Patterico's Pontifications

1/19/2010

The Stunning Brown Win

Filed under: Health Care,Obama,Politics — DRJ @ 8:42 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Rasmussen has the numbers and some of them are stunning:

“In the end, Brown pulled off the upset in large part because he won unaffiliated voters by a 73% to 25% margin. The senator-elect also picked up 23% of the vote from Democrats. [Our polling shows that 53% of voters in Massachusetts are Democrats, 21% Republican and 26% not affiliated with either party.]

Coakley also barely carried a usually reliable Democratic constituency. Union workers went for her by just six points, 52% to 46%.”

Despite the media’s spin, this vote was largely about health care:

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters in the state say health care was the most important factor in their voting decision. Brown made it clear in the closing days of the campaign that he intended to go to Washington to vote against the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Twenty-five percent (25%) of Massachusetts voters say the economy was most important.

Forty-seven percent (47%) favor the health care legislation before Congress while 51% oppose it. However, the intensity was clearly with those who are opposed. Just 25% of voters in Massachusetts Strongly Favor the plan while 41% Strongly Oppose it.

Fifty percent (50%) say it would be better to pass no health care legislation at all rather than passing the bill before Congress.”

Spin that.

— DRJ

33 Responses to “The Stunning Brown Win”

  1. “Forty-seven percent (47%) favor the health care legislation before Congress while 51% oppose it. ”

    It will be hard to spin this 4 point split.

    imdw (017d51)

  2. I gave you the whole quote for context, imdw. Now explain why 50% say nothing is better than ObamaCare, or why the passion index is so unbalanced.

    DRJ (84a0c3)

  3. “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my …” state.

    Dave (in MA) (6e1206)

  4. DRJ, you can’t reason with a TrollBot. Like the dialogue in “Terminator”: “Trolling is what they do. That’s all they do!”

    Eric Blair (0b61b2)

  5. Remember, also, his little world view is a bit hurt. That is going to make him grumpy.

    Eric Blair (0b61b2)

  6. No more supermajority.

    Dave (in MA) (6e1206)

  7. imdw, you just beclowned yourself. Nobody made you do it. You just walked in here, and willingly beclowned yourself.

    Unbelievable.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  8. Wow, uber-liberal Masachusetts actually showed some common sense for a change. I guess when people are standing right at the edge, staring down into the abyss — at a nation becoming a bigger, northern version of Venezula — their foolishness and naivete starts to recede a bit.

    Mark (411533)

  9. […] media says this election was not about health care . . . and yet, this election appears to have had quite an impact on health care. […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Health Care = Dead (e4ab32)

  10. It shows what one candidate with courage can do. There is a tremendous hunger out there for fiscal conservatism, and he addressed that. “I will be vote 41.” Doesn’t get much clearer than that.

    I could not care less about his social views. I want these people to stop spending us into oblivion. And that’s it!

    Patricia (b05e7f)

  11. Kick. Ass.

    Thank you, voters of Mass.!

    Teetop (1f1551)

  12. Remember that Boston Globe map showing town-by-town results which they let slip early (with a Coakley victory)? It has been updated and has some very interesting results:

    Boston: Coakley 69% to Brown 30%
    Cambridge: Coakely 84% to 15% (naturally)
    Medford: Coakely 57-42 (her home town)
    Provincetown: Coakley 84-15 (a liberal part of Cape Cod with a huge gay/lesbian population)
    Williamstown: Coakley 77-22 (Williams College)
    Amherst: Coakely 84-15 (Amherst College, UMass)

    Coakley runs up huge margins in parts of Massachussetts that (1) surround Boston, (2) border New York, or (3) border Vermont. She also gets the upper Cape, the Kennedy’s home area of Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket, and a few remaining mill towns (Lawrence, New Bedford, Fall River). She gets skunked just about everywhere else, with Brown taking 60+% of the vote on the lower Cape, 65-70% of the parts that border Connecticut, 60-70% of central Massachusetts, and even 55-60% of the parts that border Rhode Island. It would be interesting to see how the distribution of Independents falls along these lines, but it is not totally out of the question to think that Republicans can replicate this success.

    JVW (48cbba)

  13. […] Pontifications:  The Stunning Brown Win The Spin Begins: Big Media Tells Us This Wasn’t About Health Care; UPDATED with Proof That It […]

    ~ Massachusetts Voters Demonstrate To Forty-Nine Other States: IT CAN BE DONE – (P.S. All Sitting Senators Strongly Advised To Take Note) « Critical Political Thinking (a9dd43)

  14. Imd-dummy must feel B-i-itch slapped today.

    PCD (ae93de)

  15. PCD seems a little obsessed about IMDW — the two of them sound like a married couple arguing by using double meanings at a dinner party….

    voiceofreason2 (8e6b90)

  16. imdw constantly behaves as though he has a horrible case of inflamed hemorrhoids. Which is too bad because whatever valid point he has gets lost in grumpiness and snark.

    nk (df76d4)

  17. I looked at the results summary by jurisdiction last night and the higher the turnout, the greater Scott Brown’s lead (in percentage points) against whats-her-name.

    http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2010/senate/results.html

    Sabba Hillel (153338)

  18. Inspiring

    “I want my country back. I want my legislation before my face–not behind my back. I was tired of watching the liberals run roughshod over all of us.”

    Mike Doherty, Independent
    Hanson MA, Heavy Equipment Operator

    elissa (3bc841)

  19. The AUTO section writer for USA Today wrote about Scott Brown and his truck.

    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/01/scott-brown-drives-his-gmc-pickup-truck-to-us-senate-victory/1

    I predict the media is not going to be able to stay away from this smart and charasmatic Senator. And that’s a very cool thing.

    elissa (3bc841)

  20. Druge: Now … will he run for President?

    Pretty funny. It says that he beat Obama. And implies that he has about as much experience as Obama did when he ran.

    Alta Bob (e8af2b)

  21. The fascination w/Brown reminds me of the fascination with Palin. We’ll see how the MSM ends up treating him: whether taking him out, so to speak, or treating him with a modicum of respect (could it be a gender thing?)…Of course he most likely won’t be as polarizing, but still… there are similarities.

    Dana (1e5ad4)

  22. Obama’s toast. Light brown without a Negro dialect toast.

    nk (df76d4)

  23. unless he wants one I suppose

    happyfeet (e9e587)

  24. The LA Times led with “GOP wins vital Senate seat.”

    Talk about soft-selling their loss, the race was a referendum in a very, very Democratic state. That’s where the upset really is shocking. This is Mass. not some evenly divided state.

    Alta Bob (e8af2b)

  25. Great going Brownie! Yoo-hoo! Obama is toast. The Democrats are finished. The Republicans are back! YEESSS!

    The Emperor (f80a22)

  26. Puzzlement of the day for Obama and AX. So where did all those extremist bible thumping knuckle dragging bitter clingers in MA come from all of a sudden?

    elissa (3bc841)

  27. I am proud of the people of MA for the first time in my life.

    JD (1ecb57)

  28. I know a fair number of people in MA. All of them are liberal. Most of them voted for Mrs. Coakley.

    One of them did not. His rationale: she’s terrible at her current job and is an establishment politician running for an office which, if she gets it, she will keep for a generation. And it’s not so bad if Brown wins, he continued, because the “health care reform” bill is a travesty which isn’t real reform, but is instead a giveaway of money to insurance companies which will enrich them and destroy small business.

    Which is to say: a surprising number of liberals dislike the health care reform bill because they view it as having compromised away every element of real reform in exchange for nothing.

    aphrael (73ebe9)

  29. The fascination w/Brown reminds me of the fascination with Palin. We’ll see how the MSM ends up treating him: whether taking him out, so to speak, or treating him with a modicum of respect (could it be a gender thing?)…Of course he most likely won’t be as polarizing, but still… there are similarities.

    Comment by Dana — 1/20/2010 @ 6:50 am

    As Obama crashes and burns, they’ll treat Brown like they treated McCain. He’ll be their favorite new kind of Republican.

    I am tickled to death that he won for the immediate relief it will provide. But he invokes the name McCain far too frequently for me to get too giddy. As the friendliest Senator ever to reach across the aisle winds down his career, a new, young “maverick” emerges.

    I’ll reserve judgement as to whether this is long term good fortune for conservatives.

    Matador (176445)

  30. It would make as much sense to run Brown for prez as it did Obama, which is none at all. But Brown has held responsible positions for a lot longer than Obama ever did.

    I guess you have to be a career politician in order to be credible as President, and Obama certainly shows why. You have to learn to give and take and deal with entrenched interests.

    Matador, Mccain just isn’t that bad. He’s to the right of W in many respects, at least in my opinion. No, he’s not as conservative as I’d like, but it was amazing how we all assumed that electing him would send the country to the left. Brown’s kind words to Mccain were surprising and classy… he didn’t win political points with many people for that, and Mccain is yesterday’s news… I think he was sincerely being nice to someone who deserves some level of respect.

    There’s a reason Mccain and Palin like eachother… they aren’t as different as we’re told. And both are far to the right of Scott Brown, as we’ll soon realize. That’s the main reason Brown won’t be president: he’s to the left of 2/3s of the GOP in Mass.

    If our tent doesn’t have room for Mccain, then Obama wins all day long.

    Dustin (b54cdc)


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