Legalectric

Voting in Red Wing, and everywhere in the U.S. today.  I was number 362 to check in, and number 352 to check out (some were taking a while to vote), and was told it was a high turn out.  While waiting for results to come in, I was thinking about how this election might compare to the last Presidential election.

From the Minnesota Secretary of State site, HERE are the 2012 voting results.

So here are some numbers for Red Wing, taken from the above spreadsheet.  First the numbers of voters in each Red Wing precinct (click for larger view), by the time the polls closed, 8,748 voters, and in Minnesota we don’t register by party:

For the 2012 Presidential race, it’s 4:3 for Democrat/Obama v. Romney, with very few voting 3rd party, and for those few, mostly Green Party.   This distribution is significant when we get down ballot, where there’s quite a bit of crossing over and people voting for an R here and a DFLer there, back and forth.

For the US Senate race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (incumbent) v.  State Rep. Kurt Bills (? know nothing about him?), it’s more than 2:1 DFL over Republican!  A very heavy win for Klobuchar.  And then for our Representative, Rep. John Kline (incumbent) v.  Rep. Mike Obermueller (or former Rep.), it’s favoring Kline the Republican, but nearly tied!

Looking at the Minnesota Legislature in the 2012 election:

In 2012, for the state, it was very much like the U.S. races, for Minnesota Senate, first term Sen. John Howe (R) v. unknown Matt Schmit, which went by a wide margin to the DFL, though not as much as the US Senate contest.  Conversely, as with the Congressional race, the House race between Rep. Tim Kelly (R) v. unknown John Bacon (DFL) went Republican in an almost mirror image of the lopsided MN Senate race!  ???

It’s been a split ticket forever down here.  For way too long, we were “represented” in the Minnesota Senate by Steve Murphy (DINO and corporate toadie), the Senator from Xcel, literally an Xcel/Northern States Power employee until he resigned/retired(?) in his last term.  And in the state House, forever it was Rep. Jerry Dempsey (R), and I mean FOREVER, well, maybe it just seemed it, from 1993 to 2006, replaced by Rep. Sandy Wollschlager (DFL) for one term, then Rep. Tim Kelly (R) for three terms.  Now it’s an open seat, with Haley (R) v. Bayley (DFL), hotly contested and lots of outside money on this race — my guess is it’ll flip back to DFL this time.

And then there’s Goodhue County, the Senate District 21, it’s a swing district…