Women problems for Democrats

Before we get back to dissecting election results, let's take note of the first kernel of wisdom emerging from the early analysis of the dismal Democratic results; women bailed on them.  And not just in Texas.

Democrats hoped women voters would help them weather a tough election year, but weariness with President Barack Obama and disgust with relentless partisan warfare in Washington prompted many to abandon the party they had backed two years earlier.

[...]

Female voters expressed disgust with both parties, but on Election Day it was the Democrats who suffered most. They needed to win the women's vote by a wide margin in order to offset Republicans' huge advantage among white men.

In the end, Democrats won women by 5 percentage points over Republicans, according to exit polls -- far short of the double-digit margins they have racked up in more successful years.

Democrats lost women voters even in states like Colorado, where they ran a relentless campaign accusing Republicans of threatening access to abortion and birth control. Voters tossed out Democratic Senator Mark Udall even as they rejected an anti-abortion ballot initiative.

Many of the dozen women interviewed by Reuters in battleground states said while they supported abortion rights, they were more concerned by what they described as faltering leadership in the White House and a tendency by candidates from both parties to focus on negative attacks rather than explain what they wanted to achieve.

"I can't vote for people who allow such negativity, because it doesn't say much for their characters. They're being politicians -- they're not being the kind of leader I want," said Maxine Schein, 69, a lifelong Democrat who this year voted for a third-party candidate.

That's Team Blue's first wake up call.   Here's the snooze going off again.  You should read from the beginning for context that includes the struggles to raise the minimum wage (many women), address pay inequality (mostly women), and defend assaults against reproductive freedom (all women).  There's also been the discussions around sexism and violence epitomized by this year's hashtag #YesAllWomen -- it has a Wiki if you fellas were out to lunch-- as well as the domestic abuse cases among NFL players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson that captured the nation's attention, and the glaring exposure given to the rape culture on college campuses.

Now then...

There is a strong desire to see society no longer dominated by old, wealthy white men which gives the idea of a woman president great appeal. Unfortunately, it is Hillary Clinton, as of now, who is the most likely female candidate in 2016.

Hillary Clinton has been entrenched in corporate politics for decades with ties to the largest corporations in the world including Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Walmart. She’s part of the corporate club – not a tool to end their agenda. Any real fight for women’s equality will come up against the resistance of corporate America, which will not accept changes that affect their bottom line. This is why we need to build a mass women’s movement independent of both corporate parties linked to a new political force representing the interests of the 99% against the 1%.

The Democrats want women to believe that the way to defend their rights is to vote for them. It is certainly true that right-wing Republicans have been the main force attacking women’s rights in recent times. Yet the Democrats have singularly failed to stop these vicious attacks.

You don't have to buy what follows: the author's suggestion that a genuine socialist movement is the best response.  I think there's enough opportunity for Greens and even some progressive Democrats to take the initiative and run with it.

Jill Stein was certainly that person in 2012.  Elizabeth Warren could be that person in 2016, but probably won't be.  The real question is: what woman will?  I don't think a man can sell this.

Anyway, I suspect there'll be much more to blog about on this topic over the next few years.

Update: At least here in Texas it should be noted, in context and in clarification, that "women" is meant to refer to "white women".

I went to the Texas Tribune first for a dissection of the election results, and one piece of information struck me as particularly… wrong. The Tribune cited CNN exit polls to illustrate the landslide, saying Abbott “beat Davis by lopsided margins with white voters (72-27), men (65-34) and women (52-47). Davis beat Abbott among Latinos (57-42) and African-Americans (93-7).” Last time I checked, though, there were thousands upon thousands of women in Texas considered Latina and African-American — what about their votes?

As RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes reports, their votes were solidly in Davis’ favor: 94 percent of black women and 61 percent of Latinas voted for her. Only 32 percent of white women did. That’s certainly not enough women to say that Abbott won the whole gender (though that’s a ludicrous statement in the first place).

The SCOTX and CCA results

The state's highest courts also got a case of the crimson tide effect from yesterday.

Let's note before we look at those numbers, all of which are courtesy of the Texas Secretary of State's office, that the highest recorded percentage of the state's 14 million-plus registered voters participated in the race for governor, at 33.57%.  Texas has a 2013 population by the US Census of 26.45 million, and was projected in July of this year to be a smidge over 27 million.  But not all of those folks are of voting age, nor are able to vote because of citizenship status and other reasons.  The number of eligible voters in Texas -- what is called in demographer's parlance CVAP or citizen voting age population -- was estimated to be (thanks to Michael Li) 15.583 million in 2011, with a projected increase of about 700K per year (687K in 2011, up to 747K in 2014).

Or about 17.68 million, give or take.  Here's a table to start with if you want to check my math.

With all that in mind, when I have frequently said here that about half of Texas residents are not registered to vote, and about half of those registered do not bother to cast a ballot, you know where I'm coming from.  This quick and dirty method is a little generous to non-voting Texans in 2014; as Greg Abbott's high-water mark tells us, only a third of the state's registered voters, or  4.7 million, voted in the governor's race and he earned 2.784 million (or 59.25%) of those.  Update: Ted with more on this.

Another way to put it: a little over two and three-quarter million Texans -- or about the population of Houston and a few of its surrounding incorporated areas like Bellaire, Pasadena, The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Katy, Baytown, Galveston, and so on -- voted for Greg Abbott for governor... which is about 10% of the population of the state.  He'll still consider that a mandate to do whatever he likes (not that anything was holding him back before, of course).

Now then, on to the TSC and CCA races.

-- Hecht (R) 59.6, Moody (D) 37.3, Oxford (L) 3.05%.  This is the virtual baseline for statewide Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians up and down the ballot.  Compare these percentages to the statewide results in the previous post as well; you'll find the deviations are only a point or two at most.

-- Brown 60.3 (R), Meyers (D) 36.5, Ash (L) 3.18%.

-- Boyd (R) 58.9, Benavides (D) 37.6, Fulton (L) 2.75, Waterbury (G) .74%.

Next is a Supreme Court race that had no Democratic candidate on the ballot but did have a Green one.  Leaving a statewide contest unchallenged by the blue team is the primary reason why Texas Greens are able to secure ballot access for the next election cycle.

-- Johnson (R)78.8, Koelsch (L) 11.95, Chisholm (G) 9.24%.

Democratic ticket-splitters appear to have gravitated to all three remaining parties on the ballot.  Phil Johnson received the highest number of votes of any Republican on the ballot -- more than John Cornyn, over a hundred thousand more than George P. Bush (who topped Greg Abbott by 30K).

Libertarian Goelsch, with 444,000-plus votes, got almost seven times the number of votes that Kathie Glass got.  When it comes to hotly-contested governor's races, Libertarians get scared and return to the GOP.  And Jim Chisholm's 391,00 votes was just the second-largest for Greens in the state.

What this race demonstrates is that Democrats first vote for Republicans, and then they vote for Libertarians and Greens in nearly equal measure when there's no D.  Another piece of evidence that refutes the tired myth that Greens somehow cause Democrats to lose.  And that's when Dems don't skip the race altogether (the undervotes in this contest, from the one directly above it, jumped to over 6% of the state's 14 million registered voters).

Democrats cause Democrats to lose.  But we knew that already from abysmal turnout.

-- Richardson (R) 59.8, Granberg (D) 36.57, Bennett (L) 2.93%.  With no Green in the race, we're back to a familiar pattern of vote distribution.

The two Court of Criminal Appeals races had a Republican defeating a Libertarian and a Green.  You'll notice the previous trend.

-- Yeary (R) 76.27, Parker (L) 13.25, Sanders-Castro (G) 10.47%.

Quanah Parker and Judith Sanders-Castro both benefited from their names and achieved the highest votes totals in Texas for Libertarian and Green Party candidates respectively.

-- Newell (R) 78.26, Strange III 13.16, Altgelt 8.57%.

This is the pattern as we have seen above.

More analysis of Harris County results tomorrow morning, followed by the Senate and gubernatorial races elsewhere across the country tomorrow afternoon or evening.