MyDD :: Expanding the Map Into the Deep Blue

Expanding the Map Into the Deep Blue

by Chris Bowers, Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:17:45 PM EST

I am building a huge database of all congressional votes for both 2004 and 2002, so that I will be fully prepared for the recruitment phase of the 2006 elections (which will being around January 1st, if not earlier). Today, when I was shifting through the data for House races in California in 2004, I noticed a horrifying trend. In California, a fortress of Democratic electoral and congressional strength, Republican districts still regularly had a higher total number of votes than Democratic districts. This may not sem like a big deal in California, but it is:

Of the fifty-one congressional districts in California that were contested by more than one candidate (one D and one R ran opposed even by third parties), Democrats won thirty-two seats and Republicans won nineteen.
In the thirty-two Democratic districts, the total combined vote 70.47% for the Democratic candidates, and 26.13% for the Republican candidate, a margin of 44.34%.
The thirty-two Democratic districts averaged 163,864 total votes cast for the House campaigns. The nineteen Republican districts averaged 194,589 total votes cast for the House campaigns. The margin between the two is 30,725 total votes.
A 44.43% margin out of 30,725 votes is 13,624 votes. Had turnout in Democratic districts in California been equal to turnout in Republican districts, Kerry could have expected to increase his California margin over Bush by at least 13,624 votes per district.
13,624 multiplied by thirty-two is 435,970. Considering the undervote in congressional races, had turnout in Democratic districts in California been equal to turnout in Republican districts, Kerry would have closed the national popular vote gap by nearly half a million votes just in California alone.

This is a very big deal. Winning hte popular vote goes a long way toward establishing credibility. I have not reached Illinois and New York yet in my research, but I have little doubt that I will find more of the same. By increasing turnout in safe blue districts in safe blue states, we can go a long way toward closing the national vote gap between Democrats and Republicans.

Expand the map, and not just into safe and lean red states.

Tags: Democrats (all tags)

Permalink :: 22 Comments :: Post a Comment

The tally isn't final yet (none / 0)

Not to detract from your point, which is a good one, but you might want to wait until November 30, when the election is certified in California, to input final 2004 results. Many California counties are notoriously slow to count absentee ballots, and I know that this year the largest and most liberal counties (including my own) have tens of thousands still outstanding. When these are finally tallied, I think you'll see somewhat higher totals for Democratic candidates. (In 2000, late-counted California ballots boosted Gore's popular vote margin by a couple of hundred thousand votes.)

by amyj on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:40:32 PM EST

What about challenging GOP incumbents? (none / 0)

Why in the world has Richard Pombo lasted six terms, anyway? His district isn't all that Republican, and yet he's quite the right-winger.

by Tom on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:41:20 PM EST

I agree with Chris... (none / 0)

I've been thinking for several weeks that we needed to hit California and other very blue states to increase our turnout and help the popular vote. I didn't say anything to anyone at the time because it was too late for this election. It is not too late for future elections, however. We can get the popular vote by hitting red and blue states in addition to swing states. How we're going to spread out our candidate that far is another question--one I don't know how to answer.

by BornAgainLiberal on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:43:45 PM EST

Email my some states... (none / 0)

Send me some states and your database template.

I got nothing to do tonight. I can help do some legwork.

ttagaris@yahoo.com

Tim

by Tim Tagaris on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:43:58 PM EST

Re: Email my some states... (none / 0)

I just started it today. I'll be happy to send you send more as soon as I have decided exactly how it will work.

by Chris Bowers on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 09:56:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Email my some states... (none / 0)

Have you ever thought of taking a team of volunteers to help with the low level grunt work?

by Matt42 on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 01:23:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Not only that... (none / 0)

But we have to press our blue state advantage.

That means challenging and removing moderate Republicans.

It doesn't matter that they are moderate if they go to Washington and vote for the right wing leadership that currently control Congress. Better to appeal to the moderates and simply tell them that a vote for Chaffe is a vote for Frist.

We also need to secure state legislatures in the blue states so we can dictate districting and take advantage of our electoral power in these states.

They want to play games in Texas...let's show them what the heavy population blue areas gets us in the House!

by Nazgul35 on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 10:06:09 PM EST

Re: Not only that... (none / 0)

But right-wing DEMOCRATS need face strong primary fights too! What good are they if they vote with the wingnuts?

by rfr on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 10:37:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

A lot of California energy went elsewhere (none / 0)

Kerry and Senator Boxer were shoo-ins here, so there wasn't a lot of effort to get Dems to the polls here.

I don't care much about the district-by-district vote counts directly, but it would have been nice to get enough more Dems to the polls to pass Prop 72 and require large corps (read Wal Mart) to provide health care and pay for at least 80% of it.

The way I see it, we don't get healthcare reform until the corporations demand it. Right now, the healthcare battle pits employees against employers, with the argument being over who pays what % of a rapidly rising rate. We need both groups fighting against a perverse system that consumes massive amounts of wealth and doesn't even manage to place us among the healthiest of countries.

by Ottnott on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 10:19:36 PM EST

Re: A lot of California energy went elsewhere (none / 0)

FWIW Passage of proposition 72 would have been symbolic only. ERISA pre-empts state regulation of employee benefit plans. You can regulate insurance and you can regulate payroll practices, but requiring that an employer pay 80% of the cost of the health benefits would probably violate ERISA. Hawaii had to get an exemption from Congress for its law.

by Abby on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 01:29:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

statewide races and turnout realism (none / 0)

Best reason to increase turnout in safe blue districts isn't to push the national popular vote total up in Prez years, but to win statewide close races, as Chris Gregoire and Dan Mongiardo can tell us. (I assume someone on this blog will tell us when Chris Gregoire finally wins, or doesn't win, WA-Gov; I don't live in WA and I'm tired of looking at the Seattle Times updated vote-counting site.)
I remember reading somewhere that safe R districts always had higher turnout than safe D districts (except maybe Montgomery County, MD), because safe D districts almost always have high numbers of people who don't drive, need help getting to the polls, can't wait in line for a long time, or don't speak English; in safe R districts everybody has a car. Can we get equal turnout? (Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to raise turnout, of course; just asking whether equal turnout is a reasonable goal.)

by accommodatingly on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 10:26:34 PM EST

Dem Party in Cali. (none / 0)

One big problem in California is the Democratic Party infranstructure is old and decrepit. They don't bother with their base at all and are growing no new blood. They are notoriously unresponsive to the concerns of Democratic Party members and have been deterioriating for 20 years. It's a miracle that the state leg is majority Democrat. They don't even bother to field candidates in some counties. The only thing saving us is that we have some decent newspapers here.

by Phredd on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 10:43:38 PM EST

Re: Dem Party in Cali. (none / 0)

Phredd:

It's true the state party is lame and disconnected, but hey, I'm a Chargers fan. Californians are to blame too; we just aren't motivated by things like sports and politics.

It is no miracle that the leg is Democratic, the one thing the party does really well is map districts in our favor. In this election, in the face of the alleged Schwarzenegger juggernaut, we kept every single seat and held 48/32 in the Assembly, 25/15 in the Senate.

by Pacific John on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:18:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Dem Party in Cali. (none / 0)

For example, take a look at the resistration numbers for this years' Senate district races. Only SD15 is balanced between the parties.

by Pacific John on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:25:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Your idea is well meaning (none / 0)

...but a tough nut that we face in every statewide CA election. A few urban districts really pull down the Dem avg turnout. High turnout like Tauscher's CD11 has, say, 240,000 votes. Low turnout districts down in So Cal include CD31 (100k), CD34 (98k), CD38 (105k), CD43 (110k) and CD47 (90k) - all numbers approximate. The real surprise is CD47, the new version of Loretta Sanchez's district.

Trust me, we know about this sort of problem. Northern Santa Barbara County should be a goldmine for us, but with turnout on the order of 30%, the GOP wins local elections, and spawned the guy who won our only competitive state senate race.

Rather than treat this as a problem of averages, each district needs to be targeted individually, and with issues. A minimum wage ballot initiative is a good place to start, and a great petition to have at voter reg tables.

by Pacific John on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:10:52 PM EST

Re: Your idea is well meaning (none / 0)

I'd like it if for 2006 we could put together the sort of national drive that America Votes put on in swing states. I think it would really help areas of the sort we are both describing.

by Chris Bowers on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 12:20:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Noncitizens (none / 0)

The major reason for the lower turnout in Democratic leaning/urban districts in California is the large number of noncitizens who are ineligible to vote.

Obviously, improving the process for accepting citizenship applications (which can and often do take more than 12 years to process) would help, but until we succeed in that, it will be very difficult to reach the same turnout levels as the rest of the state.

by Voting Rights Advocate on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:33:49 PM EST

Upstate NY (none / 0)

I'm curious what you'll turn up in NY. Here in Broome County (Binghamton & environs), I know we put a serious scare into our local GOP. We took out a Republican state assembly incumbent, which is kind of hard to do, even though so many of them are so utterly useless. We probably also took the county executive slot in a close race. And we actually made our GOP state senator campaign, which shocked his worthless self-satisfied faux-entitled ass, and gave him the smallest victory margin since roughly the Jurassic. (And we weren't running necessarily the best candidate ever, even, if you catch my drift...) Hinchey and Schumer cleaned up, and that blue for Kerry in the NY Tier right over Scranton PA on the county presidential maps is us, and a few surrounding counties.

Small potatoes, in some ways. But given the very real upstate NY/NYC division which tends to make upsate rural counties go GOP, very encouraging small potatoes. Personally, for me, even though I'm a newbie to local politics and indeed as any sort of activist to national politics, & though the national results of course are depressing, I'm pretty damn excited. I know it's only an assembly seat, but we were given no real chance of taking it and we did. There are a lot of young, enthusiastic Dems around here, and even slightly older cynics like me are energized for anything in 2006.

As to the thread topic, I know we had great turnout and it did wonders for us. In what is a pretty much a rural county we had an impact and are making NY bluer. There were a lot of factors playing into this, but an enthusiastic local team was key.

by The Eradicator on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 02:01:13 AM EST

Many of us went to other states to work (none / 0)

California was down in turnout among Dems because our best activists went to other states to help out. I went to Washington state to work for 7 months and ended up working on local races including Christine Gregoire's (hopefully victory).

My union (SEIU) sent over 2000 people from safe Dem states to swing states all across the country. I am sure that other organizations and individuals did likewise. Winning the popular vote is nice but we had to focus our resources on winning the electoral vote.

Too bad we lost prop 72 by such a close margin. If these activists had stayed in Cali, we probably would have pulled it off but Kerry would have then lost by a landslide.

by raddude on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 02:20:14 AM EST

Also, a few solid red districts were uncontested (none / 0)

My district, CA - 21 had only a nominal challenger who raised no money and mounted no campaign. so it went 75% Repub. This will be my main effort in the epcoming election cycle, making this area blue... it's doable with sizable Spanish speaking population and more concern about education and air quality.

It might to be hard to make this CD turn blue (were are in the birth place of the free republic), but shouldn't be outside of the question to pull it to 60-40 or 55-45, which as you say makes a big difference nationally.

by jakarta on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 02:41:46 AM EST

I noticed the same thing in briefly looking at the voting results for VA CD's. In the 8th, we had a huge push (volunteer action approaching battleground state level). We won resoundingly, but the incumbant R's in the 10'th and 11'th CD's still pulled in more votes than our winner (all 3 winners faced equally weak challengers). Granted, Moran has some baggage, but I don't think it can be all chalked up to that.

I think the effect you're seeing comes down to local party organizations. The R's have churches that are willing to be political. What kind of face to face organizations do we have (that don't involve bused in volunteers)? Our local precint structure is dormant at best. We best figure out how to get that operational again or envision new community structures.

by hoagieboy on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 10:55:17 AM EST

one odd phenomenon (none / 0)

In this election was the dancing around Arnold. Arnold couldn't campaign too hard for Bush because the state is so liberal. The Dems couldn't campaign too hard because Arnold is so popular. Everyone felt they had more to lose than gain and made an informed decision to go with the status quo.

I'm not real happy about our state party, but I'm not sure how to go about changing it. Maybe I'll take a hint from DFA and run for dogcatcher in 2006, although actually those sorts of local races are very competitive in my area.

by lamproswc on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 12:16:53 PM EST

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