California Voting and the Race for the House.
It looks like it's finally all over but the official certifications and concession speeches. Despite my pessimism a week or so again, Kamela Harris (D) will win the Attorney General's race over Steve Cooley (R). She's currently leading the vote count by more than 40,000 votes and her lead keep climbing as more votes are tallied. No analysis I've seen suggests that Cooley has any plausible chance of picking up enough votes from counties with votes outstanding. That gives Democrats a clean sweep of important state-wide offices this year.
This has implications for the Proposition 8 lawsuit. Harris intends to reiterate current AG (and soon-to-be governor) Brown's position that Prop 8 is unconstitutional and therefore the state refuses to defend the case on appeal. Cooley would have attempted to inject himself and the state into an attempt to defend the case.
In two other close Congressional races in California, two Democratic incumbents have managed to pull out near-certain victories despite being behind early in the counting. McNerney and Costa will be sent back to the House of Representatives in what looks more and more certain to be a 242 R - 193 D split, although 243 R - 192 D is possible.
This means the Democrats managed to lose a net of 62 seats (they picked up three, so they will have lost 65 seats they held). That, I believe, is a larger-than-expected loss given the ultimate national vote differential (although probably not statistically significant), which came in at R+7 (that is, if you sum all the votes for House candidates across the whole country, R candidates got 7% more of the total than D candidates got).
This has implications for the Proposition 8 lawsuit. Harris intends to reiterate current AG (and soon-to-be governor) Brown's position that Prop 8 is unconstitutional and therefore the state refuses to defend the case on appeal. Cooley would have attempted to inject himself and the state into an attempt to defend the case.
In two other close Congressional races in California, two Democratic incumbents have managed to pull out near-certain victories despite being behind early in the counting. McNerney and Costa will be sent back to the House of Representatives in what looks more and more certain to be a 242 R - 193 D split, although 243 R - 192 D is possible.
This means the Democrats managed to lose a net of 62 seats (they picked up three, so they will have lost 65 seats they held). That, I believe, is a larger-than-expected loss given the ultimate national vote differential (although probably not statistically significant), which came in at R+7 (that is, if you sum all the votes for House candidates across the whole country, R candidates got 7% more of the total than D candidates got).