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Tag Archives: Virginia
November 2023 Elections
In the U.S., in something that would be a surprise to the Franers, the presidential election has become the “main” election. Turnout is always highest for the presidential election. But that is not the only only election, and other elections can be even more important. To save money, most states have their statewide elections coincide with federal elections (either the presidential election or the mid-term election). But a handful of states have taken a different approach and hold their elections in odd-numbered years. In addition, many states (while holding the elections for state offices at the same time as federal election in even-numbered years) hold local elections in the odd-numbered years. And most states, even if November in odd-numbered years is not a “regular” election date keep it available as a potential election date for special elections and propositions. This year, the November election will feature several big races.
At the state-wide office level, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky hold their elections for governor in the year immediately proceeding the presidential election. Louisiana is a little different because it holds a “jungle primary” which is actually an open general election (i.e. no party primaries) with a runoff if nobody gets 50%. This “primary” election was several weeks ago, and the Republicans picked up the governor’s office in Louisiana. Given that Louisiana is a deep red state, this pickup was not too surprising as it takes the right Democrat to have a chance at winning and the incumbent Democrat was term limited. The new governor is a right wing extremist, and we will probably be hearing a lot of nonsense out of the Pelican State for the next eight years.
But the races for Governor in Kentucky and Mississippi will be on Tuesday. (At least the initial vote will be on Tuesday as Mississippi has a runoff provision if nobody gets to 50%.) The governor in Kentucky is a Democrat and the governor in Mississippi is a Republican. Both are favored to be reelected but the challengers in both states have chances at pulling an upset. In Kentucky, the challengers big advantage is that he is a Republican. But the Republican candidate has been a controversial figure as Attorney General, and the Democratic incumbent is popular which might be just enough to hold onto the office. In Mississippi, the Governor has gotten entangled in some scandals and the challenger happens to be a member of a famous family even if that fame was over 50 years ago. But Mississippi is still a deep red state. In short, the most likely outcome is that there will be no changes, but it is also possible that either or both states could flip.
Posted in Elections
Also tagged 2023 Election, Abortion, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania
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The Midterms — Preview (Part 1)
We are into the home stretch of the campaign. This election comes down to those who want to protect women’s rights, LGBQT rights, our democracy, the middle class, and the safety of our streets on one side against those who want to undermine the concept of free and fair elections and impose an authoritarian theocracy on the other side. The midterm elections are more like parliamentary elections in other countries. There is no national race and winning is about the results of multiple state and local races.
As in 2020, there is expected to be a large number of votes by mail. Some states have changed their laws to allow counting of mail-in ballots to start earlier, but some still require the process of verifying and counting mail-in ballots to begin on election day. So there will be some states in which the Republican candidate will take an early lead based on the in-person votes, but the Democrat candidate will close that gap (and potentially take the lead) as the mail-in votes are counted. On the other hand, in states that announce mail-in and early voting results first, the opposite will occur.
These previews will go in the order of poll closing times. In states that are in two time zones, some states will release results as polls close. Others will hold off on releasing results until all polls close. If I know that a state holds off until all polls close, I will put the state in the time when the last polls close. Otherwise, I will put the state in when the majority of the polls close. I will list the time by Central Standard Time as that is my time zone. For ease of conversion, CST is UTC +8 (i.e. it is 8 p.m. UTC when it is noon CST), Atlantic ST +2 (2 p.m AtST for noon CST), Eastern ST +1 (1 p.m. EST for noon CST), Mountain ST -1 (MST 11:00 a.m. for noon CST), Pacific ST -2 (PST 10 a.m. for noon CST), Alaska ST -3 (9 a.m. AkSt for noon CST) and Hawaiian ST -4 (8:00 a.m. HST for noon CST).
Posted in Elections
Also tagged Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Vermont, West Virginia
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Virginia and New Jersey — Gaffes and What’s Next
It is a quadrennial tradition. The party in the White House has poor results in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the pundits predict doom and gloom in the mid-term elections. (Of course, then the party in the White House has losses in the House and maybe losses in the Senate and the pundits say “see we told you so.” So what lessons should we take from this week’s results.
First, Terry McAuliffe did make a gaffe. Using the classic definition of a gaffe, he told the truth that nobody wants to hear. In his case, in response to questions about education, he noted that parents do not get to dictate to the schools what the schools teach. This statement is partially true. But as with most sound bites, explaining what was meant takes a lot of time and does not overcome the gut reaction to the original statement.
What is absolutely true is that public schools are not a system of private tutors. Teachers are responsible for teaching a class of students. For the system to work, Johnny has to be using the same books and Kathy. So Johnny’s parents do not get to decide the materials that Johnny has to read for the course.
Posted in Economy, Elections
Also tagged Education, Infrastructure, Mid-term elections, New Jersey, Off-year elections, Reconciliation
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Redistricting — Virginia
Virginia continues the broken record of this year’s redistricting storyline — growth in urban and suburban areas and shrinking population in the rural areas. The four districts which have the highest excess population are the four districts (First, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh) that contain parts of Loudon County, Fairfax County, and Prince William County in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. The other two districts with excess population are the districts (Fourth and Seventh) that take in part of the Richmond area. The other five districts have shortages with the biggest shortage being in the Ninth District in southwestern Virginia.
For this cycle, Virginia has opted to use a hybird commission (part legislative members and part citizen members) to draft plans which will then go to an up-down vote by the legislature. If this process fails, the courts will draw the lines. Because of the change in the process, it is unclear whether the results will be based on the old map or if the commission will draw the maps from scratch. For now, I am assuming the the current maps will be the starting point. The criteria encourages that the lines respect communities of interest, but do not require that the lines follow existing political subdivisions. In terms of the Voting Rights Act, the Third District (part of southeastern Virginia near Norfolk) and the Fourth District (southeastern Virginia and Richmond) are half-white/half-African American districts and the Eighth District (Arlington and Alexandria) and the Eleventh District (central Fairfax County and eastern Prince William County) are minority-majority (although just barely) districts with no dominant minority group.
I started in the southwest as the Ninth has the biggest shortfall. I gave the Ninth District the rest of Henry County (currently split with the Fifth District) and more of Roanoake County (currently split with the Sixth District). To make up for its losses (and its own shortfall) the Fifth District (a large blob that essentially splits the state from the southern border up to the D.C. suburbs) gains Amelia County and Greenville County. The Second District (eastern Virginia) gains part of Chesapeake County (from the Fourth District) as does the Third District. The Fifth District will probably gain some from the Fourth District in its southern part along the border as well as chunks from the Seventh District. (I am seeing Greenville County, Nodaway County, and Amelia County going to the Fifth District along with additional parts of Fauquier County.) The Fourth District would gain additional parts of Chesterfield County to make up for its losses. To make up for its losses, the Sixth District will gain Frederick County and part of Winchester County from the Tenth District. The Seventh District will gain territory in Farquier County and Prince William County from the First District to make up for the loss which in turn will gain other parts of Prince William County from the Eleventh District. And finally, the Eighth and Eleventh will shift slightly to the north and west in Fairfax County.
Posted in Elections, House of Representatives
Also tagged 2020 Census, redistricting
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Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers
On Monday, four days ahead of its latest target date and almost four months behind the statutory date, the Census Bureau released the national and state-level results from the Census including the apportionment numbers that determine how many representatives each get. As can be expected, there are multiple different tables summarizing the data in different ways for us number geeks.
The bottom line table shows the apportionment population (both those living in the state and those residing overseas — like military personnel — who call that state home), the number of representatives that each state is getting, and the change in representation. We will get back to the change in a minute, but the big level number is that the apportionment population is slightly over 331 million. As such, the average size (mean) of each congressional district is just under 761 thousand. Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer people than the average congressional district. While the apportionment formula does not work for calculating the population needed for the first representative, even Wyoming has enough population to be entitled to three-quarters of a representative.
If, D.C. and Puerto Rico were states, Puerto Rico would be just ahead of Utah (which has four representatives) and just behind Connecticut (which has five representatives) and D.C. would be between Vermont and Alaska. Given that Puerto Rico is only slightly larger than Utah (which was not close to getting a fifth representative and far enough behind Connecticut, Puerto Rico would be due for four representatives. If both were states, the five states that would lose a representative would have been Oregon, Colorado, and Montana (all of which gained a seat), California (which lost a seat), and Minnesota (which barely avoided losing a seat). The chart of priority values that allows us to consider the impact of adding Puerto Rico and D.C. also shows that Minnesota barely held onto its last seat and New York barely lost its seat. Apparently, given the formula, Minnesota would have lost that seat if it had 24 fewer people, and New York would have kept its seat if it had 89 more people. (The disparity in numbers is caused by the fact that the two states have different number of seats.
Posted in House of Representatives
Also tagged 2020 Census, apportionment, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, redistricting, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia
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Election Night Preview — Part 7 (Referendums)
The first six posts in this series have focused mostly on federal elections with a handful of Governor’s races. Of course, there are also state legislative races, some local (mostly county) races, and referendums.
While I am sure that somebody has a complete list of every local bond issue or city charter issue, this post will focus on the state-wide issues. More specifically, this post will focus primarily on the changes that will make structural changes to the political system. It’s not that votes on legalization of marijuana or changes to the criminal justice system are unimportant, it’s just that many of these referendums are the results of the failure of the elected politicians to address these issues. and it’s the structural changes that may (or may not) make legislatures more responsive to these types of issues.
Several states are considering changes to the structure of elections In Massachusetts, voters will have the option of following in Maine’s footsteps by adopting ranked-choice voting for most state and federal elections (except for President).
Posted in 2020 General Election
Also tagged Alaska, campaign finance reform, Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, Puerto Rico, Ranked Choice Voting, redistricting, term limits, top-two primaries
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Election Night Preview — Part 1 (6 PM to 8 PM EST)
Election Night in the U.S. is always different from how things play out in most other countries. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that have more than two time zones. And, in most of those other countries, all areas within the same time zone close at the same time. Voting hours in these countries are set by federal law. In the U.S., however, voting hours are set by state law. And that creates a weird sequence of poll closing times.
In addition, poll closing times are, in some sense, tentative. While you need to be in line to vote by the time that polls close, anybody in line to vote gets to vote. For states that close in the early evening, long lines at closing time are nor unusual as there is not much of a window to vote after getting home from work resulting in many people attempting to vote after work still being in line when the polls cloase. And there is always the possibility of an emergency order permitting certain precincts to stay open late to compensate for problems earlier in the day. Even after polls close, many jurisdictions use a centralized counting location. That means that there is a lag time between the polls closing and the ballots getting to the counting location. In my county, the closest precincts are still only getting to the county seat about thirty minutes after polls close and the far edges of the county are getting there around an hour after the polls close. As a result, it typically takes ninety minutes for my small (eighteen precinct) county to report all of the results. Large urban counties can take three to four hours to report all of their election night results. This delay in reporting (which is pretty much the same in most states) is one thing that traditionally makes it difficult to project result. If the three largest counties in a state have only reported 10% of the vote while the rest of the state is 80% in, there is still a large number of votes that can change who wins a close race.
The other issue that will impact this election is the number of mail-in votes. As we have previously discussed, every state has different rules for counting mail-in votes. In most states, early in-person votes will be released around the same time (if not before) the election day votes, but mail-in votes will be reportedly differently in different states. As such, with each state, the big questions will be: 1) is the reported vote just the early vote or also the election day vote; 2) if we have full early vote and partial election day vote, how much does the election day vote differ from the early vote; and 3) how much of the mail-in vote has been counted and how much may remain to be counted or still be “in the mail”? The early count from a state may appear to be lopsided, but — without knowing the answers to these questions — it will be more difficult to determine if we have enough of the vote counted to know who is going to win. In states that are used to large mail-in vote totals, it is not unusual to not know the winner of the closest race for a day or two after the election as we finally get enough mail-in votes counted.
Posted in Elections, General Election Forecast
Also tagged Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Vermont, West Virginia
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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 1 — Early States and Territories)
Super Tuesday is always a hard day for delegate math. There are fifteen contests ranging from a territorial caucus in American Samoa (which given the time gaps will actually be taking while it is still Monday in most of the United States) to the massive primary in California in which a final count will not be available for several weeks. Every candidate still running (and this post is going live while we are still waiting for the results in South Carolina) can point to some contest in which they might win delegates. Super Tuesday is also the day on which we will see if Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s strategy of skipping the early caucuses and primaries worked.
As with the first four states in the “early” window, these contests are complicated by the number of candidates running. While the states differ from each other, in all of them, there is the question of how many candidates will reach the 15% threshold (either state-wide) or in a single district. In Iowa (with the exception of the Second District in which only three candidates won delegates) every district and the state-wide results had four candidates break 15%. In New Hampshire, in every district and state-wide, three candidates broke 15%. In Nevada, one district had three viable candidates but the other districts and the state-wide results had only two viable candidates . It seems likely that — in at least some districts and states — three or more candidates will reach that 15% threshold. And multiple candidates reaching 15% will cause weird fractional issues. Additionally, the possibility of some candidates getting between 10-13% could allow the viable candidates to gain more delegates than the minimum numbers discussed below.
Trying to do things chronologically, the first four contests to end (not necessarily the first four contests to report the results) are American Samoa, North Carolina, Virginia, and Vermont. All of these contests close by 7:30 p.m. EST. Part 2 will deal with the contests that close at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. CST, Part 3 will deal with the states that close after 8 p.m. EST (excluding Texas and California). Part 4 will deal with Texas and California.
Posted in Delegates, Primary Elections
Also tagged American Samoa, Delegate Selection Plans, North Carolina, Super Tuesday, Vermont
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Louisiana Elections
The off-year general elections kicked off yesterday with the “jungle primary” in Louisiana. Louisiana’s jungle primary is similar to, but not quite the same as, the “top two” primaries that California and Washington use. Like the top two primary, a jungle primary is “semi-partisan.” By semi-partisan, I mean that, like a non-partisan election, all candidates run in the same election regardless of party but, unlike the typical non-partisan election, candidates are identified by their designated party. Thus, you could have three Democrats, four Republicans, a Libertarian, a Green, and an independent on the ballot. A jungle primary differs from a top two primary in that a jungle primary is actually a general election with the possibility of a run-off rather than a true primary. In other words, in a true top two primary, the top two candidates advance to the general election even if one of the candidates gets a majority of the vote in the primary. In a jungle primary, if one candidate gets a majority of the vote, that candidate is elected.
Thanks, in part, to the scandals surrounding former Senator David Vitter, Louisiana has a Democratic governor. And Governor Edwards has done a decent job of threading the needle in a red state. (Of course, threading the needle in a red state means conceding certain issues that you can’t win in order to win on some issues even though such concessions may aggravate those who believe in purity and attack any person who deviates as a DINO.) Heading into yesterday’s election, the two questions was whether Governor Edwards could reach 50% and which Republican would take second (a more traditional Republican legislator or a self-funding Trumpish candidate). With the unofficial results in, Governor Edwards fell just short of 50% getting 47% of he vote, and Eddie Risponse (the self-funding candidate) eked out second place by a 27% to 24% margin. So there will be a run-off for governor in mid-November. The real issue for the run-off is how much the national parties will put into the race. For Risponse to win, he needs to absolutely unify those who voted for the three Republican candidates (the third Republican got less than one percent of the vote). While the Republicans would like to win this race given how red Louisiana is, it will have little impact going forward. After the first round of voting, the Republicans are guaranteed to win at least 26 of the state senate races (out of 39) and at least 63 of the 105 state house races. And, even if Democrats can get enough seats in the state house to block a veto override, there is very little chance that there will be any significant impact on congressional district lines in 2021 given the geography of Louisiana and the Voting Rights Act.
It would probably benefit the Democrats if the Republicans did put money into Louisiana. There are two other governor’s races in November — Kentucky and Mississippi. While both states are red, the Democrats do have chances in both. Mississippi may be a step too far given Mississippi’s Jim Crow era law that requires a candidate to win not only the state-wide popular vote but also win the popular vote in the majority of the state house districts. So even if the Democrat manages to win the popular vote, the election would probably go to the state legislature barring a landslide win. In both states, it is unlikely that Democrats will win the state legislatures and, in any case, it is hard seeing how the congressional district lines in either state could be substantially altered in a way that would create a significant chance of electing a second Democrat to congress in either state (although in a wave year, there is the possibility of that happening in Kentucky) as the least Republican district currently held by Republicans in both states is more Republican than the sole Democratic district is Democrat. In other words, there are not enough extra Democrats in the Democratic district to swing a single Republican seats even if the two districts adjoined.
Posted in Elections
Also tagged Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey
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