Since I spent so much time researching the candidates in the 2014 California primary, I thought I'd go through and review the results.
Governor: As expected, Jerry Brown placed first in the open primary by wide margin, getting 54% of the vote. If most countries with a two-round system, an outright majority in the first round would grant that candidate victory. However, since the California system has to fit in with the rest of the elections in the US, so there will be a second round in November. This is a good thing, since turnout in primaries is very low. Brown got the same percentage of the vote in this election as he did in the general election in 2010, but got less than half the number of votes. In November we can expect Brown to increase his percent of the vote, both because people aren't voting for randos, and because turnout of Democrats increases drastically for the general election.
For the Republicans, Neel Kashkari beat Tim Donnelly, with 19.4% and 14.8% of the total vote, respectively. Kashkari's victory is a relief for Republicans, since a Donnelly candidacy would probably have lead to a campaign full of embarrassing and offensive statements. This would have been especially harmful in California, where Republicans are doomed if they alienate minority groups (reminder! this year CA is now plurality latino, though people who actually vote are still majority non-latino white). That leaves Kashkari to regroup Republicans and try to get his name recognition up so he doesn't fail too badly in November. Looking at the results map, Donnelly did well in rural areas, while Kashkari did better in the bigger counties. Donnelly won two counties in California's Northeast corner, the only two that Brown didn't win. Kashkari racked up votes in the LA, OC, and SD areas. Interestingly Donnelly did better than Kashkari in a few liberal counties in the Bay Area (SF, Alameda, Santa Cruz), leading some commentators to suggest Democrats were voting for Donnelly because he was the worst Republican candidate. In the end it didn't matter, especially because both Republicans got so few votes in general in the Bay Area.
In the rest of the bunch, all the wackiest candidates got low amounts of votes, though 9,000 people still voted for some guy whose ballot description was "golf course operator."All the "No Party Preference" people ended up at the bottom because people want to grasp someone's platform by looking at which party they're in. The green party guy beat Cindy Sheehan (1.5% to 1.2%), clearly people were taking my advice!
Lieutenant Governor: In a great surprise, Gavin Newsom won the primary. He got 49.9% of the vote, clearly a sign that dooms his campaign to being marginally less popular than Jerry Brown's. He won all but 8 counties, and those in rural parts of Northern California. The Republican winner was Ron Nehring, who had been endorsed by state Republicans, so that was a no-brainer. Nothing else interesting to say, the randos didn't get very many votes, and the guy who wanted to get elected to avoid paying his college tuition placed last.
Attorney General: Sleepy race #3. Kamala Harris is more popular than Gavin Newsom, she got 53% of the vote. Though there were no random Democrats running here to pick off 5% of the total vote. Both are probably well-positioned to run for Governor in 2018, or maybe for Senate if Boxer/Feinstein retire. The Republican side ended up being a close race between Ron Gold (who I said "seems harmless" but also thought was a totally fake candidate) and Phil Wyman (who has been running for office and losing for the last 20 years), with Gold winning. The four Republicans all got between 8-12% of the vote, so I think the voters were also picking at random. In other news, 130,000 people voted for Orly Taitz and probably think Obama is a Kenyan Muslim out to get us. Turns out this is a consistent constituency because she got the same percentage of the vote (3.2%) when she ran for Senate in 2012.
Treasurer: This race only had 3 candidates so it was particularly predictable. John Chiang, who is virtually the incumbent since he currently is state Controller, won 55% of the vote, and Greg Conlon, rando Republican, won 38% of the vote. That left 6% of the vote for the green candidate. I think that means there's momentum for the state bank, no?
Insurance Commissioner: Even more exciting! Same as above except for the Republican got 2% more of the vote cause he's actually a legit guy (state senator) and there was a Peace and Freedom candidate instead of a Green candidate.
Secretary of State: Oh look things to talk about.
1. Alex Padilla (D) placed first with 30.2% of the vote, closely edging out Pete Peterson (R), who got 29.7%. Since Democrats are advantaged in November, this means there's a good chance we'll again have a Latino statewide elected officer.
2. Leland Yee, who was arrested for corruption and withdrew from the race, placed 3rd with 9.4% of the vote, which is pretty embarrassing. Theories ranged from "people don't read the news" to "asian voters show solidarity with asian candidates."
3. Dan Schnur, who was running as a NPP candidate on a platform of "Sec of State shouldn't be partisan," placed fourth with 9.2% of the vote. This shows that it's really hard to win as a nonpartisan candidate, because when in doubt, people vote with their party. I think it would only work if someone had a lot of $$$ and name recognition. The 2-party system is very strong.
Controller: Most interesting race! It's still not resolved because there's a recount! Comments:
1. Ashley Swearengin, Mayor of Fresno, placed first with 24.8%. She did well in the Central Valley and Southern California, especially (unsurprisingly) Fresno County. This positions her to be competitive in the general election, but she'll have to overcome California's growing Democratic trends.
2. The big surprise on election night was that it looked like a rando Republican was going place second and shut the Democrats out of the race. David Evans, whose ballot statement was "most qualified to be controller," ended up placing fourth with 21.1% once the ballot count was completed. He did especially well in the northernmost counties, which apparently have a tendency to vote for randos. From the analysis I've read, it turns out that in most of these races people just vote based on ballot descriptions, since it takes effort to know something about the candidates and these races are simply not very interesting. Evans had the ballot description "CFO," which signaled that he would be a good candidate for the financial manager position of controller.
3. The two Democratic candidates, Betty Yee and John Perez, placed second and third with 21.7% of the vote each. In the final count they are separated by only 500 votes. Therefore Perez has started a recount. This is one of the rare uses of the CA recount process, which apparently has a lot of problems. The person asking for a recount has to pay for it unless the result changes, and it's very expensive. However the recounter can choose which precincts to target, so Perez is targeting places where he did well. It'll probably be a mess. Stay tuned, and also stay tuned for efforts to change the recount law to have the state pay for it when the margin is very small.
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