Election hangover

I'm feeling a little hung-over this morning but still trying to get some of my election-night notes down on the blog. First and most importantly, I lost my $5 bet by badly underestimating the number of electoral votes for Obama. As you all know, I predicted 290 and it appears that he got (with the late addition of Florida) 332. Sorry Nate Silver, I should have kept the faith.

Second, Obama owes his victory to his well-positioned field workers,  an abysmal cast of Limbaugh Party opponents, and to an amazing turnout of his ever-forgiving base, particularly African-American, Latino, women (thanks Akin, Murdock, Ryan, etc...) and youth voters, in the key battleground states. Black vote was 93% for Obama. Latino, 76%.  It's safe to say that the road to the White House went straight through the barrio.

Obama got about 60% of the youth vote, but his share shrunk from 4 years ago. Good reason to support and build the emerging youth voter movement looking towards 2014.

White voters who still make up 72% of the electorate (hear O'Reilly moan), went 57% for Romney/Ryan. Older white males were the heart of their voter base, as expected. But Obama was able to do better among white males than he did in '08, especially in states like Michigan and Ohio, where Romney's class bias and opposition to unions and the auto industry bailout had an impact. Obama's support among white men went from 16 %  when he defeated Republican McCain in 2008, to 21%.

Irony is that neither candidate said much to separate themselves on education, yet education turned out to be a big vote motivator. I think the Dems, despite their horrible corporate reform policies (Race To The Top) were able to score votes by supporting more funding for public ed and shoring up their alliance with the teacher unions. Despite dire predictions by some lefties about teachers abandoning Obama, they appear to have voted for him in overwhelming numbers (as did swing-state lefties). The reason -- teachers aren't just teachers. They are also, women, African-Americans, parents, college-loan payers,  home owners, health care consumers, etc...

Chicago

It was a great day in the Windy City. We got almost a 90% vote for elected school board. But non-binding. Now we need to put the heat on the legislature. 65,763 voted for it, 10,174 against. That's actually 86.6%. Also, the mis-worded Constitutional Amendment put on the ballot by Mike Madigan's pension grabbers, failed to win the needed 60% vote. Rest assured that they will try, try again.

Lots more to talk about. Victories for women, marriage equality, the overcoming of  T-Party govs' supression of voting rights and more. Look for civil war in the GOP to explode. Look for their mea culpas and a promise to do right by Latinos and immigrants. Overall, great victory over the right-wing surge. Most fun was watching postmortem at FOX with Rove trying to claim that Obama hadn't really won Ohio.  Bad news if any -- Obama promises to be even more conciliatory towards the Limbaugh Party.