Posted on 11/04/2008 11:11:57 PM PST by HamiltonJay
I may write on this topic one more time when the final few percentage points of precincts are in and I have a little more time to analyse.
That however will be it, so you can flame away at me all you want.
As most of you know I saw PA falling for McCain, very comfortably, obviously that has not happened. So, I was wrong and I am sorry.
Feel free to yell, kick, scream, flame whatever you wish at me IN THIS THREAD, if that helps you get through the night. Know that I never tried to purposely deceive any of you, but only report what I was seeing. My flaw was it seems not seeing enough of what was going on out east, or that overall turnout in PA was going to be down.
Now, I know that people will rehash this election and the McCain campaign for a long time, for their choice of fighting for PA. I had no influence or no responsibility for the campaign or their decisions, however I can see even now why they fought for PA. Did time and money in PA cost us VA or OH of FL? Perhaps, but given its 1:30 in the morning and MONTANA still hasn't been called I'd say its pretty clear blaming the election loss soley on drawing the line in the sand in PA is rather laughable.
The election is over, and Fauxbama did take PA by what looks to be a 10+ point margin. I found that unbelievable, and still find this shocking to this day. But it happened, the pollsters were right, I was wrong, and as such I eat my humble pie.
I will now explain what I personally saw, and please stick with me, because much of what I personally witnessed happening was true and has been confirmed by the results. WHere I failed was projecting what I was first hand seeing out into other areas of PA I had not been first hand.
I live in the Pittsburgh suburbs, and I noticed trending here that support for Fauxbama was weaker than Kerry, noticably weaker. Annecdotal evidence, but evidence that certainly gave me pause to the notions that Fauxbama was carrying Kerry levels of support. Kerry had squeaked by so I viewed this as a good thing. 144,000 or so votes was all he carried.
Turns out in the results I was right about what I saw, just not remotely right on the projections out.
The following 7 counties make up the Pittsburgh area, here are the final results of this election and the last election for them Percentages.. I have posted real numbers in (Allegheny)Pittsburgh, to illustrate a point I will make following this:
Allegheny: M 41.7(254,000) B 42.1(272,000) F 57.4(350,000) K 57.2(369,000) 96,000 93,000
Fayette: M 49.6% Bush 45.8% F 49.3% Kerry 53.2%
Greene: M 49.5% Bush 50% F 48.9% Kerry 49.3%
Washington: M 51.8% Bush 49.6% F 47% Kerry 50.1%
Beaver: M 50.9% Bush 48.4% F 47.8% Kerry 51.1%
Armstrong: M 61.4% Bush 60.9% F 37.2% Kerry 38.7%
Butler: M 63.1% Bush 64.9% F 35.7% Kerry 35.2%
Westmoreland: M 57.8% Bush 56% F 41.2% Kerry 43.5%
Now as you can tell by these numbers McCain actually outperformed Bush in the majority of these counties, and Fauxbama underperformed Kerry in the majority of these counties. Now yes, these margins were generally not huge, Given the Kerry and Gore victories has been so close this certainly suggested Fauxbama was in trouble, the percentage shifts did not need to be huge to cost the Dem the state, less than 2000 votes per county on average was all it would take.
Obviously he wasn't in trouble he won the state by 642424 votes, a rather big spread over the 144ish that Kerry won by or the 205k that Gore won by. However he didn't gain on that spread in terms of numbers in the Pittsburgh region over Kerry. So what was going on in the pittsburgh region clearly was not reflective of much of the state.
Erie for example went to Fauxbama by 25,000 votes, where is Kerry won it by only 10,000. SO while he was definately having issues here in the Pittsburgh region, he was not having the same issues elsewhere.
So, there you have it, I blew it, and at this late hour, that's about the best I can figure out as to why I blew it so badly.
So, flame away, I'll go eat my crow and humble pie, and get some sleep. This battle has ended with us in solid defeat.. tommorrow the next battle begins.
Shutting down coal resonated in Pittsburg, did not resonate in Philly?
Actually, in many counties, PA votes Conservative, unfortunately those counties are sparcely populated.
Murtha won. He’s an incumbent. Incumbents don’t lose simply because of a few dumb statements.
Hell, I am an Iowan and yet I can't figure out why the GOP lets this state of losers still get the first caucus! The state's Republican apparatus has ossified to the point of debility, so let 'em throw as big a fit as they want... give the first one to GA or TX.
At least you live in a red state. I live in Florida which I thought was a red state but today’s results proved me terribly wrong.
Tom Cole won. We returned 4/5 Republicans to the House — same as before.
Republicans had a great night in OK.
I as disgusted during the primary season when Iowa kept getting mad when candidates didn’t come in the state all the time and how they were going to punish them and ditto NH and then MI.
I am fed up and think 55 million other Republicans should be too that we allow blue states to pick our nominee.
Wonder how we go about changing it? I am willing to start a petition or whatever it takes. We have 3 years to get it changed.
Really, to hell with IA and NH and Mediascum and RINOs and “open” primaries etc. How do we reclaim the nomination process so that the Mediascum do not determine who we are allowed to nominate? We really have TWO years to reform the system for choosing R. party nominees since by the time it gets close to 2012 it will be too late for the coming cycle.
I think to some extent we saw two important things:
--The utter backfire of "Operation Chaos," which merely ended up pumping more money and resources into what eventually became Obama's "ground game" machine, while also giving him loads of media attention, and
--The failure of the McCain campaign to capitalize on the months and months and months between his capture of the nomination and the convention season. Where WAS the McCain campaign? What was it building all that time, if anything, on the ground?
Perhaps McCain would have lost in any case but... like this?
His campaign managers have a lot to answer for tomorrow.
Well yes.
Philly suburbs trending liberal screws the whole state.
I think that the caucus order should be based on performance in the last Presidential election (or a similar setup). No state gets it "just because it has always been that way," and it rewards the organizations with moxie. And no crossover voting. Ever.
That this frigging state went for Obama (and Huckabee) tells anyone how worthless it is to the Republicans.
I am with you guys! I want open primaries gone, I want Iowa, NH, and Michigan sent to the back of the pack, and want conservative states in the front that are reliable red states not ones that we have to guess are going red.
We need to start now to get it reformed. This is ludicrous for blue states and the media to pick our candidates. I detest open primaries with a passion. I want closed Republican primaries like we have in Oklahoma which BTW was ruled constitutional.
Don’t think that is too much to ask. RNC has way too much control for being such an inept organization. That place needs a thorough housecleaning.
Exactly! Way too much time was spent by our candidates in Iowa and NH — both blue states.
States should be rewarded for staying red.
I did a lot of work for McCain and was his coordinator in this part of the state. Like so many others I didn’t start out supporting McCain but went over after the FL primary when I was asked.
Also worked with LetsGetThisRight.com that we put together a few months ago to support Congressoinal candidates.
At least Oklahoma went in large numbers for McCain. We must be doing something right in our State.
To anyone who knows of a good way to start the ball rolling, just keep in mind that the Iowa Republican apparatus is quite creaky these days, and they would have no choice but to back down. It ain’t my mother’s GOP... heck it isn’t even mine.
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