Major surprises to me about last night’s results:
- Casey Cagle’s 12 percent margin of victory over Ralph Reed in the GOP LG race
- What happened to Shyam Reddy and Scott Holcomb in the Dem SOS race? I guess Gail Buckner wasn’t kidding about her polling. I’d just like to know where all that support came from.
- Ray McBerry, who was supposed to be token opposition, pulling almost 12 percent of the vote against Sonny Perdue in the GOP Gov. race
- Mac McCarley’s abysmal showing in the Dem Gov. race (just over 2 percent). So much for gay protest votes.
- Cindy Sheehan showing up to get jiggy with Cynthia McKinney in the 6th. Maybe Hugo Chavez forgot to RSVP?
I want to write about all these scenarios in detail and throw some numbers around, but I don’t have time now. Please chat it up in the comments. I’m especially intrigued by McBerry and Cagle’s surprisingly strong showings contrasted with McCarley’s awful one. I suspect more crossover voting than was predicted by most people, but don’t have time to crunch numbers to validate that theory one way or the other.
UPDATE: Of course, that theory could be (and I think probably is) totally misguided since with 98.6 percent of precincts reporting, 53,451 more people voted in the Dem. Governor’s primary (466,262) than in the GOP Governor’s primary (412,811). That makes these results even stranger to me.
Re: McBerry
1. I don’t think Democratic cross-overs were that significant. A lot of Dems who said they were going to cross over to vote against Reed ended up voting in the Dem primary anyway because of the Lt. Governor and SOS race.
2. I think McBerry was a protest vote for many disgruntled Republicans. And not just on the flag issue - I just don’t think there are enough flaggers to make up 10-12% of the Republican primary voters. Perdue’s gonna win, so if you’re unhappy why not vote for McBerry?
Mac was not the only recipient of the gay protest vote. You also have to look at Bill Bolton’s total, and also look at the number of under-votes to get the best idea. I think without the gay protest, it would have been 1% of the vote total for both men. So 3% you can blame on gays voting for neither Mark nor Cathy. I have no idea how many undervotes there were.
Just putting in a preliminary plug for Hicks. I went with him over reddy- and it was a tough choice.
Will Ralph Reed now disappear?
I pray it be so!
These numbers really make me wonder how many people were crossing over and if a lot of people will be truly crossing over the aisle this fall.
Really weird results. There seemed (to me) to be more contested/hot races on the red side. You would think there would be a lot more Pub voters…like in 04′.
Were they uninsprired?
Was it too hot?
Were they working?
This is pretty interesting to me and I’m not even a wonk.
If I was a Pub…..I’d be nervous.