Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Liveblogging the Returns

By

End of election note by Hoyapaul: As FrankSkeffington notes in the comments, turnout in most of the Dem cities killed us. The liberal base cities (Cambridge, Newton, etc.) over-performed for Martha (both in turnout and percentage), but that’s about it.

There’s already an open thread up, but since that will get busy, I figured I’d start a separate diary to discuss the returns as they come in from the Commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns. (I have a few notes about key towns to keep an eye in another BMG thread here.)

Let’s hope Martha exceeded the polls and predictions. We’ll know soon.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. the suburban towns tend to get the heaviest turnout earlier, and the urban areas later. This may mean that the suburbs will be among the first to start reporting, though I’m not sure.

      • I think early absentees will tend to be among the first reported, because they are already counted. But every town is different.

    • I was a poll worker last fall. The results will be reported once everyone in line has voted and they have verified that nothing strange happened with the ballots (basically, they make sure there are no extra ballots or missing ballots). So late turnouts only matter if there is a long line at 8.

      <

      p>Absentee ballots don’t change when the results are reported. Tonight’s results will mostly not include absentee ballots. I think some absentee ballots that arrive early enough are included in the precinct results, but I might be misremembering. Either way, any absentee ballots that will be counted today were delivered before the polls opened.

  2. Polls just closed! I’m used to CNN and the like giving a “too close to call” type message, but with no exit polling today we’ll just have to wait the conventional way — for the actual votes.

      • Too late for the exit poll people to get set up — they thought it wouldn’t be a close election originally, so they didn’t have plans to do exit polls in the first place.

    • Even if Plan A failed and a {shudder} Republican takes the seat, we still have Kirk there now and it could take a couple years to certify this election to swear Brown in.  

      <

      p>We win.

      • on a national stage if you plan to go that way.  Count on it.  If you think playing shenanigans with when/if Brown is seated, please feel free to do so.  I know you’re throwing that comment out in the heat of battle, but a move like that in this climate would pretty much croak any Democratic majority come this fall.  So I guess you’d “win”, but I don’t think so.  

  3. Report that Coakley says national Democrats didn’t help her soon enough, Rahm Emmanuel blames Coakley for not doing enough. Axelrod says we did everything we were asked to do: if we were asked sooner, we would have done more. etc. etc.

    <

    p>”Democrat was literally on vacation.”

    <

    p>Say that Lynch says “it doesn’t look good.”

    <

    p>”It is remarkable to see the blaming going around hours before the polls close. Democrats tried to skate through this one and it didn’t work. Anecdotally, bad news for Coakley.” — Rachel Maddow.

    <

    p>Hmm.

  4. Wolf Blitzer on CNN just said that “county returns should be coming in at any moment.”

    <

    p>I kinda feel like a crusty New Englander who gets annoyed at people from other parts of the country who mispronounce places like Leominster and Natick. This is Massachusetts, Wolf! We report election results by town, dammit!

  5. Only one precinct from Falmouth (R+3) in so far, and Brown had a 63% edge. Coakley better hope that’s a Republican precinct and not like the town as a whole.

        • ..but they have Coakley up 80-19 in Springfield early, which makes some sense.  Oh Boston.com, please just give me some accurate information that I can believe.

  6. Boston.com has crashed.

    <

    p>Could be my browser, but I doubt it.  With everyone around the country searching google for results, I bet a bunch found the Globe site.

  7. NECN had Brown ahead at 50/49%

    <

    p>WWLP in Springfield has it 53/45 Coakley on top

    <

    p>So the “1% Reporting” really fepends on where that is from

  8. Coakley up 61% to 36%, with 7 of 64 precincts counted. Just 2278 ballots cast though.  

  9. But 100% (all one precinct!) has been reported in Southhampton (R+7), and Brown is winning by 9%.

    <

    p>About 50% reported in Shrewsbury (R+6); Brown winning by 10%.

  10. We had a near presidential level turnout–lots of U’s voted–and I feared a complete blowout…Brown won 58-42 and I think that bodes well for us.  

  11. Sudbury is a key swing town (D+1) — Coakley’s got 52% there with 3 of 5 precincts reporting. OK sign there.

    <

    p>Middleton is a Brown base town (R+15), Brown winning by 19% with 64% turnout. He clearly is cleaning up in his base towns.

    • All counted in Sudbury — MASSIVE turnout (71%), and Coakley won it with 51%. Surprisingly good sign there, frankly. But just one data-point, keep in mind.

  12. Well, early on it’s shaping up that Brown is exceeding his targets in his base towns, but Coakley is holding steady in the swing areas.

    <

    p>In places where Coakley is supposed to do well, like Framingham (D+4), she’s winning bigger (she’s up in Framingham by 8% so far).

    <

    p>All in all, this is shaping up to be very CLOSE, based on these very early returns.

    • Concord is a good Coakley area (D+7), and she won it by 12%, with massive turnout of 71%.

      <

      p>Brown is a good Brown area (R+8), and he won it by 13%, with solid turnout (57%).

      <

      p>This looks like it will come down to the wire, pending the big city returns. Both the Dem and GOP base showed up, for sure.

  16. I see bad things there…lost urban Haverhill badly, lost Wilmington 2 to 1, lost Woburn by 3,000 votes..then site crashed…it was it me that crashed…

    • is going to be obliterated tonight (not their fault) but they are going to be overwhelmed with all of the national interest.

      <

      p>Herald’s site is getting swamped too.  Heck, may have to turn on the tv like the old days.

  17. My big concern right now is Joe Kennedy at 1%. That’s not good in a race that looked close with him getting 3-4%…

  18. It looks like some of the larger areas are having poor turnout. Holyoke only had 36% turnout, and Coakley underperformed by 2%. Hopefully this isn’t the case with Coakley’s true base cities.

  21. Brown won Quincy (R+1) by about 4%, with relatively lower turnout (47%). It also looks like Boston will under-perform, at least in terms of turnout. That’s not good.

  23. Looking more and more like a 3 point Brown victory. However, I’m certainly not calling it, because it remains to be seen how the true Coakley base does. It’s close — but Coakley is running uphill at this point.

  25.   But the official also revealed some of the details of the Coakley campaign that have so angered the professional operatives in Washington — notably, that Coakley failed to activate Massachusetts’ formidable Democratic organization, despite being tarred by association with the “machine.”

    Coakley didn’t the official said, call Boston Mayor Tom Menino until last week.

    <

    p>possibly be true?

  26. The blue-collar suburban areas are breaking hard for Brown. I don’t think Boston is going to make up the difference.

    <

    p>This is a big preview of the 2010 gubernatorial race. Emotion beats reason. I know gays, teachers, and anti-corporate types voting for Brown. He was able to get people to vote beyond their interests.  

  30. She’s down 100,000 votes with 30% of precincts left. No way the rest of Boston can make up that difference.

    <

    p>There will be a reckoning after this day. I’m going to sleep on the results (whatever the final numbers may be) before calling for a public (metaphorical) hanging of the people responsible for this debacle.

  34. It will tighten when more results come in, but I’m having trouble seeing Coakley pulling this out.

    <

    p>My first postmortem take is that Brown won this by getting just enough votes in working class areas to make up for the huge turnout Coakley had in the wealthy liberal areas.  Boston shouldn’t have been this close and he shouldn’t have won Quincy so easily.  And Waltham went for Brown narrowly.  Is this about the state of the economy more than health care?

    • Win some Middlesex County towns, lose the mid-sized cities, underperform in the big communities.  As Hoyapaul ran off the town by towns, it all sounded familiar.

      <

      p>Our candidates need an urban, blue collar agenda as well as a “soccer mom” agenda. When we have both, our party wins.

    • To differentiate from the Harshbarger-Cellucci race, which was 60-40.

      <

      p>BTW – urban turnout numbers almost never match that of the suburbs, one issue, huge numbers of students registered and voted for Obama in 08, but havent shown up since or have moved on and not been purged, lowers the turnout numbers in other elections, as do a number of other factors.

  37. I’ve been watching the live NECN. They reported, at 9:21p, that AP has called the race for Brown.

    <

    p>RD Sahl: “It’s all over.”

    • Plymouth (hometown of her finance chair and Senate President) goes Brown.  Prevaricating towns such as Bridgewater and Kingston go for Brown by 2-to-1.  Even Brockton only delivers 55% of its vote to Coakley.

  40. It is gone.  There simply aren’t enough votes left in the cities, and the Western Mass. towns to make this up.  It looks to me that we didn’t pull TO in the cities up enough.

  41. Brockton 43% turnout
    Chelsea 31%
    Chicopee 46%
    Lynn 38%
    Fall River 38%
    Lawrence 28%
    New Bedford 35%
    North Adams 42% (Martha’s home town)
    Quincy 47 %
    Springfield 32%

    <

    p>There will be lots of finger pointing and among them will be a failed…A FAILED GOTV effort.

    • How about a failed candidate?  How about a candidate who doesn’t think campaigning is beneath her?  How about a candidate who goes toe-to-toe in campaign appearances with her opponent so, like, when your opponent makes about 66 campaign appearances you make more than 19?  How about you actually shake some freakin’ hands and talk to the commoners?

      <

      p>How about you call the mayor of the largest city in your state earlier than the week before the election?  

      <

      p>Worst candidate ever.  Worst campaign ever.   And for anyone to suggest that people didn’t work their asses off to get voters to the polls in order to compensate for having such a lazy and entitled  candidate is absolutely bullshit.  She should have won this race on freakin’ HALF the numbers of people who turned out.  

      <

      p>No one could save her from herself, apparently–least of all the activists in the field.  

      <

      p>I am so fucking angry I could spit nails.    

      • said it any better.  Thanks for putting my/our rage/anger/disappointment/etc in such succinct terms.

      • I’m too upset to fully break down all of the various failures during this campaign and the ones I personally encountered working with the campaign staff, but you nailed the gist of it perfectly.

      • but without the Democratic GOTV, this election would have been a blowout. The Brown people were going to show up regardless.

        <

        p>Now it’s time to relax after a busy day. Then we can think about better candidates to take back the seat in a Presidential year. But rest assured the GOTV was good — we were just swimming upstream in this one.

    • …that Coakley gets almost a million votes…you would have thought she won in a landslide. The GOTV effort was fine.

      • I don’t know what the statewide turnout will be…but looking down the town list, many were in the 60s and some in the 70s…but we underperformed in the areas that we won.  I was part of this effort, doing calls over the weekend and in my area I was called four times (by people).  

        <

        p>Sorry, claiming a job well done because Coakley got nearly a million votes, when  2 million votes were cast is lame.  If I told you 2 weeks ago that Brown would get almost 1 million votes, you’d like I was crazy…bottom-line, Brown communities turned out and Coakley communities did not.  

    • I’m not sure how you can pin this loss on cities when the map looks so red. Springfield turned out 32%, but that’s way more than usual — 28,711 votes in this special election, compare to 22,090 votes in the last municipal election. Sure, it doesn’t compare to the 50,415 votes in the presidential election, but look to 2007 — 21,548 in the municipal election, 30,000 cast in 2006.

      <

      p>People love to say that the Democrats give out welfare to buy votes, but the bottom line is that people who have to worry about where the food on the table is going to come from generally don’t participate in civic matters all that much. They live in an existence separate from government.

      <

      p>Why isn’t anyone talking about the suburban towns breaking 60-65% for Brown, towns that were 55% for Obama?  

  44. legitimacy of the teabag anger. We see them as the same conservative philosophy we fought for 8 years of Bush/Cheney. They have positioned themselves as something new that latches into the fear and anger over the economic melt down. A truer conservatism. It is the perfect storm of people having high expectations for immediate results and being handed a country with huge problems. Unlike when Bush Cheney took office (and talked alot about the Clinton recession) we did not do a good enough job of explaining how bad things were and spent too much time trying to get consensus to get things done. They should have ended the filibuster and moved economic and health care measures through. I have more thoughts when I am not so wet and exhausted from campaigning non-stop.

      • …Scott Brown is typical of the traditional politicans that will try to bend this thing to their ends. I saw Mihos on TV trying to talk like a teabagger. It was almost comical. I think perhaps I would have smiled if my face ever thaws out.

          • Because Baker’s raising serious cash — although the tea party people probably won’t support Baker with their cash given his positions on several issues. We’ll see.

            • ..is that Mihos plans to largely self-fund.  He gave MAGOP ten grand to retire debt, and pledged to not take state party funding as candidate, instead freeing up MAGOP money for legislative and county races.  He’s also given every GOP candidate who asks $500, and donated Brown’s Worcester HQ to him gratis (even though Scott endorsed Baker).

              <

              p>Put that all together, and the meme that he who can suck the most oxygen out of the limited political funds enviornment is the most popular may not hold up.

    • Look at the results compared to the 2002 gubenatorial race (a 50-45 Romney over O’Brien win).  It looks like Coakley did much better in certain areas where Romney won pretty big…the wealthy burbs outside of Boston.  But she did way worse than O’Brien in blue collar working class towns (like Chicopee and New Bedford).  Meanwhile, the cities had lower turnout than the rest of the state.

      <

      p>At least on first blush, it would seem that the economic populism that the teabaggers advocate for has found a receptive audience amongst working class voters.  And honestly, that’s probably not too surprising if you think about it.

      <

      p>My fear is that national Dems will blame Coakley and her campaign for this loss without taking any lessons away.  Was the campaign perfect?  No.  Was there an element of anti-Beacon Hill anger in the vote today?  Probably some.  

      <

      p>But it also seems that working class voters are open to the tea bagger message, and that’s probably not good news for Dems, especially in certain parts of the country.

      <

      p>Also, can someone who is smarter than me figure something out.  At least at first blush, it looks like the votes who came out for Obama for their first vote ever aren’t necessarily voting again after that, even when Obama campaigns for a candidate.  That’s worrying.  And odd.  Hard to elect a guy and then not give him the tools he needs to do the job.

      • At least at first blush, it looks like the votes who came out for Obama for their first vote ever aren’t necessarily voting again after that, even when Obama campaigns for a candidate.  That’s worrying.  And odd.  Hard to elect a guy and then not give him the tools he needs to do the job.

        <

        p>That’s not surprising. Unfortunately, many Americans — including plenty of liberals — have an idealized picture of the office of the President, imagining the Presidency to be much more powerful in domestic policy than it actually is.

        <

        p>So they don’t think about “tools” to help the President do his job — they just assume he can do it by himself. That view is a big reason why it’s very hard for the President not to come in under expectations.

        • …I wanted to title this “unbelievable” but then I thought about it and it wasn’t all that surprising.

          <

          p>Do they really not teach civics in school at all anymore?  When I was a freshman in high school (back in the early 90’s).  It was an elective that a lot of people took.  And there was definitely an aspect of civics taught in history and other required classes.  But then again, my history teacher for three years was also the chair of the town council, so that might have played a role in that.

  45. I love that people here get it, they knew Martha was a weak candidate and they voted for the best person for the job – I have voted for dems and repubs and i shake my head when someone opnly votes one party, no party can give you the perfect candidatre every time every year, a honest voter picks the best person for the job and that was scott brown this year, next time it coul dbe a dem, thats ok, i am so happy

    • and not the policies they would enact, you obviously have not through through your own personal philosophy.

      <

      p>The fact that someone would vote only Dem or Republican is a sign that they understand that there is a HUGE difference between how each candidate will vote, and how those votes will affect policy and therefore, your life.

      <

      p>You can be condescending to party line voters if you want, but it’s not a sign of lack of sophistication to vote for one side or the other. Rather the opposite.

      <

      p>The problem for me lies with the conclusions Republican voters have come to, because I think the evidence has thoroughly debunked pretty much every economic and most social policies they stand for. But at least they have a philosophy.

      <

      p>Scott Brown is the best person for the job of killing Wall Street reform, getting our bailout money back from the record profits of the banks, he’s the best person to put a notch into any green legislation we might want to enact, or for destroying all efforts to improve our health care system.

      <

      p>If you don’t believe in those things, Scott Brown was NOT the best person for this job.

Archives