Election Recap

Here’s a recap of races & measures covered before the recent general election. As before. in reverse order:

Challenger Rasheen Aldridge defeated inch,bent Rodney Hubbard for 5th ward special election for Dem Committeeman

Prop S for Senior services (info)

Both tobacco tax measures failed (Prop A, Amend 3)

Proposition A 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 1,210,199 44.738%
NO 1,494,886 55.262%
Total Votes: 2,705,085

Constitutional Amendment 3 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 1,107,716 40.760%
NO 1,609,953 59.240%
Total Votes: 2,717,669

Voters will need a photo ID

Constitutional Amendment 6 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 1,700,139 63.139%
NO 992,555 36.861%
Total Votes: 2,692,694

Taxing services won’t be an option

Constitutional Amendment 4 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 1,522,189 57.056%
NO 1,145,709 42.944%
Total Votes: 2,667,898

Limits placed on campaign contributions

Constitutional Amendment 2 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 1,877,477 69.947%
NO 806,676 30.053%
Total Votes: 2,684,153

Voters overwhelmingly renewed a sales tax for streams

Constitutional Amendment 1 3237 of 3237 Precincts Reported
YES 2,203,717 80.138%
NO 546,181 19.862%
Total Votes: 2,749,898

All the judges were approved. no surprises is state rep races or citywide offices.

If anyone doubted that Missouri is a red state, Tuesday’s results confirmed it! Republicans won all statewide offices and Sen Blunt renamed his seat in the U.S, Senate. Missouri will likely become a right-to-work state and give huge tax credits causing our state to have a budget crisis like neighboring Kansas.

And the presidential race…

Many were expecting it to be historic, possibly a landslide victory. It was, just the opposite of what many expected.

Here are Missouri’s results for the last three presidential elections:

2008

• McCain 1,445,814 (49.36%)
• Obama 1,441,911 (49.23%)

2012

• Romney 1,482,440 (53.76%)
• Obama 1,223,796 (44.38%)

2016

• Trump 1,585,753 (56.877%)
• Clinton 1,054,889 (37.836%)

As you can see the GOP vote total increased each time, but the Democratic vote total dropped each time.  Total statewide voter turnout is also dropping.

The City of St. Louis is a tiny, but loyal, blue eco camber in a big red state that getting redder every election. Totals for 2008 aren’t available, but here are the last two:

2012

• Romney 22,943 (15.93%)
• Obama 118,780 (82.45%)

2016

• Trump 20,281 (15.72%)
• Clinton 101,487 (78.69%)

Does this mean Democrats stayed home? Not exactly, in Missouri and other states we don’t pick a party when we register to vote — there are zero “registered” Republicans & Democrats in Missouri. Zero. However many people are party loyalists.

Turned off by the partisan wars in Washington, 39 percent of voters now identify themselves as independent rather than affiliated with one of the two major political parties, according to a 2014 analysis by the Pew Research Center. Self-identified Democrats accounted for 32 percent of the electorate, Republicans 23 percent. (NPR)

There are more Democrats than Republicans, but Independents are a larger group than each. Just because we vote for a party’s presidential ticket doesn’t mean we’ll automatically vote for that party’s ticket 4 years later. Democrats fail to understand this simple concept. Our vote can’t be taken for granted.

For a long time many have felt Clinton wasn’t the candidate to take on the GOP in 2016, far too much anti-establishment feelings on both the left & right.

In June 2015, more than a year before the convention, I shared a quote from a Salon article on my personal Facebook timeline:

Clinton resists change. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in either party who seems to feel the tectonic plates of our politics shifting, perhaps because he’s expected the change for so long. His is still an improbable candidacy, but less improbable than it was a month or even a week ago. If he clears out the second tier, his battle with Hillary could become epic, forcing not just her but the Democratic Party to choose between the middle class and the donor class; between corporate and democratic rule; the battle over trade carried over into a presidential election.

Democrats picked the donor class and corporate rule. There were plenty of red flags, but they were ignored. Many of my “friends” gave me a hard time for not supporting Clinton, on Wednesday some blamed me because I voted Green in the presidential race. According to them I was idealistic, they were pragmatists.

If every Green voter in Missouri had voted Blue our 10 electoral college votes still would have gone to Trump! I looked at the results from the six battleground states that made Trump president-elect: Michigan, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Only in Michigan & Wisconsin would the results have been different if every Green voter had gone Blue, for 26 additional electoral college votes. Clinton still far short of 270.

Last Monday I wrote:

“In Missouri, Illinois, and most states, voters can vote for the ticket that best represents their values. Voters in battleground states like Florida & Pennsylvania, on the other hand, have a much tougher choice as their vote will help determine the final winner.”

They did. The DNC and loyal Clinton supporters are blaming everyone but themselves. I remain an independent voter looking for progressive candidates that share my views. Wednesday I’ll talk about the Electoral College vs. popular vote.

— Steve Patterson