Monday, October 19, 2015

Responding to Senator Sanders' statement that Republicans win in low voter turnout.

During the October 13th Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders stated:
  
"Republicans win when there is a low voter turnout, and that is what happened last November." 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/13/the-oct-13-democratic-debate-who-said-what-and-what-it-means/ 
 

However, that statement is not completely true about the 2014 November midterm elections. 
For example, Republican Cory Gardner ended up defeating Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado with a pretty high turnout voter there.
From the New York Times:

"Yet in Colorado, Mr. Udall lost despite a better Democratic turnout than in 2010. So far, the state has tabulated 2.06 million ballots, or nearly 80 percent of the 2.57 million votes in the 2012 presidential election, according to an Upshot analysis of ballot tabulation data from the Colorado secretary of state. The turnout was nearly 300,000 votes higher than in 2010, when a strong Democratic turnout effort propelled Senator Michael Bennet to a come-from-behind victory." 
  
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/us/turnout-a-scapegoat-wasnt-always-the-difference-this-time.html?abt=0002&abg=1&_r=0

 

Here are the 2014 Colorado's Senate election results:

Cory Gardner - 983,891 - 48.21%
Mark Udall --- 944,203 - 46.26%
Others ------ 112,964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Colorado,_2014

http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Results/Abstract/2014/general/index.html

 

The State of Virginia had a very low voter turnout during the 2014 November midterm elections, but Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Warner was able to still win reelection over his GOP Opponent there by 0.8%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Virginia,_2014

 
 
And the State of California had  a very low voter turnout during the 2014 November midterm elections, but the Democrats ended up winning all of the seven State offices there.
 
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/prior-elections/statewide-election-results/general-election-november-4-2014/
 
http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/02/11/california-2014-voter-turnout-was-even-worse-than-you-thought/