[EL] Extremely close State Legislative election in CA (4 votes)

Thu Jun 14 11:33:50 PDT 2012

Individual votes matter to be sure, which is the broad lesson, but this
potential outcome also underscores the vagaries of Top Two in operation.
Nearly a third of votes (32.4%) in this particular race currently count for
four Democrats who finished 4th and below. If any of those four candidates
hadn't run, then the runoff would be between the two Democrats.

Indeed, as our news release yesterday indicated (
http://www.fairvote.org/top-two-in-california-primaries-june-2012-by-the-numbers<http://www.fairvote.org/top-two-in-california-primaries-june-2012-by-the-numbers#.T9ota7BYtmg>
.),
about two thirds of races with at least four candidates had potential
"spoilers" -- meaning that if the candidates in 4th or below hadn't run,
it's possible that the candidate in third would have moved up to second.

We also are seeing remarkable turnout disparities in who turned out this
month compared to who will turn out in June. This June primary electorate
was disproportionately older, richer, whiter and more Republican than the
November electorate, with a clear impact on the outcomes in a number of
races.

Consider that there are five US House districts that are at least 35%
Latino voting-age-population, but less than 60% in a our partisan voting
index (similar to Cook index) -- these basically are the districts with
substantial Latino populations where Obama ran less than 10% above his
national average, with the result being Republican candidates were more
serious in these districts.

In each of those five districts, the Democratic candidates' total vote
share ran well behind the partisanship. In November, that Democratic
candidate vote share will likely be much more in line with the
partisanship, all things being equal. But as it was, Democrats ran behind
their vote share by:

- 4% (meaning overall margin impact of 8%)
- 4% (margin impact of 8%)
- 6% (margin impact of 12%
- 7% (margin impact of 14%)
-12% (a whopping overall margin impact of 24%)

The average difference was 7%, or a 14% margin impact.

And in one of those districts, the only two candidates running in November
will be relatively conservative white Republicans because of this turnout
disparity and vote-splitting. Obama will likely win the district by about
8% in a nationally even year, but his backers will need to choose between
two Republicans for House representation.

Rob

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

>  That's my district and I can attest that the first round was extremely
> fierce with the teacher's union and the charter movement fighting over the
> top two Democratic candidates.
> i have never been hit with so much mail or campaigning over another race.
>
>
> On 6/14/2012 11:18 AM, Douglas Johnson wrote:
>
>  They're still counting ballots in Los Angeles County, but I thought it's
> worth highlighting for the list that in California's Assembly District 46<http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/state-assembly/district/46/>the number-two Democrat trails the Republican in their battle for 2nd place
> by 4 votes, a difference of 0.01% with 38,302 ballots counted.****
>
> ** **
>
> As of 4pm June 13th the County had 131,177 ballots left to count<http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/2012-elections/june-primary/pdf/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf>,
> but it's unknown how many are in AD 46.****
>
> ** **
>
> This is a safely Democratic district, so "victory" for the Republican
> means the virtually certain election of the number-one Democrat in
> November, while election of the number-two Democrat (who is an advocate for
> Charter schools) means an extremely competitive election in November.****
>
> ** **
>
> A nice reminder that individual votes still matter, even in California's
> largest-in-the-nation state legislative districts.****
>
> ** **
>
> - Doug****
>
> ** **
>
> Douglas Johnson****
>
> Fellow****
>
> Rose Institute of State and Local Government****
>
> m 310-200-2058****
>
> o 909-621-8159****
>
> douglas.johnson at cmc.edu****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing listLaw-election at department-lists.uci.eduhttp://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
> --
> Rick Hasen
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
> UC Irvine School of Law
> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
> Irvine, CA 92697-8000949.824.3072 - office949.824.0495 - faxrhasen at law.uci.eduhttp://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.htmlhttp://electionlawblog.org
> Pre-order The Voting Wars: http://amzn.to/y22ZTvwww.thevotingwars.com
>
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