A number of losing Republican candidates in last week's election are blaming their defeats on Democrats who voted a straight ticket ballot.
The reality is that Republican voters chose a straight ticket in almost the same proportion as Democratic voters.
There are 4,870,261 voters in North Carolina registered with one of the two major political parties. Of those 2,867,453 are registered Democrats, or 58.9%
In last week's election 2,128,983 voters cast a straight ticket either for the Democrats or Republicans (Libertarians are excluded from this analysis.) Of the major party straight ticket voters 1,264,076 were Democrats, or 59.4%.
So Democrats make up 58.9% of major party registrants and made up 59.4% of major party straight ticket voters. That paltry disparity is a lacking excuse for why Republicans lost major offices, particularly given that candidates in low information races like Steve Troxler and Cherie Berry were able to weather the tide.
I looked on the NC BOE website to try to find the data for straight ticket voting in 2004. I could not find it. Do you know what it was? It probably was less Democratic than this year. I don't remember hearing as much about it that year than I have this year.
ReplyDeleteNot related, but do you know if the college areas voted much stronger for the Democrats this year than usual? I figure they must have, since the three counties Obama won in the mountains have medium-large college campuses.
ReplyDeletetom,
ReplyDelete.i think it is a major oversight to assume unaffiliateds didn't vote straight tickets as this analysis would suggest.
Jim
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI hope you're getting royalties for these posts...Listening to 680 WPTF last night at 8 and heard them read this blog post as their own news without citation. I'd just read it before I'd gotten in the car, so I remembered it word for word. Might be worth a call to them asking for a cite on who's actually writing their news.