Early reflection on the election direction: national, meals tax races

No Daily Fishwrap this morning, since the papers are all about one and only one thing: last night's historic election, decisively won on a national level by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. We'll look this morning at the presidential and meals tax race before turning our eyes to local and state races later today or tonight.

It was time for a celebration in the Bull City last night, with what the Herald-Sun estimates to have been 500 people turning out for the Barack 'N' Roll celebration downtown, as seen in the photo at right.

From a North Carolina perspective, the remaining outstanding question remains whether Obama will add our state to an historic sea of blue. With about 93% of the votes in last night shortly before midnight, our calculations on a county-by-county basis here at BCR projected that Obama's less-than-20,000-vote lead would hold, with McCain picking up a few thousand votes but not enough to win the state.

As of this morning, Obama's lead is 12,000 votes, with all but the provisional ballots counted. We'd suspect that the provisionals would not be sufficient to overturn the outcome, particularly since infrequent or unregistered seem the most likely to face a provisional ballot, and national trends would seem to give the edge in these voters to Obama.

Should the current trend hold, there's no question that Durham County was a key factor in Obama's victory in the state. Durham delivered a net margin of 70,000 Obama votes to the Democratic candidate. By comparison, Wake County delivered 65,000 net Obama votes -- but more than three times the number of total votes were cast in Wake as opposed to Durham.

The only county that made a bigger difference for Obama was Mecklenburg, where the core of the Charlotte region gave Obama a 100,000 point cushion.

Within Durham, Obama won decisively throughout almost the entirety of the city limits. The race was close in largely white, middle- to upper-middle-class northwest Durham (in the Croasdaile and Cole Mill Road area). In rural northern Durham County/Bahama and in the Falls Lake area of eastern Durham County, McCain won by as much as a 2-to-1 ratio in some cases. (Note that these precinct-by-precinct numbers only measure day-of-election voting as we can't break down early votes for Obama v. McCain by precinct.)

The most significant one-sided outcome we can find in a quick eyeball of the data? NCCU's one-stop early voting site, where Obama won 13,979 out of 14,291 votes cast -- or 98%. That represented almost one-fifth of Obama's total plus-margin in the county.

In local races, as we noted earlier, the prepared meals tax died a violent death, losing almost as badly as McCain did.

From the looks of the precinct results, even setting aside the unusually-high turnout of the night and the impact that the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People's opposition probably had on the measure, the tax appears to have been doomed to failure even in an off-year.

The liberal, middle- to upper-middle-class areas around Duke in west-central Durham -- the part of the Bull City most likely to back such a tax and its supported projects in a big way -- came out against the vote by narrow to decent margins. It won only a single precinct in the entire city, the NCSSM precinct in Watts-Hillandale, and there only by a 200-to-189 margin. In largely African-American precincts, it was not uncommon to see the measure go down by 5-to-1, even the occasional 10-to-1 margin.

Interestingly, there were only 11,094 undervotes on the measure -- out of 135,000-plus ballots cast on the night, all but 11,000 voted on the item. So much for the idea that folks might skip the measure, located at the end of the ballot all the way past the judicial races.

It had been a tough measure to predict, though most backers seemed pessimistic on its chances for success in the waning days of the campaign. I talked about the result with vocal opponent Frank Hyman at the Obama rally last night, and he was surprised by the significant vote against the tax, thinking (as had most pol-watchers) it would be a closer vote.

Update: Here's the DCVB's take on the vote. One must never doubt the ability of Reyn Bowman's folks to be, er, optimistic:

A Durham referendum on a 1% meals tax, like that the State granted Raleigh and Charlotte, fell short but still garnered as many “yes” votes as any successful measure or official in last year’s local election. 
 
But the process still began to educate the public on the merits and demonstrated that in a local election atmosphere with time customarily provided for public education, the measure would have passed handily.

Overall, turnout was 76% of registered voters, a number that's doubly impressive when you consider the number of new registrants for this year's balloting. Three-quarters of all votes cast were cat through early voting (102,632 early vs. 33,161 on Tuesday.)

An historic night for Durham -- and for America. And, as Durham's erstwhile elections chief Mike Ashe would say, it's a good day for democracy.

Comments

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

I never thought this would happen, but the Libertarian candidate appears to have made the difference between Obama and McCain.

A lot of Libs were unhappy with Bob Barr, but given his name recognition as a former Repub I was surprised to see him get only 25K votes in NC. Turns out that was enough. Wow.

I had expected Munger to be the candidate making a difference (i.e., covering the spread), but it wasn't to be once McCrory collapsed. Thankfully he got more than two percent to qualify the LP for ballot access in 2010.

[AR]

I kind of like NC being "purple" (mixture of red and blue). I'm a registered Republican who happily voted for Obama. I also really liked McCain's "purple" concession speech- it was just what I needed to hear.

I have a feeling that a LOT of voters had no understanding of the prepared meals tax. To the uninformed voter, it was a no-brainer to vote "no."

[MikeAshe'sRunning Shoes]

It was a good day for the democratic process as well -- and that is thanks to Mike Ashe, who would make a wonderful head of the state BOE.

Interesting that 20% of the county's Democrats did not vote straight ticket -- I'd love an analysis on which races caused democrats to forgo that option.

[barry]

the meals tax was doomed when its most prominent proponent, Mayor Bill Bell, turned chickenshit in the face of opposition from Lavonia Allison at DCABP, and wouldn't even commit to voting for it in a public forum.

[john b]

i think the food tax failed by a lack of public education and branding. heck even the description on the ballot didn't say what the tax would fund. if i recall correctly, it basically just said that this measure would raise food tax. who in their right mind would vote for that if they didn't study about it ahead of time?

i don't know what the process is for the ballot initiative description process, but it seems to me that proponents of this tax did a poor job of getting a more positive description of their proposal on the ballot.

[B]

MARS--I registered as a Dem for the primary (to vote for Obama), but don't consider myself a Democrat in any way, shape, or form. I'm probably not very representative, but I doubt I'm the only one, either...

[Phil]

1. Thanks for the fast analysis! (I hope you can stay up at work after being up many hours crunching numbers?) I wonder if you could point us to the precinct results online?

2. I'm a little confused by what you wrote here: "Overall, turnout was 76% of registered voters, a number that's doubly impressive when you consider the number of new registrants for this year's balloting." Regarding the "doubly impressive when you consider" my intuition is opposite. I would think that "many new registrants" would suggest "many more newly enthusiastic and definitely primed to vote people" that would raise expectations of a higher turnout. Am I missing something?

[Jon]

Umm, didn't we all vote successfully for a bond referendum two years ago for improvements to the old Durham Bulls stadium and the Museum of Life and Science and other cultural amenities?

I opposed the food tax not because I didn't want or enjoy these cultural amenities; I just felt a bond referendum is more transparent to voters and is less likely to be re-appropriated (read the fine print) in a budget crisis. How would we REALLY know how the PFT money was being spent?

Why not try for a bond referendum in the next local election? My vote would be for.

[Ross Grady]

@Phil, a lot of new registrants are people who were approached during voter-registration drives. I happen to be one of them -- I moved to Durham in June, and it just so happened that I hadn't changed my registration yet when I was approached by someone with a clipboard at an outdoor concert. It took about 2 minutes for them to fill out a form, and then I got my card in the mail a couple of weeks later.

In my case, I was *definitely* gonna vote, but I think in general, there's a huge gulf between passively spending 2 minutes letting someone write your name into a form, and actually getting motivated to do the actual voting. Hence the assumption that a significant percentage of new registrants might not actually vote.

[Coop]

There's actually a big drop-off in new registrants and those who actually make it to the polls. A lot of people register because their friends are, or because someone asks them to and they want to be nice, or they feel they should but later forget about it as other priorities hit, etc. I spent the last week before this election calling new voters in NC who had not yet voted in early voting. The list was huge and an amazing number had no idea where their polling places were -- but once you got them on the phone and told them, and got them excited again, I think a lot of them headed out to vote.

By the way, the NCCU precinct in Durham turned in an 86.44% turn-out and enough votes for Obama to give him his current 12,000 lead in all of North Carolina. Go Eagles!

[JPL]

@Phil: The turnout numbers are a percentage of registered voters, so to get a high number with more registrants means even more people voted. Also, people registered by campaigns have historically turned out at a low rate (~30% I think).

[barry]

"I registered as a Dem for the primary (to vote for Obama), but don't consider myself a Democrat in any way, shape, or form."

You can vote in the primary as an independent.

Why would you register as a Democrat if you don't consider yourself to be one "in any way, shape, or form?"

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

@B: you didn't have to register Dem to vote for Obama in the primary (or for Hillary, in my case). I was registered independent back then, before the Libertarian and Green parties won their lawsuit and I was able to re-register as a Lib.

The whole straight ticket thing is of little use to voters like us who vote all the way down the ballot. Going into the booth I wasn't sure how straight ticket was going to work given that Durham uses paper ballots marked by hand. In other counties, pulling the party lever automatically pulls the levers for all candidates in your party, and then you can change this for individual candidates before committing your vote on paper (e.g, punchcard).

I view it as a time saver for when you're trying to get through the rest of the ballot; you can skip over the races where the straight ticket already made the decision. Too bad we can't do this in Durham.

Yesterday I marked straight LIB ticket even though I also voted for all the Libs, just because I wanted to be counted in the 19K straight LIB ticket voters.

For paper ballots, straight ticket voting seems to make sense only for very harried voters (those who don't vote down the ticket for judges and referenda).

[Coop]

I HATE straight ticket voting -- it encourages voters not to think for themselves, allows self-appointed gatekeepers to build petty political power kingdoms by delivering sheeple to the polls -- and it allows corrupt politicians of both parties to hang out among the crowd of the other party candidates and slip through, thanks to straight ticket voting.

Not that any of these things would *ever* happen in Durham.

[Steve]

Hey Kevin, does erstwhile still mean "former"? 'Cause I think I might have missed the news about Mike Ashe's resignation! :-)

[Barry]

@KDD: "Yesterday I marked straight LIB ticket even though I also voted for all the Libs, just because I wanted to be counted in the 19K straight LIB ticket voters. "

I thought you could vote straight party ticket and vote for an individual candidate from a different party in a contested partisan race, but that voting straight party *and* voting for candidates of that party would void your ballot.

We'll double check that with Mike Ashe on the radio tomorrow.

@Coop: "allows self-appointed gatekeepers to build petty political power kingdoms by delivering sheeple to the polls." Check out the undervotes in the Durham County Commissioners race and see if your notion might equally apply to groups that push their own, non-straight party ticket voting. Especially here in Durham.

@John: "Why not try for a bond referendum in the next local election? My vote would be for." The beauty of bond issues is that you get to borrow money now, and have someone else pay for it later. Maybe you'll be living here, maybe not. But when you go in to the voting booth on a bond referendum, you don't really know how much it's going to cost you. You're putting it on a credit card, essentially. My momma taught me to avoid doing that as much as possible. Now, obviously, there are some capital projects which can't be financed out of cash on hand or current accounts. But why is it a bad thing for the citizens of a community to decide that they want to raise revenue in the here and now to finance projects without borrowing?

[Michael Bacon]

There should be a corollary to Godwin's Law about the word "sheeple."

I would like anyone who so strongly opposes straight ticket voting to explain to me, without looking, the pros and cons of each of the candidates for Soil and Water Commissioner.

[Coop]

I don't really understand your point, Michael -- the Soil & Water races are nonpartisan one, so voting straight ticket is not going to help you in those races anyway.

For my part, if I don't know any of the soil and water candidates, I always just google them and pick the one (or ones) with what I see as the best background for the job. It takes all of ten minutes. And if I can find nothing on a candidate, not even a professional resume or evidence of community service in a related area? Well, I feel that tells me something about them right there.

[Bullicious]

@barry: if straight party + vote for same party negates the ballot, it should dang well say so on the ballot. It doesn't. My understanding is that marking the ballot for any candidate overrides the straight party vote for that office.

@KDD: "you can skip over the races where the straight ticket already made the decision. Too bad we can't do this in Durham." You probably already figured out from the comments that you CAN do this in Durham, with the paper ballot and the optical scanner.

[bl]

It's a shame. Without the PFT, we're eating out. With it, we'd be building museums and greenways together, creating a legacy. But now that I've saved 25 cents when my family eats out, I can... I can... heck, I don't even think I can make a phone call anymore. At least we know that in 10 years Durham will still be Durham, just a little older and more worn. Gotta love that forward thinking!

[Freddie]

I consider myself a Libertarian as well but voted in few occasions for the Red party only because I thought it was the right choice...In a couple races, I voted Lib but mostly voted Blue.

By the way: I was in the gym this morning and overheard a lady asking this one gentleman if he won...She was asking about the voting and pretty much asking if his candidate of choice won...He said yes, I did win...Then she goes on to talk negatives about the race and Obama...After the conversation, I went up the gentleman whom is a very nice elderly white man whom everyone knows for his outgoing personality and his non-stop smile which he carries, and I say to him: "Next time someone asks you if you won you tell them we all won!". He gave me a re-assuring smile that said we'll all be okay.

[Jon]

@Barry "The beauty of bond issues is that you get to borrow money now, and have someone else pay for it later." That's a really good argument. But I still want safeguards to say that those sales tax revenues would not be reappropriated. Wouldn't a referendum offer such protection?

[barry]

@jon - haven't lived in Durham very long, have you?

"But I still want safeguards to say that those sales tax revenues would not be reappropriated. Wouldn't a referendum offer such protection?" short answer - no.

Long answer - take a look at Durham's recent history with the 1996 and 2005 park bonds.

[Frank Hyman]

@ Barry

The revenue from the PFT would have been used to pay off money borrowed for the various trails, museums, etc. same as when we use property tax revenue to pay off money borrowed for projects voted on in bond referenda.

Frank Hyman

[Peter Palma]

@bl

You can take your quarter and donate it to whichever of the worthy causes you support. Or any of the many worthy causes which weren't being funded by the PFT.

And you can be assured that the cause you choose will get the entire quarter rather than 8.75 cents of it going to a Minor League baseball museum and 8.75 cents of it to the Hayti center.

And you can demand accountability from the worthy cause because you're making the donation directly rather than the government providing the funds as an entitlement.

[B]

"You can vote in the primary as an independent.

Why would you register as a Democrat if you don't consider yourself to be one "in any way, shape, or form?""

Because I misunderstood the rules here when I registered to vote in NC (the third state I've lived in during the last four presidential races), and by the time I realized my mistake (after the primary) I didn't see any point in changing it.

[B]

"You can vote in the primary as an independent.

Why would you register as a Democrat if you don't consider yourself to be one "in any way, shape, or form?""

Because I misunderstood the rules here when I registered to vote in NC (the third state I've lived in during the last four presidential races), and by the time I realized my mistake (after the primary) I didn't see any point in changing it.

[CJ]

An interesting set of map showing how each precinct voted can be found on the NC Board of Elections site, including some on Durham County. From the maps we can clearly see that the North and far east ends of the County are more conservative than the South and central portions.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/7937/13362/en/select-county.html

[Michael Bacon]

Sorry, my example was a bad one. I should have picked one of the council of state races. I can almost guarantee that Cherie Berry won re-election because of a bunch of "swing" voters who knew nothing about her but thought her name was funny when they saw it in the elevator, but knew nothing about the fact that she's been a major obstacle to work for farmworkers rights in NC. Those who voted straight party Democrat because they believed in the Democratic party platform would have made a much better choice than those swing voters.

Despite what "independent" voters like to tell themselves, strong partisan voters are often the most informed:

"Strong partisans are also more informed than true independents, averaging 24.1 and 21.4 respectively. Similar patterns are found using the 1988 data: voters were more informed than non-voters (12.2 correct answers to 7.1) and strong partisans were more informed than independents (11.7 to 7.2)."

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~seig/paper_m_carpini.html

This model only works, of course, if the partisan primaries/caucuses/whatever are strongly contested. That's certainly a problem in many races in Durham, currently.

[Michael Bacon]

One more thing: Frank, if you see this, I'm wondering if you turned your test of regressiveness on property tax incomes. I could never replicate the breakdowns by income quintile that got published everywhere, but based on my reading of BLS data, the property tax is just as regressive if not moreso than the PFT. I stumbled through some of this at my blog on Monday: http://bullinfull.typepad.com/

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

What Michael said (about the primaries, not the taxes). Do you know what my opponent did to win the Republican primary? He simply registered as a Repub. and paid the $227 filing fee -- he was the only one who bothered. Bingo, he's on the ballot and got 22% of the vote thanks to straight ticket voting (I should also add that he ran a courageous campaign, not accepting any contributions or endorsements).

Anyone considering a run for office should give it a shot, even if you don't intend to win. It will bring out your inner populist, renew your faith in humanity, and develop skills you never knew you had. Speak your mind and make your voice heard!