Updated 5:15 p.m.:
The conventional wisdom about what fueled the Democratic beatdown of Charlotte Republicans on Tuesday comes up short.
Scott Stone, the Republican who lost badly to Mayor Anthony Foxx, told the Observer, “It really came down to turning out their vote. We didn’t turn out ours.”
Wrong. Republicans turned out fine. There just aren’t enough of them, and they aren’t as unified around their candidates as Democrats are around theirs.
Get this: Of the 10 Charlotte precincts with the highest percentage voter turnout Tuesday, nine are considered Republican-friendly. And of the 10 Charlotte precincts with the lowest turnout, nine are friendlier to Democrats.
UPDATE: The Board of Elections is still totaling the official numbers, but unofficial totals suggest the turnout rate for Democrats was 19.2 percent; for Republicans 18.9 percent and for unaffiliated voters, 11 percent.
The problem for the GOP is that there are almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans within the city limits: 236,657 to 121,765.
Republicans’ other problem: Democrats tend to vote more loyally for their party. In precincts that had twice as many Republicans as Democrats, Stone beat Foxx by 50 votes here, 80 votes there. But in precincts that had twice as many Democrats as Republicans, Foxx beat Stone by 200 votes here, 300 votes there.
The same pattern hurt Republican City Council member Edwin Peacock, who was blindsided by one Beth Pickering, who raised almost no money and about whom most voters knew little. To take just one example, in Precinct 13 in First Ward, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-1, all four Democrats crushed Peacock. By comparison, at Republican-dominated Precinct 18 at Eastover Elementary, Democrat Patrick Cannon beat one Republican, almost beat another and was only 127 votes out of second place behind Peacock.
Winning by a little in Republican precincts and losing by a lot in Democratic precincts doesn't add up for the GOP.
Voter turnout was low. But it was low across the city. There's little evidence that even double the turnout would have done anything to help Republicans.
Taylor Batten
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The real reason Republicans lost Tuesday
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13 comments:
white flight
Mr. Batten will you be writing anymore stories where a conflcit of interest due to you advancing a policy or agenda that you wife is also working in favor.
Just want to make sure since you dont like full disclosure. Thanks.
ps613:
Thanks for your anonymous comment. I have never written a story that posed a conflict of interest. Can you name one?
Taylor Batten
I'm no tea party type but I must say that while there might not be a conflict of interest in your writting consistently well left of center columns, your bias is both obvious and quite unpalatble to this reader.
Perhaps its the smug self righteous tone you tend to use.
Charlotte is heading down the road to becoming the next Memphis: a black, southern, democrat city.
Matt M - Memphis? I was thinking Chicago South. Now that the Socialists control the Mayor's office, city council, county commision and the school board, the only thing Chicago has that we don't is a mob boss. I'm sure Foxx will recruit one while the DNC is in town.
We can now look forward to punitive taxes, more streetcars to nowhere, and more enforcement of "if schools are bad, there is one, and ONLY one, way to make them good, and that is to throw hundreds of millions of additional dollars at them" philosophy.
I have to seriously consider if I want to continue to live here.
Spot on Observer. The Dems are harvesting the crop of white flight and importing poverty to Charlotte. How is that going to work out for the people that actually work and pay income taxes around here?
This is from your own paper:
White students now make up just under one-third of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' student body, as African-American and Hispanic enrollment continues to grow at a faster clip, new CMS numbers show.
WHITE FLIGHT.
Talyor, you are a liberal - your paper reeks of conflict of interest. Your problem is your arrogance and self fulfilling agenda is going to run Charlotte into the ditch. Tell you what - bring back Mary Newsome so she can lament about the evils of cars and her desire to promote the UN Agenda 21.
You don't have to "write" a story about conflicts, your entire paper is a propaganda rag for Mayor Bobblehead and President Nitwit.
I would say nice escape clause, but not even close.
Wow, judging from all the unfocused, sputtering rage here, I'd say the Republicans are smarting pretty badly from this drubbing.
Love it when the befuddled right-wingers say a columnist, or the entire paper (sort of depends on which side of the bed they fell out of that day), is full of "liberal bias". That's code for "they don't agree with me, thus they must be biased against me and by extension, all that is good and right with the world".
The bar has shifted so far to the right in recent years that just doing a professional job of reporting is now seen as evidence of some left-wing conspiracy, which involves literally every news operation that doesn't actively cheerlead for conservative causes and candidates. Unreal.
This article was a solid analysis of the election results. I don't see any bias here, just a logical interpretation of the demographics. All the hysteria simply serves to reinforce what the thinking half of society already knows: endless right-wing propaganda has turned the minds of many of our citizens to mush. They can no longer be trusted to think for themselves and arrive at logical, common sense conclusions.
And 5:38 useful idiot for the left I can post actual fact that is anything but "sputtering", genius whites are fleeing Charlotte and President Nitwit thinks blacks are stupid and I am sure you will have one heck of a liberal reponse to this:
KINSTON, N.C. | Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.
The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.
The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want.
Democrats home of racism, home of the KKK and home of the plantation black vote.
Any questions?
Straight party ticket voting: anyone unwilling to educate themselves on the candidates, their views and their stances; anyone unwilling to vote for the best candidate for the job should not be allowed to vote.
Straight party ticket voting is not really exercising your right to vote, it's exercising your ability to follow a lemming mentality right over a cliff.
And I mean that no matter the party affiliation.
That being said, voters (especially African-American voters) need to realize that they are being used to propogate a political platform that neither confirms nor upholds their beliefs.
Their electoral power is being "borrowed" and misused by the ultra-left wing faction of the Democratic party, a faction that would have zero chance of advancing their agenda without the muscle of the African-American voter.
This realization will soon come to the Democratic voters. I just hope it isn't too late for the city, the state and the country.
We were lucky that we chose not buy when we got here to Charlotte. Very good decision and since we are on the NC/SC line all we have to do is step over it. We will now focus on buying a home there and, of course, take our little biz with us.
Charlotte will just continue to take the same self-destructive progressive path as Detroit. Been been there, done that, not loosing it all again to those who think we should support their pet projects and the lazy.
According to the Board of Elections:
2009:
125,218 ballots cast
25,926 Democratic straight party votes
19,406 Republican straight party votes
2011:
98,831 ballots cast
23,845 Democratic straight party votes
11,339 Republican straight party votes
It sure looks to me that Republicans made up a lot of the almost 27,000 fewer voters this year than last year. If 8,000 GOP straight party votes hadn't disappeared in 2011, Edwin Peacock would still be on the City Council.
You noted 2011 turnout rates of 19.2%, 18.9%, and 11% for Democrats, Republicans, and Unaffiliateds, respectively. What were the equivalent percentages in 2009?
Unquestionably, there are considerably more Democrats than Republicans in Charlotte. It just appears to me from the voter data that there was a sizable drop in Republican turnout this year. Thus, it is probably not the case that "Republicans turned out fine."
Mecklenburg County, 55.3% White, 30.8% Black, 12.2% Hispanic.
CMS 32.8% White, 41.2% Black and 16.4% Hispanic.
The march towards Detroit status took a giant leap yesterday.
Congratulations!
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