
Secretary of State William F. Galvin is predicting record voter turnout in Tuesday’s election … Galvin said he based his prediction on the number of absentee ballots that have already been cast. As of today, more than 132,000 voters have filled out ballots. In January, when 2.25 million voters went to the polls to chose a new US senator, 107,000 absentee ballots were cast.
Hope for the best, and work for it with GOTV here.
I doubt it. Even for gubernatorial elections.
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p>More likely: People are just getting more used to voting early. Political parties and other organizations are also getting better at pushing people to vote early, even in Massachusetts.
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p>Tomorrow’s election will have a relatively high turnout, but I’ll honestly be surprised if it exceeds ’06, and ’06 was not our highest recorded turnout for a gubernatorial election (just the highest in a long time).
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p>None of this is to put a damper on tomorrow’s election: the fact that it won’t be a record turnout makes it even more important for you to go out and get there. Bob’s thesis is right; we lost the Senate Special Election because turnout was light amongst groups that normally vote dem, while the Republicans and closet Republicans were out in full force.
I have a moment until the next trade up from the pollcheckers and looked this up:
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p>From Wikipedia:
2006 votes for Governor 2,219,775
For DP 1,234,984 (55.64%)
For KH 784,342
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p>Total turnout (some folks blank the Governor’s race) 2,243,835
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p>2002 votes for Governor 2,194,179
For MR 1,091,988
For SO 985,981
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p>Total turnout 2,220,301