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Tagged: election 2012

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January 24, 2013
18:50 • 3 months ago

Long lines at voting precincts deterred over 200k Floridians from casting their vote

Tags: numbers sm florida voting florida voting voting lines november election election 2012 obama reelection rick scott florida governor voter fraud voting rights act

201,000 Floridians didn’t vote in November because the lines were too long source

January 9, 2013
15:54 • 4 months ago

Chris Christie is a popular man

Tags: numbers sm christie chris christie new jersey governor election 2012 election 2016 politics new jersey republicans
  • +21 Chris Christie’s net popularity amongst Republicans. Respectable!
  • +29 Christie’s net popularity amongst Democrats. Even better! source

Remember the days just before the election, when Christie was saying all sorts of nice things about President Obama, and everyone thought that was really crazy for doing that? It doesn’t look so crazy anymore.

November 21, 2012
20:24 • 5 months ago
Tags: Politics Chris Christie Election 2012 Mitt Romney Barack Obama sc
I always hate this kind of scapegoating after elections. I mean, when you lose, you lost. Someone asked me the other day, ‘Why did Mitt Romney lose?’ Because he got less votes than Barack Obama. That’s why.
NJ Gov. Chris Christie • Discussing his displeasure with the mental gymnastics that both parties frequently display, after losing an election, in an interview with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’. Gov. Christie has become the most recent prominent Republican to publicly dismiss Mitt Romney’s theory that “gifts” won President Obama the election, though he’s far from the only one to do so. source
November 20, 2012
16:10 • 5 months ago
Tags: Allen West Election 2012 Florida House of Representatives Politics sc
Exactly two weeks after Election Day, we finally have a winner in the race to represent Florida’s 18th congressional district. After a prolonged battle “to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly”, incumbent Rep. Allen West appears to have lost by less than 2000 votes (0.58% of the electorate). source

Exactly two weeks after Election Day, we finally have a winner in the race to represent Florida’s 18th congressional district. After a prolonged battle “to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly”, incumbent Rep. Allen West appears to have lost by less than 2000 votes (0.58% of the electorate). source

November 17, 2012
01:16 • 6 months ago
Tags: bill burton super pacs dark money election 2012 karl rove priorities usa citizens united campaign contributions campaign finance sm pacs political action committee
Super PACs are still a bad idea. Corporations should not be able to give unlimited sums to political campaigns. It is bad for our democracy.
Bill Burton, co-founder of an Obama-supporting super PAC, Priorities USA. This is a significant question for Democrats: Should progressives who oppose the very existence of super PACs also oppose progressive super PACS? Or is the utilization of super PACS a necessary step to changing the legal framework that makes them possible? Burton seems to believes it’s the second. “Citizens United harms our country, not just the liberal cause,” he says. “I’m proud of the work we did at Priorities in this election, but this system is broken and needs reform.” source (paywall)
November 16, 2012
16:27 • 6 months ago
Tags: sm super pacs election 2012 democrats republicans citizens united from newsbeastlabs
newsbeastlabs: A defining characteristic of this election cycle was Super PACs and the hundreds of millions of dollars outside groups were spending to influence races. Now that it’s all over, we wanted to see which outside groups spent their money on succssful races and which did not. The result was our interactive Not-So-Super PACs: 2012’s Winners and Losers. … It’s a bit confusing at first, but the interactive version of this chart (behind the link) is awesome. The thickness of the lines indicate how much money was given, and the success rate of the various PACS is in ascending order on the X-axis. The take-home message? Democrats spent a lot less on super PACS this cycle, yet enjoyed a much, much higher success rate at the ballot box.

newsbeastlabs:

A defining characteristic of this election cycle was Super PACs and the hundreds of millions of dollars outside groups were spending to influence races. Now that it’s all over, we wanted to see which outside groups spent their money on succssful races and which did not. The result was our interactive Not-So-Super PACs: 2012’s Winners and Losers.

…

It’s a bit confusing at first, but the interactive version of this chart (behind the link) is awesome. The thickness of the lines indicate how much money was given, and the success rate of the various PACS is in ascending order on the X-axis. The take-home message? Democrats spent a lot less on super PACS this cycle, yet enjoyed a much, much higher success rate at the ballot box.

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16:04 • 6 months ago
Tags: george allen allen senate tim kaine kaine senate virginia senate senate 2012 election 2012 virginia senate race allen reelection macaca
Most of it was pretty worthless.
An aide to former GOP Senator George Allen, criticizing the Romney campaign’s efforts in Virginia. Allen ran for his old seat this cycle; his campaign predicted that an effective VA operation by the Romney camp would put Allen over the finish line. That didn’t happen; Allen ultimately lost to former governor Tim Kaine. The aide in question also blamed outside advertising for Allen’s loss: “Well over half [the interest group ads] weren’t on our message, weren’t on our points we tried to convey and they weren’t well-done.” source
November 15, 2012
17:58 • 6 months ago

Prominent Republicans respond to Mitt Romney’s “gifts” comments

Tags: Bobby Jindal Election 2012 Kelly Ayotte Marco Rubio Mitt Romney Politics Rick Scott grabbags sc Terry Branstad

  • Gov. Branstad “I don’t think it’s helpful. I guess my feeling is that we need to turn the page, and we need to focus on the future and not make excuses for the past.”
  • Gov. Jindal “We need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education. … So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong.”
  • Gov. Scott “It’s wrong, it’s not true. What we’ve got to do is say we want every vote, we want to take care of every citizen in our state”
  • Sen. Rubio “I don’t believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don’t want to work. I’m not saying that’s what [Romney] said. I think we have millions of people in this country that are out of work and are dependent on the government because they can’t find a job.” 
  • Sen. Ayotte “The campaign is over and what the voters are looking for us to do is to accept their votes and go forward and we’ve got some big challenges that need to be solved. I don’t know the full context of them but I don’t agree with them.” source

November 13, 2012
15:49 • 6 months ago

Opposing views from Republicans who might be on the 2016 ticket

Tags: Politics Election 2012 Paul Ryan Bobby Jindal grabbags sc

  • Rep. Paul Ryan “Well, he got turnout. The president should get credit for achieving record-breaking turnout numbers from urban areas for the most part, and that did win the election for him.”
  • Gov. Bobby Jindal “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.” source

November 11, 2012
10:26 • 6 months ago
Tags: rick scott election election 2012 2012 election es florida election florida
We are glad that so many voters made their voices heard in this election, but as we go forward we must see improvements in our election process. I have asked Secretary of State Ken Detzner to review this general election and report on ways we can improve the process after all the races are certified.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott • In a statement regarding the state’s massive lines on election day. Scott plans to have his secretary of state investigate what happened — and to make improvements in the process. “We need to make improvements for Florida voters and it is important to look at processes on the state and the county level,” Scott continued. “We will carefully review suggestions for bettering the voting process in our state.”
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November 8, 2012
19:34 • 6 months ago

Roundup: How employers reacted (poorly) after Obama was re-elected

Tags: obama Election 2012 elections es rt lyons obama election employers obama employers grabbags

  • closed A Bedford, Va. jewelry store owner closed his business on Wednesday, in protest of Obama’s victory. He said he was in mourning. ”I just didn’t feel like coming to work,” R.T. Lyons said. “There are many days I feel like that as a small business owner.”
  • fired In Las Vegas, a man named “David” called up a local radio station and said he had laid off 22 people in an effort to protect his investment. “Well unfortunately, and most of my employees are Hispanic — I’m not gonna go into what kind of company I have, but I have mostly Hispanic employees — well unfortunately we know what happened and I can’t wait around anymore, I have to be proactive,” he said.
  • cutting One Georgia business owner told C-SPAN that he told his employees that he was cutting their hours. “Yesterday I called all my part-time employees in and said because Obama won I was cutting their hours from 30 to 25 a week so i would not fall under the Obamacare mandate,” Stu, who did not give his full name, said.
  • reconsidering After warning his employees before the election that he might lay them off if Obama wins, Westgate Resorts owner David Siegel appears to have changed his mind — at least a little. “We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile I gave everybody in the company a raise this week—the average was 5 percent. I wanted to help them handle the additional burdens the government will put on them,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. 

17:53 • 6 months ago
Tags: Politics Election 2012 Voting Kentucky Robert McDonald Olivia Ballou Walton City Council sc

Candidate's wife forgets to vote, election results in a tie

Robert McDonald learned the hard way that every vote counts.

McDonald, who is known to most people as Bobby, finished in a dead heat Tuesday with Olivia Ballou for the sixth and final seat on the Walton City Council.

Each candidate captured 669 votes, but one ballot McDonald is sure would have gone his way was never cast. His wife, Katie, who works nights as a patient care assistant at Christ Hospital and is finishing nurse’s training at Gateway Community and Technical College, didn’t make it to the polls yesterday.

“If she had just been able to get in to vote, we wouldn’t be going through any of this,” McDonald said. “You never think it will come down to one vote, but I’m here to tell you that it does.”

Did anybody else immediately think of Jerry Gergich, from Parks & Recreation, upon seeing this story? It might be good to keep this in mind, particularly if you think you’ll have friends questioning the value of an individual vote during the next round of elections. Unfortunately, for Robert McDonald, there won’t be a run-off either. The tie is likely to be broken by a coin flip some time next week.

November 7, 2012
21:19 • 6 months ago
Tags: election 2012 obama reelection romney president romney transition sm obama romney tech savvy romney mitt romney web
In an alternate reality, this would be Mitt Romney’s first web presence as President-Elect. He prepared a transition site in preparation for victory, and it was live for a brief period of time before it was clear he’d lost the election. Big ups to Taegan Goddard for grabbing screenshots before the site was toast. source  

In an alternate reality, this would be Mitt Romney’s first web presence as President-Elect. He prepared a transition site in preparation for victory, and it was live for a brief period of time before it was clear he’d lost the election. Big ups to Taegan Goddard for grabbing screenshots before the site was toast. source  

20:07 • 6 months ago

Reactions to the election: Liberal edition

Tags: grabbags sm election 2012 obama reelection liberals liberalism obama president obama second term

  • Jonathan Cohn “Romney and the Republicans had turned the election into a referendum on liberalism—not just the liberalism of Obama, but also the liberalism of Johnson and Kennedy, of Truman and Roosevelt…[They] challenged the philosophy behind such policies—the whole idea that governments should act to protect vulnerable groups and to guarantee economic security. It was a huge gambit. And it failed.” source
  • Greg Sargent “If Mitt Romney had won, he and his ideas (tax cuts, deregulation, unshackling the free market) might have been associated with the recovery, leaving Keynesianism and stimulus spending thoroughly discredited. Instead, Obama and Democrats will hopefully gain more credit for the ongoing recovery, and perhaps the idea that government can act to fix the economy will get rehabilitated.” source
  • Ezra Klein “The bad news for Republicans isn’t what happened last night. It’s that it only gets worse from here. In 2016, we can expect the minority share of the electorate to rise by another two percentage points — and we can expect the economy to be in rather better shape…the reality is that the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, and it’s only going to get harder for them from here.” source
  • Michael Tomasky “[T[he Republican Party is just too far to the right. Not just to win a national election. It’s too far to the right even to compete really seriously in one. The thing some Republicans are saying now is absolutely true: They should have been able to win this year. No incumbent president has ever been reelected with this kind of unemployment rate, and there’s no good reason it should have happened now. They could have won.” source

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