An Odd Election, an Odd Electorate

What an odd election.

Back on September 28, I predicted a Romney victory. I was wrong but I can't really blame myself. As the AP Reported this morning:

 

"Obama won even though exit polls showed that only about 4 in 10 voters thought the economy is getting better, just one-quarter thought they're better off financially than four years ago and a little more than half think the country is on the wrong track."

Yet they elected him. One remarkable fact is that Obama has received 10 million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Of course votes are still being counted, but he will not make up that 10 million deficit, or even close to it.  And Romney, as of now, has received fewer votes than McCain did in 2008.

 

The situation is equally odd in California. The state is in the worst shape ever, yet the voters have rewarded the Democrats, who controlled the Governership and both the state senate and assembly, with total one-party supermajorities:

"California Democrats picked up a supermajority in both houses of the state Legislature Tuesday night, a surprise outcome that gives the party the ability to unilaterally raise taxes and leaves Republicans essentially irrelevant in Sacramento.

Democrats were long expected to gain a two-thirds advantage in the Senate, but Assembly Speaker John Pérez had downplayed expectations that the party could win a supermajority in the lower house. The party's apparent capture of at least 54 seats in the Assembly and 27 in the Senate would mark the first time in nearly 80 years that one party controlled two-thirds of both houses, according to Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg."

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney