Well that was fast. Before the returns started coming in last night I believed that we'd wake up this morning and still not have a good grasp on who the next President would be. Instead my prediction was wrong and the predictions of the Media (who I thought were way off base) were correct. Especially those who had Obama getting around 303 electoral college votes.
You can see my predictions here
So how'd I do?
President: I predicted an Obama win, but a close Obama win with Romney taking the popular vote. As it stands now Obama will win the popular vote by around 2 Million.
Texas Senate: I predicted a Cruz win with a percentage close to 60 than 50. He got 56.62% of the vote.
US Senate: I predicted the Dems would retain control of the Senate with around 52 senators elected. Currently they have 51 with 2 Independents that caucus with them.
US House: I predicted the Republicans would retain control of the House and possibly pick up a seat or two. They did retain control, but the Dems closed the gap.
Texas Statewides: No shocker here, Republicans swept the Statewide races.
Texas House: I thought the Republicans had a better than average chance of keeping the house super majority. I was wrong.
Texas Senate: On this I was correct, not much movement on overall numbers, but a lot of new faces.
Harris County specific races: I predicted all of the bonds would pass and I was right. The Metro referendum passed with 79% of the vote. (I predicted it would get more than 60%). If nothing else this means that fringe groups like Houston Tomorrow and the Citizens Transportation Coalition need to realize that they are outside of the mainstream. (They won't, but if they want to effect policy they should). The county races went just as I predicted. (Sheriff, Tax Assessor-Collector, etc.)
Harris County Judges: I predicted that Harris County Democrats would point to this as a "win" considering everything else that went on. I was correct here.
You saw this coming: It took about 5 minutes for ChronBlog to write their first negative, post election, smear piece on Cruz.
So what does all of this mean?
The pundits are already going mad suggesting that the GOP blew it because they were "too extreme" or too "right wing". An analysis of the results doesn't really support this theory however. In the areas where the GOP did not perform well (President, US Senate) the candidates that lost were more of a moderate bent (Romney, Thompson, etc.) than conservatives. As a matter of fact, the BEST results for the GOP was in the supposedly too conservative House of Representatives. The GOP is not dead, but they need to make some changes in order to be competitive in the future, most notably when it comes to courting the Hispanic vote.
Future policy is a mixed bag. ObamaCare is certainly here to stay and, in the immortal words of Nancy Pelosi we're about to find out "what's in the bill". If implementation is a failure (and the odds of that are better than 50% given government history) then the GOP will be looking at a very favorable climate in 2016 and beyond. If it succeeds, then America just became a lot more of a European social democracy and taxes must increase to try and offset the increased expenditures. Either way, things will not continue on as they always have, and America is now a much different place than the nascent country cobbled together by the founders.
Here's the thing: A majority of the American populace wants it that way, the GOP is going to have to find a way to convince them otherwise, a strong platform of reform legislation in the House is a good start.
No comments:
Post a Comment