Mac McCorkle has a little fun with Chronicle Reporter

My good friend Pope “Mac” McCorkle is having a little fun with the reporter from the Chronicle.  Here are the money quotes, from me and then his “refutation.”

“They don’t want a candidate who is going to hold [President Barack Obama] back,” Munger said. “Bev Perdue is a clown—she should have never been governor. The only reason she won was the tsunami of Obama’s campaign in North Carolina.”
But the unpopularity of an incumbent governor would not likely affect an incumbent president, said Pope McCorkle, visiting lecturer at the Sanford School of Public Policy, who worked as a consultant with Perdue’s 2008 campaign.  “[Perdue] had a better shot of winning than is commonly assumed,” McCorkle said. “She got more votes than Obama in 2008. The idea that her victory is solely attributable to Obama doesn’t hold water.”

Now, Mac is a smart guy, and knows full well that that is nonsense.  I laughed out loud when I read what he said.  There is just no necessary relationship, none at all, between the vote totals and whether Perdue would have won without Obama’s coattails.  The reason is straight ticket voting.  At least 2% of the folks who went to vote for Obama ended up voting for Perdue straight ticket, but did not vote for Obama at all because of the quirky NC rules.

Here are thestraight ticket totals for 2008:

• Democrats: 46 % of all registered voters, but 58.76% of the straight ticket votes cast went to the Dems (1,283,486 total straight ticket votes) 
• Republicans:  32% percent of registered voters,  40.4%  of straight-party votes (881,856) 

Democrats from the national party (not the Perdue campaign) organized the straight ticket get out the vote campaign.  They handed out cards, and told people (as they were getting off busses paid for by George Soros and his Wall Street pals, Obama fans all) how to vote straight ticket Democrat. (In NC, it takes two votes to vote straight ticket. If you just vote straight ticket, you cast a vote for Gov, but not for Prez.  That's not what you meant, but that's what you did).

I watched this happen, dozens of times, at different polling sites.  Those folks getting off the bus had NEVER HEARD of Bev Perdue.  They were there to vote for Obama, and when some Dem functionary handed them a card explaining how they should vote, straight ticket D, they did it.

Those numbers, 58% of straight ticket votes, and 1.28 million straight ticket votes cast, are by far the largest ever in NC history.

Now, consider just how lame Mac’s “refutation” is.  If I’m right, and the straight ticket votes from the Obama turnout machine were the difference in the race, then it would be IMPOSSIBLE for Bev to get fewer votes than Obama.  Make it simple:  suppose every Obama voter voted straight ticket.  And a few others voted for Bev.  Then Bev got all those straight ticket votes, and a few more.

That’s basically what happened.  Bev “beat” Obama by four thousand votes.  Statistically a tie.  But without Obama and the straight ticket votes, Bev would have gotten wiped out by Pat McCrory.  On election day, when far fewer people voted straight ticket, Pat “won” easily.  On election day, the votes looked like this:

• McCrory 952,000
• Perdue 783,000

But on the early, mostly straight ticket voting, with all those busses paid for by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citigroup pulling up to the early polling places, here is how it came out:

• McCrory 1,038,000
• Perdue 1,351,000

In other words, Perdue built up an early lead of 300,000 because of all that straight ticket turnout for Obama.  In a normal year, with average turnout and average straight ticket voting rates, Bev would only have gotten 1,000,000 early votes, and would have lost the election by 250,000 votes or more.

The only way for me to be wrong is if the reason for all that historic straight ticket voting, and higher turnout, had NOTHING to do with Obama.  And that doesn’t pass the laugh test.  Consider this headline in the HuffPo:  "EarlyVoting Numbers Climb in NC, Mostly the Work of ObamaVolunteers."  That darned right wing HuffPo...

Obama volunteers. Not Perdue volunteers.  And Perdue only won because of early voting.  Perdue couldn't possibly have gotten fewer votes than Obama, because all those early votes were for BOTH.  Perdue loses, without Obama.  And my friend Mac is laughing at that reporter, for not asking better questions.  Good one, Mac.