My Take NY 20 CD

My take on the race in NY’s 20th Congressional District Race.

WOW.

The two candidates are separated by around 60 votes out of roughly 150,000 votes cast. There are still 5,900 odd absentee ballots to count. The Department of Justice sued the state to allow a longer length of time for AB ballots to be mailed in allowing 30 days from the date it was sent out. While my understanding of the reasons for this and the DOJ specifics as to dates is vague, the bottom line is that we will not know the results until April 13th at the earliest.

That is not the point however. Both sides are claiming victory will be theirs in the end. Both of the parties are claiming they have won a moral victory here regardless of whether they win or not.

For my part I want to try to look at the numbers. The result last night was a tie at 50% of the voters for each candidate. The Democrats are claiming that this is victory for them because of the larger number of registered Republicans. They are claiming to have done the impossible against overwhelming numbers.

The numbers for the last election however tell a different tale. See link below and scroll down to the 20th district and look at the actual numbers that were cast just a short 5 months ago.
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http://www.elections.state.ny.us/NYSBOE/elections/2008/General/USCongress08.pdf
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Below are the numbers as best as I could cut and paste them


20th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Kirsten E. Sandy Sandy Sandy Kirsten E. BVS
County Gillibrand Treadwell Treadwell Treadwell Gillibrand Blank Void Scattering Subtotal Total
DEM REP IND CON WOR
Columbia 18,657 7,633 859 1,005 1,845 1,848 7 3 1,858 31,857
Part of Delaware 8,337 6,587 544 462 810 1,511 0 0 1,511 18,251
Part of Dutchess 25,397 15,176 1,185 1,636 1,810 4,848 0 5 4,853 50,057
Part of Essex 2,811 2,438 272 150 237 743 0 0 743 6,651
Greene 11,174 7,518 612 870 1,138 1,551 7 0 1,558 22,870
Part of Otsego 2,634 1,930 159 145 216 659 0 1 660 5,744
Part of Rensselaer 17,862 9,254 906 1,196 1,717 1,996 2 0 1,998 32,933
Part of Saratoga 59,356 32,960 2,254 3,071 4,058 6,190 0 21 6,211 107,910
Warren 18,181 9,430 728 819 1,494 1,829 10 3 1,842 32,494
Washington 14,587 7,004 505 723 1,330 1,798 0 2 1,800 25,949
Total 178,996 99,930 8,024 10,077 14,655 22,973 26 35 23,034 334,716
RECAP 193,651 118,031
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The totals are 193,651 and 118,031 for a total of 311,682; The Republicans lost by 75,620 votes.

The numbers should speak volumes. The Republican Treadwell by my figures got only 27% of the vote. I have read elsewhere that it was 38%. Either way for the Republicans to move up to 50% of the vote within 5 short months begs a reason. I would think the question is not what the Republicans did wrong but what the Democrats did wrong to cause this massive shift. That is a turnabout of 12-23% of the vote to the Republican Party, and again I emphasize what has happened in less than 5 months to cause this Republican gain in votes?.

As I hear of the ouster of Michael Steele, well--I guess if I was a Democrat I too would hope that whoever was responsible for this Republican gain would quit and go away.

Before you jump to the conclusion that it was all due to Obama in 2008, look at the nearly 23,000 blank ballots not counted. That would indicate that the "President Only" voters weren’t counted in my 27% count. Also note the larger turnout.

Also if Obama played such a role in the results above for the 2008 election, why didn’t he pull the same type of numbers out this time? He did make a personal robo call to the district and sent out emails with his vaunted political machine. A tie, oh well.

I say this to all the critics of Jim Tedisco; if gaining 12-23% in the vote means nothing then think about what that would have meant in the 2008 election! Obama would still be a junior Senator from Illinois. Hey all it would of took was an 8% change for that to happen. Wikipedia shows the numbers at 52.92 Obama, 45.66 McCain.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008
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All I hear from the Dems is how they overcame the impossible to tie. I would say they did the impossible by not winning.........by double digits.

Regards, Live Dangerously Be A Conservative