The MA 5th is made up of 29 towns.
Here are the Percentage break down per town with the Tsongas number first and the Patrick Number 2nd
Acton 64% 60%
Andover 48% 48%
Ayer 46% 49%
Berlin 45% 44%
Billerica 44% 43%
Bolton 48% 48%
Boxoborough 56% 54%
Carlisle 60% 56%
Chelmsford 45% 45%
Concord 68% 63%
Dracut 32% 42% [Republican Candidates hometown]
Dunstable 42% 40%
Groton 54% 48%
Harvard 61% 59%
Haverhill 49% 50%
Hudson 57% 51%
Lancaster 52% 45%
Lawrence 69% 69%
Littleton 51% 50%
Lowell 54% 56%
Maynard 61% 57%
Meuthen 45% 45%
Shirley 52% 47%
Stow 57% 52%
Sudbury 60%-55%
Tewksbury 44% 43%
Tyngsboro 41% 42%
Wayland 66% 59%[is a split town am not sure about the partisan effect of the difference]
Westford 46% 44%
To Summarize, Tsongas ran at or better than Deval Patrick Levels in all but five towns, only running considerably behind in her opponents hometown. So Yeah NRCC, The Future lies with Dracut. That or you are grasping at the biggest straw ever.
If you think about it:
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(1) Almost everyone thought Deval Patrick ran a great campaign.
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(2) Almost everyone thought Kerry M. Healey ran an atrocious campaign.
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(3) Tsongas’ campaign graded out mediocre at best, and Ogonowski’s seemed indifferent (but much better than Healey’s)
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and yet the results were the same.
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If this doesn’t say something about base politics in Massachusetts, I don’t know what would.
these samples aren’t iid.
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For example, Deval ran as an outsider — not at all involved with electoral politics within MA… did that play?. Tsongas certainly couldn’t make that claim, the wife of a senator. Deval ran on state issues, Tsongas on national issues. Deval is black man; Tsongas is a white woman. The governor’s race was a Nov election with statewide buzz; the MA-05 race was a special election without months of attention from the Globe, Herald, etc.
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Maybe all those things were totally irrelevant, or maybe they canceled each other out, or, as I suspect, it’s just plain really complicated.
Whenever turnout is this low its impossible to read much into it. I used to use the yard sign gauge to guess voters intent until I found out that most of the signs arrived on trucks full of them, doled out by “volunteers” onto a pre-exisiting list of people who always have the chosen groups signs … Look at how many signs are still on peoples lawns from the primaries, I wonder if the residents are even aware that they are there. … So many people could have cared less about this thing that it would be impossible to figure out who the voters were and which way the uninvolved would have spilled. I agree with the OPs assertion, its really interesting to see it broken down that way … looks like more of the same to me.
Wayland pcts 1,3,4 (MA-05) went for Patrick 2864 out of a total of 4850 cast, or a 59.1% (vs. 58.5% overall) clip.
When I put up the gubernatorial vote models back in June to say Ogonowski had a shot. Everybody said, this is a federal race not a state race. The electorate behaves differently. Well what is it? You can’t have it both ways.
He had a shot. But he didn’t convert on the opportunity.
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What’s your explanation?
Highly effective negative ads by the Tsongas camp and allies.
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You guys needed to spend a total of over $4million dollars.
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I’ll agree the S-CHIP debate hurt. Although isn’t it interesting that Congress is now looking at the Ogonowski third way approach. Nancy Pelosi and company should be ashamed at themselves that they would play this game with Children’s lives. Also isn’t it a tad ironic that a radical pro-abortion group were running ads against Ogonowski and his wanting to “harm” children. That to me is the height of hypocrisy.
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What I take from this is an large organization and a newly motivated base in the Merrimack Valley. Jim has a real opportunity to be a leader and move that organization to elect state house leaders. Especially if the Patrick administration keeps misfiring.
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I found it very interesting that Coleen Garry showed up at Jim’s party last night. A pre-emptive strike perhaps. A please please don’t run against me because you’ll cream me?
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The Ogonowski machine is strong and looking for the next fight. This race taught Republican’s how to win and words like GOTV and targeting voters. The day’s of sign holding are over. We’ve learned our lessons.
Ugh. Voted against marriage, among other outrages. If she loses, it won’t break my heart.
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I was struck by the relative lack of interest in this race by national rightroots, or perhaps lack of ability to raise a lot of money (hard to tell which). You’d think the right-o-sphere would have pulled out all the stops for this race. Yet your posts on Redstate appeared to garner little interest, and in general I just didn’t see much activity. Why didn’t it take off? I know that in terms of infrastructure, ActBlue is miles ahead of RightRoots.com or anything else the right has going — is that the explanation?
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Which is to say, despite the efforts of both sides to nationalize this race in various ways, it ended up being a rerun of Deval Patrick/Kerry Healey — result was almost the same, except in Dracut (no surprise there). Very interesting.
thought that this was going to be as close as it turned out to be. As it turns out , if it weren’t for the “beautiful people” in the southern liberal money towns, this one could have gone the other way. As this was a special election, there was no where near the turnout that can be anticipated in 08. None the less, it was clear that basically half (47%) do NOT support the tired old liberal democrat rhetoric; the totally failed Congress in DC and here in the People’s Republik the never ending increases in taxes, tolls and the kind of corruption that pays a criminal like Billy Bulger a $225,000 pension, not to mention a “Maaahty Meehan term limits dirtbag with 5 million dollars in the bank after his , ah hem, public service as a career , lifelong politician.People are tired of this kind of crap.
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This election would normally be a 20-25 point rout….hardly….Niki is headed to DC with barely over 50 % support… hardly a mandate.
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looking ahead…
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I think Kerry is in trouble come this fall, big time! Wouldn’t it be great to finally get rid of this pompous elitist, never passed a single bill in his 20+ year career loser?
Deval is a one hit wonder for sure but we have to suffer through 3 more years of his incompetence before we can get rid of this dangerously incompetent buffoon. This State is a total friggin disaster with its “murder du jours” ; taxes that defy belief and a level of corruption that even Boss Twead and Tammany Hall would envy….. and let’s not forget a bumbling buffoon Mayor Menino that can’t even speak English and is a National laughing stock. “tank woo, peepl of Boshun” …what an idiot..what an embarrassment
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What will be interesting to see is if OGO will try again in a year after Niki has failed to overide the SCHIP veto; failed to bring the troops home ( Hillary has already told us that she will not be pulling out troops as Pres); pushed for illegal alien amnesty including drivers licenses, free tuition, free health care.
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Let’s just play out the rope and let Niki hang herself.Actually, if she’s smart and wants to slide into the lifelong politician gig ( until she too can get a $300k “package”complete with limo and chauffeur from UM like Maaahty did)she shouldn’t make any waves and just be content to quietly iron Hilary and Nancy’s pantsuits, shine Kerry’s shoes and get cocktails for the alcoholic when he holds up two fingers..just a splash ..ah er just a splash!
do you mean the GOP one from 2000-2006 who’s single greatest achievement was the do not call list, or do you mean the Democratic one that took over in 2007, and has passed * minimum raise increases * student loan reform * SCHIP [they passed it — the GOP owns the veto] * ethics and lobbying reform that the GOP complained didn’t go far enough, yet the GOP did nothing to push those standards during 00-06 * implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations * stem cell research expansion [they passed it — the GOP owns the veto] * oversight on everything from the Justice Department to Pat Tillman
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You can call that totally failed, and it’s not a total success — we’re still mired in Iraq, an energy policy focused on reducing consumption safely hasn’t made it through the House, immigration is a big question mark, and it’s not clear how the Dems will balance liberty with personal safety.
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But, total failure? Puh-lease. The Dems have a solid list of accomplishments, in the face of a 50/51-49 lead in the Senate and overcoming the GOP’s hypocritical refusal for an “upperdown vote” on oodles of Senate bills and a constant presidential veto threat.
Minimum wage: Legislation that affected a relative handful of individual (32 states were already higher http://www.epi.org/i… ). Why, in New England alone, the Federal bill affected a whopping 19,000 people and probably negatively affected more. i.e. High school kids couldn’t find work when employers figured it made sense to hire fewer workers than pay the higher rate.
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Student loan reform: Yeah. Loan forgiveness if you become a Prosecutor. That’s what America needs, more prosecutors, to prosecute more laws, to put more people in more jails. /sarcasm. That criticism aside, this is probably the only bi-partisan success that the current Congress can claim. It’s symptomatic of this Congress–step 1, overreach without compromise, step 2, fail.
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SCHIP: “they passed it, the GOP owns the vote”. Waaah…we did good, but those mean Republicans… Already, in anticipation of failed veto override, there’re compromise bills in the works. Did Pelosi think Bush was kidding when he said he’d veto the first one? Seriously, when Democrats were in the minority, it was the majority’s fault when the Democrat agenda failed. Now in the majority, it’s the minority’s fault.
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Ethics Reform: Pelosi on earmarks: “hello? I can’t ear you?”
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9/11 Commission: For starters, we haven’t had an attack on American soil since 9/11. Something worked. Second, the International Cargo Security Council (ICSC) didn’t like the Bill: too expensive and reliant on expensive and unproved technologies. But, Pelosi, wrapped in an American flag argued, it may not work but at least it’s expensive!
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Bush recommendation to allow self-employed the right to deduct the cost of health insurance like employees. Ignored.
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Social Security pending insolvency. Ignored.
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Stem cell: Waaaah.
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Oversight: Hello! Oversight’s the job of congress, which FWIW, has an approval rating of about 20%.
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20%
In 1993, Islamic fundamentalists tried to blow up the WTC and they didn’t succeed until 2001. Having a lull in terrorism doesn’t mean the GOP has suddenly done something right. And besides, don’t you remember the anthrax scare? And it’s not like our allies haven’t been attacked in England and Spain with the train bombings, and I thought we were all part of some sort of “coaltion of the willing”.
Let’s go point-wise, shall we?
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Minimum wage legislation was significant. The real minimum wage had fallen to the lowest level in over 50 years. Twelve states got a boost immediately — but don’t forget that the floor wage is increasing twice more, to $6.55 per hour on July 24, 2008, and to $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009. How many states exceed $7.25 an hour? 41 by my count, including the large number of states who’s state law mirrors the federal law by design. By July 2009 that number may be a smidge lower, as some states may legislate minimum wage higher than the federal by then… but 41/50 is a big ratio my friend.
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Student loan reform wasn’t about loan forgiveness for prosecutors. The Dems tok $19 billion in handouts to banks and used that money to lower the interest rate for student loans, allowing students to find lower interest loans and forcing banks to earn their money by lending it instead of just taking government handouts.
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SCHIP: If you’re going to quote me, at least have the courtesy of getting the most important word in the sentence correct. veto. The Dems have written good legislation. The majority of the House voted for it, and a supermajority of the Senate voted for it. The majority of Americans like it. The president vetoed it. The president and his party own the failure of SCHIP to become law — they’re the ones who voted against it. “Waaaah”? That’s the best you can come up with? It’s pretty clear you’ve lost the argument if that’s the best you can do.
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Ethics reform: there’s no question that the Dems tightened the ethical standards for Congressmen. You can claim that it didn’t go far enough, and I’d probably not disagree with you. But, the GOP had six years to tighten things up and instead we got scandal after scandal. The Dems improved things. Perfect? Nope. Better? Yup. More than nothing which is what the GOP brought us? Yup.
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9/11 Commission: Every time I walk through Boston Common I whistle. I’ve never been attacked by an elephant in Boston Common. Something worked. As for cargo inspection, we inspect the inside of this American passport holding blogger’s shoes when he flies from Boston to Charlotte, but we don’t inspect the inside of cargo containers coming from ports in dangerous parts of the world? And instead you site the ICSC, a group who represents the shippers? Of course they don’t want to pay anything extra for security; they’d rather push 100% of the costs on others and not be responsible. That’s all not the point though. The point is that the independent 9/11 Commission made recommendations, the GOP Congress ignored them while focusing their energy on a war with Iraq instead, and the Democrats passed legislation to implement the recommendations of the group commissioned with improving security in a holistic, non-pork-to-favorite-companies, non-pork-to-non-threatened-states manner. Think the 9/11 Commission recommendations were wrong? You’d better write more than a sentence to back it up if you want anyone around here to take the claim seriously.
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Stem Cell: if “waaaa” is the best you can do, you’ve lost. Voters supported candidates who made stem cells an issue (see 2006 Missouri senate race), and I expect they’ll do it again in 2008.
As for Bush recommendations, he had six years to work with a Congress that licked his boots to get things passed. Six years. Nada. Bush has no standing to complain that the Congress isn’t passing legislation that he could have seen through between 2000 and 2006.
Minimum wage: You prove my point. Minimum wage legislation was irrelevant legislation to all but a handful of states, and only affected a handful of individuals in N.E. May as well spend thousands of hours making it a Federal law for all cars to stop at a stop sign (Pelosi: “now it’s safe on the roads for our children”. States: “Er…it’s already a state law. “Pelosi: God bless our poor.”)
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Student Loan: I point out it was the only meaningful and bipartisan supported bill that’s come from this Congress. And, it contain micro-managed legislation that tacitly implies Prosecutors (who get loan forgiveness) are better than teachers, secretaries, construction worker, … who don’t.
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SCHIP: Wah. Those mean Republicans in the minority are picking on us. Look, the President said he’d veto it; provided an alternative plan with additional spending. Pelosi: “But, but, but, the children…oh. my. God. President Bush vetoed the bill he said he would veto. I never knew.”
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Ethics Reform: Bumper Sticker for Democrats: “We’ll bring you legislation that’s better than nothing, sorta.” Damning by faint praise. How to make it financially meaningful? Address earmarks (“someone say earmarks?” [sounds of cockroaches running for cover] Again, good sounding legislation. Does nothing; sounds good.
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9/11:
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Yeah. Elephants crashed the trade center. More to the point, the unlikely didn’t happen but neither did the same or similar attack.
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Stem Cell: Again, you’re just whining. If the majority can’t get a Bill through, then it’s just that they’re ineffective at meaningful compromise.
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and let’s not forget a bumbling buffoon Mayor Menino that can’t even speak English and is a National laughing stock. “tank woo, peepl of Boshun” …what an idiot..what an embarrassment
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..aside from the fact that everyone should know that your Zitat should be “who can’t even speak English,” not “that”, I learned from long experience in dealing with highly intelligent people (scientists, engineers, mathematicians, Southerners, people from Mefa, and so forth) who had problems with standard Amerikanische Sprache, not to denigrate peoples’ intelligence merely because of the way they speak.
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You may wish to consider using the same protocol.
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A further observation regarding I don’t think any conservatives (what’s left of them in this one party State), you might want to take to heart an issue that I’ve been beating on here for months, but that you obviously wish to ignore. (Are you playing “victim”?) Party != conservative/liberal. In what you call a “one party state,” if conservatives wish to win, they will do so in the primary. That should be obvious. Apparently to you it is not.
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I wonder why it is not obvious. Maybe Ogonowski should have run as the lone conservative in the Democratic primary. If he had done so, he might have won. On the other hand, maybe sufficient numbers of voters in the state reject movement conservatism such as that obviously espoused by Ogonowski.
If anyone is, it’s Bush. She’s doing exactly what she should be doing, at the moment.
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She’s fighting a worthwhile fight. The ads do exactly the right thing-putting a human face on what our laws do to and for people. And that’s what law and government is about, which seems to be the thing everyone has forgotten.
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There’s all this talk about what they’re going to do for the real people who support this country-the middle class, and here’s an example. There’s a clip out there somewhere with Bush telling people how much he wants to do for children’s healthcare.
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More Bush BS.
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EaBo, you really should be voting for the left.
Pretty simple calculus after all.
Richard Howe’s breakdown really confirms how well Tsongas did.
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Below, here are the 18 cities and towns Tsongas won on the left. On the right are the 11 places Ogo won. The vote totals are the first number, the percentages of the winner v. loser are in parentheses.
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Put simply, Tsongas’s best performances crushed Ogo’s best performances. Any place where she didn’t do that well, she more than made up for in the places she did do well.
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1. Lawrence 2425 (69% v 27%) // 1. Dracut 2361 (65 v 32)
2. Lowell 1832 (54% v 40%) // 2. Methuen 585 (53 v 45)
3. Concord 1712 (68% v 30%) // 3. Billerica 535 (53 v 44)
4. Acton 1405 (65% v 32%) // 4. Chelmsford 476 (51 v 45)
5. Sudbury 1021 (60% v 34%) // 5. Tewksbury 443 (52 v 44)
6. Wayland 625 (66% v 33%) // 6. Tynsgborough 305 (55 v 41)
7. Maynard 488 (62% v 35%) // 7. Westford 183 (50 v 46)
8. Hudson 430 (57% v 40%) // 8. Andover 97 (50 v 48)
9. Harvard 346 (61% v 34%) // 9. Dunstable 65 (52 v 42)
10. Carlisle 300 (60% v 38%) // 10. Ayer 24 (48 v 46)
11. Stow 258 (57% v 39%) // 11. Berlin 18 (49 v 45)
12. Groton 223 (54% v 44%)
13. Boxborough 184 (56 v 38)
14. Haverhill 131 (49 v 48)
15. Lancaster 99 (52 v 42)
16. Littleton 94 (51 v 46)
17. Shirley 79 (52 v 45)
18. Bolton 22 (48 v 45)
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…sorry about the formatting.
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Does anybody know a simple place to convert xls files to blog friendly html? I tried google spreadsheets adn that hasn’t worked.
i just got this figured out myself. i had some excel pages i wanted to post (and did!) in this dairy. i googles “convert excel to html” and found that many utilities are available. i ultimately ended up downloading “total HTML converter” from here.
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note that i was unable to get the converted html to work in my diary. not sure why – i was in a hurry and so didn’t try to figure it out. rather, i used the following workaround: i created jpgs from my spreadsheet (the program actually created 9 separate jpg files, since my xl file was big). next i uploaded the jpgs to photobucket. then in the diary i linked to them using the “” thingie. i wish that each jpg would seamlessly butt up against the next, but oh well. the data got into the diary. the rest is window dressing.
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if you do find that you can successfully convert your xl to html that works here, please share your know-how!
i linked to the jpgs using the < img src = URL > thingie.
Why not just set up a table? Can tables be used in this blog? I’m going to find out now…
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1, 11, 21, 3
<td colspan=22, (1 and 2)2, 3
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If it works, I’ll explain. If there’s nothing between out now… and If it works then, well, it didn’t work.
1Lawrence2425 (69% v 27%) 1Dracut2361(65 v 32)
2Lowell1832 (54% v 40%) 2Methuen585(53 v 45)
3Concord1712(68% v 30%)3Billerica535(53 v 44)
HTML table tutorial at 3schools
HTML table tutorial at htmlcodetutorial
HTML table tutorial at pagetutor
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I have no idea if any of these are particularly good; I learned HTML the old fashioned way: I looked at the source code for other web pages.
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P.S. Another way to do it is with the code tag. < code > will make all text fixed width [think: old school typewriter] until you throw in a < /code > [note: no spaces between angled brackets and text when you actually do it]
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an example is below:
12345678901234567890123456
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCEDFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
~!@#$%^&*()_+
i was in a hurry and that was the quickest/easiest thing for me to do given my state of ignorance. 🙂 also, excel supposedly will save a spreadsheet as html, but that code crashed firefox more than once. anyone know why? likely it was overblown code, but i just wanted to get my post up and not fiddle…
Now, here’s why tables are better…
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1. They’re more flexible w.r.t. the browser width.
2. They’re handicap accessible to screen readers.
3. They’re searchable with common text searches
4. They’re indexable by search engines.
5. They allow the user to change the font size locally, helpful for those with poor vision.
6. They require fewer kB of data, so they allow for faster downloads.
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But… you’ve got to type all those tags, which can be a pain in the butt. With a good text editor you can often substitute “tab” for a close td tag and then an open td tag, which makes it a bit faster.
try to use that in the future. But I have to say that it is daunting to think of typing out a table as big as the one I made into jpgs in that diary. I can copy the basic table html for the legislators’ names & districts from the House website. But typing in over 800 other bits of info + tags? There has to be an easier way!
Here is Excel macro code that transforms a spreadsheet into html. It requires minor modifications to reflect your spreadsheet’s set-up, but if you’re comfortable with macros, it’s easily done. My row shading was lost in translation, but that’s minor and likely fixable. Below is the table from my ENDA dairy that I initially made into jpgs, and is now HTML.
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Oops! as you can see I removed the table after I previewed the post. The htm file produced by this macro looks beautiful when opened directly in a browser. However, when I pasted the code here, I got at least 100 lines of blank space before my table showed up. Anyone know why it would do that? Anyway, this looks to be a useful took worth fiddling with.
But you cannot have any newlines. Everything must be smooshed together on the same line otherwise you get a big pile of white space ahead of your table as stomv did here.
the first line of the table (with the table tag) should be on the last line of your other text. I’ll try it here, first with table on the next line, then with table on the same line…
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Example 1
Duke Cunningham is not in this cell
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Example2
Bob Ney is not in this cell
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So, that’s the difference, for what it’s worth. Notice that both tables have good spacing on the bottom, but the Duke Cunningham has extra space on the top. Again, it can be avoided by putting the table tag on the same line as your last line of regular text. After that (while between the opening and closing table tags) whitespace is largely irrelevant, and you can have different tr or td tags on different lines with indenting if you like.
Possibly the made an improvement then with the table tags. My series of Iraq diaries had a number of tables I entered by hand and I did have to keep the tr, td, and th tags on the same line. It turned everything into an unreadable blob.
Tsongas WonOgonowski Won
City/TownVote Total% Winner% LoserCity/TownVote Total% Winner% Loser
Lawrence24256927Dracut23616532
Lowell18325440Methuen5855345
Concord17126830Billerica5355344
Acton14056532Chelmsford4765145
Sudbury10216034Tewksbury4435244
Wayland6256633Tynsgborough3055541
Maynard4886235Westford1835046
Hudson4305740Andover975048
Harvard3466134Dunstable655242
Carlisle3006038Ayer244846
Stow2585739Berlin184945)
Groton2235444
Boxborough1845638
Haverhill1314948
Lancaster995242
Littleton945146
Shirley795245
Bolton224845
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Simple html…took me about 20 minutes. I don’t know why there’s a gap before the table shows up, must be a soapblox thing. I’m using IE7.
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Good catch, btw.
Tsongas WonOgonowski WonCity/TownVote Total% Winner% LoserCity/TownVote Total% Winner% LoserLawrence24256927Dracut23616532Lowell18325440Methuen5855345Concord17126830Billerica5355344Acton14056532Chelmsford4765145Sudbury10216034Tewksbury4435244Wayland6256633Tynsgborough3055541Maynard4886235Westford1835046Hudson4305740Andover975048Harvard3466134Dunstable655242Carlisle3006038Ayer244846Stow2585739Berlin184945)Groton2235444 Boxborough1845638 Haverhill1314948 Lancaster995242 Littleton945146 Shirley795245 Bolton224845
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Ah, much better. Thanks for the info!
Except that the numbers are mislabled.
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According to the Boston Globe, the numbers in Billerica are:
Tsongas 2,594
Ogonowski 3,129
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Chelmsford:
Tsongas 3,544
Ogonowski 4,020
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The column “Vote Total” should read “Plurality.”
Thanks for putting that table together!
which would enable you to copy and paste the code…I tried…
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There’s another thing to try, preformatted text (I’m just making up stuff here:
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The “PRE” tag doesn’t really perform, I’d stick with the table tag.
The table with the downspacing has br tags %lt; br %gt; tags at the end of each line. Get rid of those; they tell the HTML rendering algorithm to go to the next line.
< br > , not %lt; br %gt;