Saturday, June 9, 2018

California Primary: Governor

As many of you know, California doesn't count the ballots quickly. Complain if you want but there are a bunch of reasons. Because of that I'm going to post about the primary slowly. If there are conclusions that can only be drawn after the outcome is clear then I'll wait.

Let's start at the top of the ticket. Gavin Newsom got 33.5% of the vote. John Cox finished second at 26.2%. They'll both advance to November. Antonio Villaraigosa was a distant third at 13.2%. Travis Allen was fourth at 9.6%. John Chiang finished with 9.1%. There were a few reporters and pundits who insisted that Antonio Villaraigosa was going to make top two. After all, California is a Democratic state, Villaraigosa was fairly well known, and was spending a lot of money. The media is very caught up in the idea that money in politics is bad and thus every dollar a candidate spends means votes. Except it doesn't. Money can help but it's not that important.

Yet they're still caught up in it. So Villaraigosa didn't spend the money early enough. Or he made a mistake in who he was attacking. No, he shouldn't have gone after John Chiang. Chiang didn't have much support. Getting some of his voters wouldn't have helped. I've heard, somewhat derisively, that Donald Trump's Tweet did Villaraigosa in. None of that is true. Republicans got between 39.3% and 41.7% in three races with no incumbent. In three races where there was an incumbent they got between 34.5% and 37.3%. There was no incumbent here but Republicans were closer to the open seat share at 37.4%. No matter what Villaraigosa did he wasn't taking Republican votes. Spending more wouldn't have convinced Republican voters to vote for someone with a D next to their name.

President Trump's Tweet may have helped John Cox gain a few points but those weren't Villaraigosa voters. People influenced by a Trump Tweet aren't going to vote for a Democrat. Cox and Travis Allen got 35.8% of the vote. If they split that evenly they both would've gotten 17.9%. If Trump did help John Cox he took votes from Travis Allen and prevented Villaraigosa from finishing behind both Cox and Allen. Villaraigosa was only going to make top two if he had gotten enough Newsom voters that he would've beaten the Lieutenant Governor. That wasn't going to happen.

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