Brown and Westlund were no Barack Obamas
Now that we know who won everything in Oregon, it's interesting to leaf through the results and compare margins of victory. Obama absolutely stomped McCain in the Beaver State -- 56.64 percent to 40.56 percent. But that 16-percentage-point victory was not matched by two Democrats running for statewide office.
In the race for Secretary of State, Kate Brown defeated Rick Dancer (who ran a pretty good TV ad, I thought) by 50.97 percent to 45.93 percent -- only a 5 percent margin. In the race for State Treasurer, Ben Westlund defeated Allen Alley by 51.11 percent to 45.32 percent -- less than 6 percent between them.
And so not only were there a surprising number of Obama-Smith voters, but there also were a fair number who voted Obama-Smith-Dancer-Alley. On the whole, it seems to us that Oregonians really didn't like McCain or really loved Obama -- enough to get quite a few conservatives to jump ship, but at the top of the ticket only.
| Posted at 6:51 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (7)
Brown and Westlund both received more than 50% of the vote. It's not much, but George W. Bush described slimmer margins (at best) as "political capital", which he spent with a vengeance.
Posted by none | November 7, 2008 9:41 AM
Geek Squad was an Obama/Alley voter. The partisan tag isn't everything, especially for positions that are more limited in scope.
Posted by Geek Squad | November 7, 2008 10:30 AM
From the numbers, it's absolutely clear that many Oregonians who voted R down ballot didn't go for McCain. All three Rs running statewide got more votes than McCain: Smith almost 63,000 more, Dancer 43,000 more and even Alley with about 9,000 more votes than McCain.
Also looks like lots of folks voted Obama and then skipped the rest of the races. Votes counted for the other statewide races were off anywhere from 56,600 votes (Senate) to 160,000 votes (Treasurer).
But tell me this: Why are there 1,742,450 ballots cast, but only 1,728,793 votes tallied for President? Could almost 14,000 people REALLY have turned in a ballot but not marked a choice in the most important race?
Posted by Sarah Ames | November 7, 2008 12:59 PM
The democrats owe a lot to Pres-elect Obama (v. positive) and soon-to-be-ex-Pres Bush (killing any Republican hopefuls chances.)
Someone like Kate Brown having been around longer than dirt in Salem should have not even been that close to Dancer who is a total novice. In addition, (albeit out-of-state) the gay marriage constitutional initiatives passing in Cali may not augur well for the MoveOn wing of the Democrat party.
Posted by Steve | November 7, 2008 1:05 PM
Could almost 14,000 people REALLY have turned in a ballot but not marked a choice in the most important race?
One of my employers said he declined to vote for McCain solely because of Sarah Palin. He left the presidential choice blank on his ballot.
(Sadly, this hasn't kept him from complaining loudly and bitterly about Obama's win.)
Posted by none | November 7, 2008 1:26 PM
Wow. Hard choice for treasurer between a Republican and a guy who was a sales tax-pushing Republican just three or four years ago before he became a sales-tax pushing Democrat.
I wrote myself in.
Posted by darrelplant | November 7, 2008 2:58 PM
I was with geek squad, I voted an Obama-Alley ticket. I held my nose and voted Brown for Sec. of State, but only because I thought Dancer was an even worse choice.
Posted by hilsy | November 7, 2008 6:15 PM