As Pennsylvania goes so goes the country?

[AlCzervik]

ok check this out, i looked at the voting results for Pa. and in almost every case democrats got more votes then the republicans in the primary, in some cases the difference is pretty large and in some it's small but more people voted for democrats last night than republicans overall. Here is a link if you want to look at the differences.

http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/ElectionReturns.aspx?ElecID=12

[WI_DEM]

1. I've been monitoring the special elections for state legislative seats

this year and in almost every case, even in districts which have a republican edge the Democratic candidate has won. That is an encourging sign and the PA numbers are too.

[politicaholic]

2. Thanks for the info. n/t

[AlCzervik]

3. if that trend is real than the dems will clean up in Pa and hopefully

the rest of the country come Nov. I was pretty excited seeing those numbers.

[napi21]

4. I saw that. In most cases, it was a LOT more Dem votes.

I have heard many of the talking heads say Pa. would be a good first glimpse of what the fall elections would look like.

I think it shows two possibilities. First, Pa is a closed Primary
State, so either many more Dems went out to vote because they're really pi**ed off, OR a lot of Pubs switched their registration to vote in the Dem primary.

If the talking heads are right, this is a very good sign for the Dems. I think it's still a bit too early to tell for sure though.

[F.Gordon]

5. Interesting. Thank you

My biggest hope is that the repukes will just stay home this year or they'll just go to the polls to vote against Gay Mexican Terrorists Adopting and vote (D) on the way out...

[onehandle]

6. Yep. nt

[Divernan]

7. Special elections have significance; yesterday's primary doesn't.

Dems have won the last three special elections for the PA House and that IS significant because both parties put a lot of effort into getting out the vote (GOTV). I was heavily involved in the last special election here - just last month. I also worked very hard on our primary,including spending the whole (rainy)day outside the polling places (AHHHHHHHCHOOOO!) The elections were qualitatively different.

For the majority of voters in either party, their main interests were Gov. & US Senate, followed at some distance by their respective Congressional races & the Lt. Gov. race ----- unless, and this is a big unless, their incumbent state representative and/or state senator had voted for the pay raise and was up for reelection AND had a primary opponent. As to Gov. and Senate, for both Ds and Rs, their favorite was either unopposed, or the opponent was running behind 5 to 1, with no prayer of winning. So many people stayed home who will definitely be voting in the fall. As to Lt. Gov., most voters could care less, and had no knowledge of the incumbent's opposition. And as to U.S. Congress, even after 5 mailings, many people coming in to vote were not clear on who was running for the Dem slot and the incumbent R had no opposition. Then you throw in the rotten rainy weather the whole day, and the fact that many of our senior citizens were afraid of looking foolish if they couldn't figure out the new touchscreen machines, and the turnout was low and skewed by the state house and senate fights.

In other words, only what we call the "super voters", i.e, the people identified as coming to the polls for every single election, no matter the weather, showed up, plus those motivated by continuing anger over the pay raises the state legislature voted for themselves in the dead of night (and since were forced to rescind). And I would say that anger was directed at both Dems and Reps in a "pox upon both their houses" attitude of the voters.