Tag Archives: Scott Brown

Preliminary analysis – Scott Brown win in MA

I quickly downloaded the AP results by city for Massachusetts. Now Massachusetts is unique in the US, in that the entire state is divided in townships. Counties exist in name only and all local government functions are carried out by the township governments. Another way of putting this: There are no unincorporated parts of Massachusetts.

But, of course, the townships vary quite a bit in their size – both in area and in population. It was quickly clear from the AP table that Coakley had carried most of the largest cities in the state. She carried 10 of the 15 largest with 59% of the vote. She won Boston, Worcester, Newton, Springfield, Brockton, Brookline, Arlington, Medford, New Bedford, & Framingham. Brown won Quincy, Weymouth, Lowell, Barnstable, and Peabody. In those 15 towns/cities she collected 278,620 votes to Brown’s 193,063.

But Brown won 183 of the next 235 towns/cities and racked up an impressive total of 862,627 votes to Croakley’s 657,560.

Brown’s margin of 205,000 votes from the 2nd tier of 235 cities easily overcame Coakley’s margin of 85,000 from the top 15 cities.

In the 3rd and final tier of 75 towns/cities, Coakley won 54 and Brown only 21, with Coakley again winning 57.5% of the vote. But there just aren’t that many people in the small cities. In the 3rd tier she won 26,657 votes to Browns 19,695.

Conclusions: I think what the pattern shows is simply confirmation of the conventional wisdom. Coakley won the urban areas (and some significant liberal suburbs). Brown won the suburbs. And he won them with big enough margins that he won the state. It’s also a confirmation that you don’t have to win over every constituency in order to win an election. You have to win big on your turf and not lose too badly in areas outside your strengths.

Oh no! He DIDN’T just say that, did he?!?!

yes he did.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said THIS about Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat…“Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?” “For the Republicans to say vote for us and bring back the guys who got us into this mess in the first place, I don’t think it’s a winner.”

http://www.thefoxnation.com/massachusett-senate-race/2010/01/18/dems-make-unfortunate-kennedy-analogy

I mean, it is Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but this is unseemly!

The DSCC thinks “Tea Party” is a bad thing

Does this strike anybody else as weird?

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (which is run jointly by all of the current Democrats in the US Senate) thinks that all they have to do to persuade folks to vote against Scott Brown is to link him to the Tea Party movement.

Maybe it’s just me. But national polling has shown that the Tea Party movement has higher favorability ratings that either the Republican or the Democratic Party.

While the choir might respond well to this attack, I think the majority of independent voters greet news of Brown’s affilation with the Tea Party movement as a positive, not a negative.

Apparently, it’s not just the Coakley campaign in MA that’s out of touch. From inside the beltway it appears to be axiomatic that Tea Party = Evil.

I don’t think most voters agree. We’re going to find out tomorrow.