On election night I was in the McClintock suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel as the election results came in. I knew we were in trouble when Tom has a couple of percentage point lead and LA still hadn’t been counted. Pollster Stephen Kinney was there. It was his and other polling that had told us that McClintock, McPherson had slight leads and that Strickland was getting close.
Today Kinney made his post-election analysis at the meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Lincoln Club (For disclosure purposes I chair this Lincoln Club chaper)
Steve went through all the pre and post polling. Why did we lose the down ticket races? TURNOUT
Kinney thinks that the spread between Dem and GOP turnout may hit 10%. Some big Southern California GOP counties had lower turnout than in 2002. Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino to name them.
The reason. Kinney points to the nationalization of the election that didn’t come to California really until the last few days. Republicans were demoralized and didn’t show up. According to Kinney Arnold won by only 2% on election day.
I agree partially with that assessment. There is no doubt that that was a huge problem. I still believe we need the political audit of Victory ’06. Kinney mentioned that San Diego had about the same turnout as in 2002. San Diego was the one big Southern California County that didn’t turn everything over to ’06. To his credit Nehring did still push the boots on the ground voter contact program, not just a number of phone contacts. That may have made the difference.
The other reason we need to know what works is 2008 and beyond. The incoming CRP will probably be in debt when they start. What part of the ground game works? We need those frank answers, especially when we don’t have 10’s of millions of dollars to pour into it.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Turnout was a problem for Reps in the downtickets, but not the main one. Turnout was a little lower in 06 than in 02 in Orange Riverside and San Berdoo — but the key problem was that the Rep downtickets underperformed. In the Controller’s race the Rep won by 18% in Orange in 02, but by 14% in 06; in Riverside by 17% in 02 but 10% in 06; in SB by 13% in 02 but by 10% in 06.
In San Diego (as you noted) turnout was up (48.3% in 02, 56% in 06) But the Rep Controller candidate won SD by 12% in 02 — and LOST San Diego by 4% in 06.