Talk:US Senate Elections, 2016 (Joe's World)/@comment-25816873-20141205211818

Looking over some of the comments here, I don't think people appreciate the difference between a Presidential-year election and a mid-term. Consider Scott Walker. In 2008, Obama beat McCain in Wisconsin with 1.7MM votes to 1.3MM. in 2010, Walker won by 1.1MM to the Democrat's 1.0MM -- he got FEWER votes than McCain, a lot fewer, but the Democratic turnout dropped by about 35%. Fluke? Hardly. In 2012, Obama beat Romney 1.6MM to 1.4MM; Walker then got re-elected 1.3MM to 1.1MM. Again, Democratic turnout dropped by over 30%. If Democratic turnout had dropped by even 20%, Walker would have lost both elections. And this pattern repeated itself almost everywhere else.

Now as a man of the left, I'm appalled by this. I read a piece the other day which asked who Obama would say he had been betrayed by. My answer would be black and Latino voters. They put him in office and then left him high and dry. And then they did it again.

But if I were a man of the right, I wouldn't be strutting right now. The results are the results, and conservatives are entitled to act on them, of course. But they're low-turnout results AND their most dramatic effects (the Senate seats) were focused in states where Republicans SHOULD have done well -- AK, NC, LA, KY, AK, SD, and MT. They have almost no predictive value for 2016 and they do NOT indicate a shift in the national electorate on the left/right scale.