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CA-11: McNerney Declares Victory, Too

by: James L.

Wed Nov 10, 2010 at 10:38 PM EST


Dems are feeling some California love tonight:

California Rep. Jerry McNerney claimed victory Wednesday after the latest vote tally put the second-term Democrat up by 1,681 votes, but Republican David Harmer accused McNerney of a premature celebration.

"Congressman Jerry McNerney has won re-election in California's 11th Congressional District," McNerney campaign manager Doug Greven said in a statement. "With the vast majority of votes tallied, the results are clear. Congressman McNerney now has an insurmountable lead."

Harmer is refusing to concede, and the McNerney camp estimates that there are 11,000 absentee and provisional votes outstanding in San Joaquin and Contra Costa and 700 in the more McNerney-friendly Alameda and Santa Clara counties. Harmer would need to utterly romp among the outstanding votes in order to win - and that's very likely a fridge too far for him.
James L. :: CA-11: McNerney Declares Victory, Too
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CA-11: McNerney Declares Victory, Too | 46 comments
McNerney hows how to work it...
And how to win it. The Central Valley was mostly a killing field for CA Dems this cycle, but somehow he managed to win (again). Congrats.

And again, the CDP must be the luckiest state party this cycle!

Yes, Virginia, there ARE progressives in Nevada!
24, gay male, Democrat, NV-03 (or 04?)

It was supposed to be a killing field...
Instead Sen. Boxer and Gov.-elect Brown walked away with big margins and no district in California flipped. None. In the entire state of California, no House seats changed hands. And Democrats retained their big edge in the state legislature, too, and won all but one (or just plain all) the statewide races.

Two nations, one red and one blue.

20, center-left independent, Auckland Central resident, MD-05 voter, OR-01 native

[ Parent ]
The power of the gerrymander . . .
Keep in mind that we have had three consecutive wave elections.  And during these three wave elections, what was the culmulative number of California seats that changed hands?  ONE -- McNerney's seat in 2006.  In the 2008 Obama wave, the GOP lost zero House seats in California.  

Nationwide, the culmulative number of seats that have flipped during the past three cycles is something like 110 -- and the rest of the country is hardly a bastion of competitive House elections.  California has roughly 12% of the nation's House seats but accounted for less than 1% of the seats that changed hands from 2006 through 2010.  

So while the CDP deserves some praise, Democrats should really thank the congressional map for forestalling House losses last Tuesday.    

[ Parent ]
That's totally backward
The dummymander's disasterous impact on the CA democratic delegation is clearly apparent in the Dems lost NO seats!

In a wave year, the side that passed an effective gerrymander should lose at least one seat.  Democrats got nowhere in good years, with trends favoring the party.  That was evidence of the stupidity of the dummymander enough, but now, in a sweeping wave year, the chickenshit CA Dems were so conservative 10 years ago they lost nothing.

In other words, a sensible gerrymander would have gotten us four or five seats for the past EIGHT YEARS, and we should have lost one or two of those seats this year.

The true disgustingness of that idiotic dummymander really showed itself this year.  Stupidest dummymander of the 2000 census, by far.

[ Parent ]
Yup.
Very lucky that we had a governorship and a Senate seat at stake to get Democrats out to the polls. I am thrilled.

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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Delaware
May have been luckier.
[ Parent ]
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!
I had to do it. Now onto to more technical things. McNerney might be someone who actually benefits from the redistricting commission, as his new district will be something more contained within Alameda and Contra Costa.

24, male, African-American, CA-24, Democrat. Chair of the SSP Black Caucus.
McNerney CD11
CD11 was designed as a Republican District, combining SanJoaquin County with the most Republican, or least Democratic, parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Joe Cooper
[ Parent ]
Great.
Always liked Jerry. Genuinely good guy and very progressive. Go Cali.  

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  
Thanks! B-D


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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Can't believe that Pombo wiped the floor with McNerney in '04
He's come a long way since then. Harmer's no push-over and I'd have figured McNerney would be DOA with advance knowledge of the GOP tidal wave. But he's certainly proven himself as a capable politician; good on him.

19, male, Dem, CT-04 (home) PA-02 (college and registered)
well...........
McNerney should really have waitied until the final votes came in from san joaquin county.

2010 Race Tracker Wiki
it will be awkward if Harmer wins now ...
McNerney is assuming that the 3rd party candidate, the AIP's Dave Christenson, continues to hold about 7% in vote-by-mail ballots from San Joaquin County. That's a huge number, but it's what Christenson has been getting so far, and he's from Tracy, which is the SJ valley.

Unless Harmer can cut into that margin substantially, McNerney will walk away with a W at about 48% district-wide.

Remember that internal polling showing McNerney ahead by 10? I called BS on that one and I'm glad I did.

[ Parent ]
And
The San Joaquin numbers are as of the 3rd November. when that update hits the CA SOS website watch out.

2010 Race Tracker Wiki
[ Parent ]
Yeah, but
the Contra Costa section leaned towards McNerney, so it's a wash overall.  
[ Parent ]
No CC went for Harmer by 1%
But who knows whether that will hold for provisional ballots, which often favor Democrats.

The SJ website is up to date. Harmer is still down big overall. But with 11,000 votes to count, being up by 1700 in a county you lost 49-44 isn't so hot, and declaring victory is a gutsy thing to do.

[ Parent ]
That is, being up by 1700 votes with 11,000 votes remaining in a county you lost 49-44 ...
McNerney's lead of about 1700 is district-wide, not in SJ County. Sorry.
[ Parent ]
San Joaquin
Yeh McNerney will win the up todat SJ numbers only cut 800 odd votes off his lead.

Yay

2010 Race Tracker Wiki

[ Parent ]
That's a lot of confidence
Do you have the old SJ numbers? I foolishly didn't write them down earlier today.

I had heard there were about 30-35k VBM ballots in SJ County. If it's true that there are only 11,000 total ballots in both CC and SJ County, then that's huge for McNerney, and I guess grounds for declaring victory.

But did SJ County really upload more than 19,000 votes today, with only a 600-800 vote margin for Harmer? Crazy.

Amazing that McNerney may pull this out. Remember, this is a district that Nate Silver had as a 68% chance of takeover. If McNerney wins it will truly be because of the AIP candidate.

[ Parent ]
Is this one of the districts . . .
where the Dems worked to promote the third-party conservative, like NJ-03 or PA-07 (or as some have alleged AZ-08)?  Or did this guy get 7% all by himself?  And if so, why?  Did the tea partiers not consider Harmer conservative enough?  
[ Parent ]
Not that I know of, and I doubt it
If McNerney did anything to promote Christenson, it was done very quietly. More likely it's just that the AIP guy is from Tracy, has local roots, and was able to pull down more loyalty votes than than Harmer, whose operation is mostly in the Dublin/Pleasanton area.

Christenson is getting slightly less than 5% overall, but really taking a good chunk out of Harmer's count in SJ County. If Harmer had held him to 5% in SJ County, instead of 7%, the race would be his.

If anyone has the earlier numbers from SJ County from before the most recent update, please post them. If it's true that there's only 11.7k total ballots left, Harmer would really need a large percentage to overcome 1700 votes.

[ Parent ]
Compare
[ Parent ]
Looks like more than 26k SJ votes were added
And Harmer only cut the lead by about 600 votes. Something would have to be radically different about the next 11k votes to change the calculus.

McNerney wins unless Harmer gets the last 11k by better than 10 points, which is more than double his current margin there.

Thanks for the link!

[ Parent ]
pleasure n/t
[ Parent ]
Now check out Kamala Harris
Behind by 11k, but 300k votes are outstanding in Bay Area where she won 58% to 34% and 200k are in LA where she won by 58% to 39%.  So, half of the outstanding votes are going to break her way by 19-24 points.

Based on the straight math she wins by 24,000.  With a bump for late ballots she wins by 30,000.

what a nail-biter
I can't imagine the stress of being a candidate and not knowing the result more than a week after the fact.  
[ Parent ]
I hope you're right about Kamala Harris
    That sounds a little optimistic. There are a lot of little counties that could add up some numbers plus some more ballots from San Diego and so Cooley might keep his current lead. This is one race that I won't believe is really over until it is certified as done by the end of November or start of December.

   I'm sure glad that Jerry McNerney held his seat. His winning the seat from Pombo was the only party change in the whole decade of the 2001 bipartisan incumbent protection district map. It will be interesting to see what his district looks like after the 2011 remap.

52, male, disgruntled Democrat, CA-28

[ Parent ]
I just wonder
(and I might bring this back up later), how Larry Sabato manages to consider himself an impassionate observer, from his latest blog:

We beg to differ. If President Obama is smart, he will try to salvage his term in the White House by announcing now that he will not undertake a hopeless campaign for reelection, and instead form a bipartisan national unity government to try to hold the nation together until his successor, inevitably a Republican, is selected in November 2012.

There's only one logical conclusion to be drawn: President Barack Obama is down for the count, will have an early lame duck presidency, and will be out of the White House in two years.

I always thought that Larry Sabato
was a Republican.  

41 African-American Female DC
Taxation but no representation...
[ Parent ]
It's just he
portraits himself as a genius nonpartisan, completely removed from the political field, but that piece is absurd in so many fashions. It's strange to say that the country could act in a bipartisan manner even if Obama announced he was not running for reelection. But to use terms like "lame-duck", and "his successor, inevitably a Republican", is outrageous. The guy is a hack. He tends to be a complete whore to polling and narratives when it comes to making predictions, so, barring surprises he is often accurate, however his analysis is perhaps the worst of all the major pundits, and he has political discussions that bother me even more, such as his suggestion that there should be constitutional conventions every few decades that rewrite the constitution, or his support for a mandatory military service amendment, etc.  
[ Parent ]
What a moron
didn't he learn anything from Stu Rothenberg's declaration that the Republicans couldn't win the House in 2010?

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
See below.
I'm pretty sure Sabato is being snarky-licious.

34, WM, Democrat, FL-11
[ Parent ]
If you look at the language...
it makes no sense.  So you have control of the presidency and the Senate and you cannot accomplish anything? Such a joke, never let your opponent pick your nominee. I would never suggest a good nominee for or give good advice to the Republicans because I never want them to win.  So I take any advice from an enemy with a grain of salt.

41 African-American Female DC
Taxation but no representation...
[ Parent ]
You guys should read it again.
I'm not 100% certain, but I think Sabato is being snarky.  It's a really weird article, but the last half makes me think he is being sarcastic and mocking people who see an automatic correlation between these big midterm gains and Obama's odds of re-election.  All of the data in the last half of the article suggest Obama has a good chance of being re-elected, but Sabato tells repeatedly tells us to ignore it all and gives jackass, uninformed reasons for believing Obama is a goner.  Especially revealing is the "correction" that all of the media accounts of Obama's demise were actually quotes about Bill Clinton in 1994.

I think you guys have been had by Larry.

34, WM, Democrat, FL-11

[ Parent ]
My bad
that's what I get for not actually reading the full article, lol.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
Possibly
it is a very strange article. But I thought he was being snarky at times when he's been serious. He did, regardless, do a good job at sounding like a Republican.  
[ Parent ]
Your sarcasm meter is off....
Read the whole article.  Sabato is making fun of the pundits that declare Obama's presidency dead.  In fact, the day after the election, he stated unequivocally that this midterm means nothing for 2012.

Read the part after the "correction", where he makes the strong case for Obama's re-election... in his typical smart-ass way.

CORRECTION: Due to sloppy research by our interns, the authors would like to clarify a couple of points. It turns out that all news reports cited above were not published in the last ten days, but right after the 1994 Republican midterm landslide. Every time "Barack Obama" appears in print, you should substitute "Bill Clinton". The acronym "OTB" actually stands for "One-Term Bill" not "One-Term Barack".

Historically, incumbent presidents who have sought another term have won them by a two-to-one margin. Those aren't impressive odds. How many of us would bet on a horse with minimal chances like that? Since 1900 only one incumbent president whose party captured the White House from the other party four years earlier (Jimmy Carter) has been beaten. The other incumbent losers-Taft, Hoover, Ford, and the senior Bush-were from a party that had held the White House for two or more consecutive terms. But the key is that Carter and Obama are practically twins; both won the Nobel Peace Prize. Enough said. Moreover, the present moment is unprecedentedly perilous for an incumbent president. There's really no comparison in the existence of the American Republic, save for about a dozen crises like the Civil War, economic panics, the Great Depression, world wars, and 9/11.

Democrats may also place false hope in the fact that the next presidential election will have a turnout twenty full percentage points higher than we saw in the midterm-probably about 40 million more people than voted on Nov. 2. No doubt these "midterm-missing" voters are disproportionately 18-34 years old and members of minority groups, segments of the population that backed President Obama by margins ranging from 62% to 95% in 2008. Obama can't seem to get them to cast a ballot except when he's on the ballot. Well, yes, he'll be on the ballot in 2012, but they're likely disillusioned with him, too.


[ Parent ]
My snark-meter
is a little screwy at times. Sabato has made me cautious at times, at least with thinking he was being sarcastic.  
[ Parent ]
Having read it a second time
it is definitely snark and is actually pretty funny.  Particularly delicious was this bit of snark:

The GOP legislative caucus contains no core of rigid ideologues that might go too far and create an opening for Obama.

No-one could say that with a straight face.

34, WM, Democrat, FL-11

[ Parent ]
Yeah
it seems more so the second time around, read more closely.  
[ Parent ]
This is actully a really funny article
My favorite part:
Historically, incumbent presidents who have sought another term have won them by a two-to-one margin. Those aren't impressive odds. How many of us would bet on a horse with minimal chances like that? Since 1900 only one incumbent president whose party captured the White House from the other party four years earlier (Jimmy Carter) has been beaten. The other incumbent losers-Taft, Hoover, Ford, and the senior Bush-were from a party that had held the White House for two or more consecutive terms. But the key is that Carter and Obama are practically twins; both won the Nobel Peace Prize. Enough said. Moreover, the present moment is unprecedentedly perilous for an incumbent president. There's really no comparison in the existence of the American Republic, save for about a dozen crises like the Civil War, economic panics, the Great Depression, world wars, and 9/11.



21, male, CA-15 (home and voting there), LA-2 (college)


[ Parent ]
You're not the only one...
From Sabato's twitter account:

Some tweeps are unfamiliar with the concept of irony...

[ Parent ]
Apparently quite a few people were fooled
At the top of the article it now reads "WARNING: READERS ARE NOW ENTERING "THE IRONY ZONE""

21, male, CA-15 (home and voting there), LA-2 (college)


[ Parent ]
In all seriousness,
if the White House can't figure out ways to (a) get the part of the coalition (e.g. young and minority voters) that may have sat this one out to the polls and (b) expand the coalition like it so ably did in 2008, it doesn't deserve to win a second term. Luckily for us Democrats, Obama isn't dumb, and the Republicans will offer up candidates that are about as appealing as studying for organic chemistry.

"I have never deliberately given anybody hell. I just tell the truth on the opposition-and they think it's hell."--President Harry Truman. President Obama, are you listening?
[ Parent ]
What's the difference
between a candidate declaring victory and the vote being certified by the SoS or Election Board? I'm sorry, but if a Democrat or Repubican or Independent went and declared victory on their own, whether they are ahead or not, I would find it skeptical. I don't care if they have their internal polling numbers or own internal tally, it's still pretty biased when a political candidate certifies his or her own election results.
I like Harry Mitchell's approach to this.
Don't declare victory or concede defeat until all the votes are counted.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
CA-11: McNerney Declares Victory, Too | 46 comments

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