Orange County Voters Support Law and Order and Democrats Hold Ground

OC Congressional Map via https://ocvote.gov

Three quarters of Orange County voters support Proposition 36 for stricter prosecution and punishment of drug and property crimes (69% statewide). Kamala Harris beat Trump by 2 points (20 points statewide) but Adam Schiff was losing to Steve Garvey by a few votes on November 19. Democrats were successful in three competitive Congressional districts. They won the Mike Levin Congressional seat (17,000 votes) and held the Katie Porter open seat with Dave Min (9,000 votes). Derek Tran is ahead of incumbent Michelle Steel (314 votes 11-19-24).

Also, OC voters supported school and wildfire, climate bonds (about 52% for each) and constitutional marriage rights (57%). Like voters statewide, they rejected housing bonds (38%), minimum wage (38%), rent control (35%), and banning inmate forced work (42%). As the table below shows, OC voters are about 5 points more conservative on each proposition.

Orange County maintains its reputation as a competitive county for the parties and moderate-to-conservative on the issues.

The Country Moves to the Right, Including Colorado

From left to right: Jeff Herd, Jeff Crank, and Gabe Evans

Immediately after the election, Colorado Democrats were arguing the state provided a Blue Wall and didn’t shift to the right with the rest of the nation, but the defeat of Congressperson Caraveo mostly ended that discussion. And in fact, Colorado voters, including many Democrats, were out of sync with the party’s direction on several key issues:

• Along with losing a congressional district that will help Republicans pad their renewed majority, they failed to win the 3rd District, which was within sight before Lauren Boebert moved, but is now represented by a Republican, Jeff Herd, likely to be in office for many years. The state’s other new Congressperson, Jeff Crank, represents a non-MAGA conservative leader, helping build a new center of the Republican Party. Also, Boebert, the Democrat’s chief antagonist, won her new district handily.
  
  
• The state’s voters supported a package of law and order propositions on the state ballot related to parole, bail, and funding police that are not part of the Democratic agenda. Animal rights groups lost bans of lion hunting, and in Denver, bans of fur products and a slaughter house were beaten solidly.
  
  Denver Democrats defeated their new Mayor’s $100 million sales tax increase for housing, reflecting exhaustion for new taxes and ill-defined programs.
  
  
• Democrats failed to achieve their top goal of a super majority in the state senate and lost their super majority in the state house. One of the state’s historic working class Democratic strongholds with a large Hispanic voting base, Pueblo County, gave Donald Trump a 4,000 vote edge, elected another Republican county commissioner and a Republican DA. The city already has a Republican mayor.

As Democrats return to D.C. facing a trifecta of dedicated opposition and local Democrats assemble at the legislature to manage a diminished state budget, they should realistically examine their policies and tactics in light of this election.

Election 2024: Candidate and Party Vulnerabilities

CU Denver School of Public Affairs | Photo via Instagram

In their respective 2024 presidential campaigns, the professionals in each party analyzed the opposition’s vulnerabilities and spent most of their campaign energy highlighting them. The following graphic displays each party’s weaknesses. Polling and content analysis show the Democrats’ vulnerabilities of incumbency, inflation and immigration were the greater liability.

Donald Trump’s greatest vulnerability was his own personality and character. Kamala Harris opened and closed her campaign focused on it. Harris’s biggest vulnerability was having been in office the last four years with the aftermath of the pandemic, the economic disruption – especially inflation, and a world in greater conflict. She inherited the weakness of the incumbent, President Joe Biden. And of course, Trump never stopped discussing immigration, which he linked to crime and all manner of other problems. Unfortunately for Democrats, the voters, even liberal Californians, are angry about crime and weak prosecution. They regularly remove controversial district attorneys. Although Trump’s personal focus on inflation and DEI was at a lower level, it was a major feature of online and legacy media advertising, especially during football games, “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Besides Trump’s personality, the Democrats’ most influential issue was abortion. Trump was never able to get around his responsibility for overturning Roe v. Wade and the extreme views of many Republican legislatures. Democrats also focused much attention on the threat to democracy that the January 6 violence posed and Trump’s responsibility for it. His authoritative rhetoric highlighted by the Madison Square Garden rally made it a major Democratic issue late in the campaign.

On Friday, November 8, Floyd Ciruli presented the “Vulnerabilities” at the CU Denver School of Public Affairs program on the election aftermath. Some 100 participants joined a Zoom panel discussion as a foot of snow closed the school. It was the last of a 5-session program on the election. Ciruli, a Senior Fellow of the school developed the program with Dean Paul Teske and moderated three of the panels.

READ:
First Friday Breakfast Election 2024: What Happened and What Lies Ahead

The Buzz Called Trump the Likely Winner – November 4

In a last blog post before election day (https://fciruli.blogspot.com/2024/11/race-tight- harris-now-behind.html), the weekend polls showed Kamala Harris lost the lead she held since early September in popular vote and was behind by a fraction in most of the battleground states to Donald Trump. I said if the RCP aggregate of polls is accurate, she could lose both the popular and electoral vote to Trump. He won the popular vote by 2 points and swept all battleground states. His 312 electoral votes exceed his 2016 win (304) and Biden’s in 2020 (306).

Although the polling missed the Red Wave, it did perceive the direction of the race had shifted against Harris. She never translated her popular support to the battleground states, where she struggled for a consistent lead after her nomination. Polling is still dealing with a specific Trump voter problem. They are less inclined to participate in polls and more obscure in the voting environment.

Presidential Pollss
Above are polling averages drawn from RealClearPolitics (RCP) with regular comparisons to FiveThirtyEight (ABC News) website, Gallup, and other credible polls.

KOA – Election Night Analyses
Floyd Ciruli joined the KOA news and commentary team November 5 election night to report results, analyze the trends, and highlight the winners and losers.

Five Colorado Election Takeaways

Denver Country Club, Denver, Colorado

The following are five takeaways from Colorado’s November election. Although the Democrats held their dominance in the legislature and Kamala Harris won the state by 11 percent as predicted, Republicans won a new congressional seat and voters moved toward a more conservative position on law and order.

1. Colorado’s Democrat freshman congressperson lost due to immigration and a low-key first term. The Gabe Evans win made a contribution to House Republican majority.
2. Lauren Boebert saved her job. Her MAGA identity overcame the carpetbagger label and Beetlejuice reputation. But Douglas County, which is about half the district, is barely on board. With Donald Trump in White House, she will continue to be a lightning rod for Colorado Republicans.
3. Republican Party filled two out of three of its open seats with more mainstream members. Jeff Hurd and Jeff Crank can become the base of a more competitive party.
4. Voters strongly supported a package of law and order measures related to bail bonds, parole, and money for police. Denver Democrats, paused on a hefty new sales tax for housing but voters in the metro area said yes to large school bond packages.
5. A new election system sold by advocates of reduced party control of politics failed. They spent nearly $20 million to sell the proposal with an underfunded opposition campaign. It was judged an excessively complicated solution that didn’t fit the problem. Five other states had some version of nonpartisan primaries and rank choice voting on the ballot and all failed.

Floyd Ciruli presented a post-election analysis to the Metro Denver Executive Club at the Denver Country Club Wednesday morning, November 6.

California Voters Don’t Agree with the Democratic Super Majority

Left: Los Angeles County DA George Gascón (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Right: Alameda County DA Pamela Price (Facebook/Alameda County DA’s Office)

Although Kamala Harris carried California by 20 points and Democrats maintained their legislative super majority, their position on economics and criminal justice was soundly rejected by voters in ballot issues and District Attorney elections. Voters rejected rent control, a minimum wage increase and opposed tougher charges for drugs and theft.

Ciruli & Associates 2024

Just to hammer home voters' rejection of the state legislature's criminal justice reforms since 2020, they removed two liberal Democrat District Attorneys in overwhelmingly Democratic cities.

Los Angeles County:
Democrat George Gascón loses 68% to 32% to (Republican) Nathan Hockman (Harris carried L.A. by 64%).

Alameda County:
Democrat DA Pamela Price recalled by 68% of voters (Harris carried Alameda by 73%). Fellow liberal DA in San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in 2022.

California voters still support same sex marriage right (61%) and approved bonds for school facilities (57%), safe drinking water and wildfire prevention and climate change (57%).

RELATED:
California: Law and Order is Back Oct 9, 2024

Sales Tax Recession

The first nine months of sales tax collections in 2024 continues a second year of weak collections. It reflects a sales tax recession in the seven county Denver metro area as sales tax-dependent cities begin to tighten budgets.

The sales tax lag remains unexplained, but voters were asked to increase sales tax rates by a host of local governments with mixed results. In Denver, voters rejected a half-cent sales tax increase for housing in spite of a major campaign directed by Mayor Mike Johnston and little organized opposition.

RELATED:
Sales Tax Collection Falls Again Aug 16, 2024

Race Tight. Harris Now Behind.

Election workers sort ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Nov. 9, 2022, in Phoenix. Photo by John Moore | Getty Images

In a last snapshot before election day, Kamala Harris lost the lead (October 26, 2024) she held since early September in popular vote and is now behind by a fraction in most of the battleground states to Donald Trump. If the RCP aggregate of polls is accurate, she could lose both the popular and electoral vote to Trump. Other aggregators, such as 538 have Harris up one or two points. And most observers point out, she could win, depending on many factors, especially turnout and late deciders.

I will be making several presentations as to what caused the shift, when will the election be decided and what’s next for American politics and policy.

Presidential Polls
Above are polling averages drawn from RealClearPolitics (RCP) with regular comparisons to FiveThirtyEight (ABC News) website, Gallup, and other credible polls.

Fox News Interview with Harris – KOA Morning Show

Bret Baier and Kamala Harris. Photo: Fox News

My comments with Marty and Jeana after the Fox News interview with Kamala Harris conducted by Bret Baier (October 12, 2024).

I pointed out most post-interview news stories featured the word “contentious” prominently. It was more like a debate, with Baier asking the most aggressive RNC-type questions. For example, a significant amount of time was spent on immigration, with frequent interruptions as Harris spoke. For Baier, the audience of one was Donald Trump, who criticized Fox News for even allowing an interview.

It is unlikely to have much effect on the election outcome but she was praised by Democrats and some media for having gone into a hostile forum and attacked Donald Trump repeatedly.

The audience is largely Republican and some Democrats, especially men, a group she has tried to win over but not shown much quantifiable result. Her message was Trump is unfit to be president and people who worked with him say so.

Is Colorado’s Direct Democracy Working?

CU Denver School of Public Affairs | Photo via Instagram

On Friday, October 11, the CU Denver School of Public Affairs hosted a panel of media and political experts to examine Colorado’s Direct Democracy Produce a Torrent of Proposals. Participants (in person and online) joined the panel with extensive questions and discussion.

The panel, moderated by pollster and Senior Fellow Floyd Ciruli, recalled the appeal of direct democracy to voters who have historically believed there are problems legislators don’t address and a ballot initiative can be a solution. But today, polls record many are concerned by the volume and complexity of the proposals, and 2024 is an example of the issue. Fourteen propositions crowd the ballot ranging from animal rights to guns and from abortion to criminal justice and education. Some, in particular the election reform measures, if passed, represent significant changes to public policy which is not necessarily evident in the ballot wording.

The panelists pointed out a number of difficulties with direct democracy. Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn and State Legislative Economist Greg Sobetski, related their knowledge of how government-elected officials and staff try to improve the initiative process. The media panelists, Denver Post opinion columnist Krista Kafer and reporter Seth Klamann, pointed out the background story of initiatives. Kafer and Flynn, in particular, were critical of the decisions being forced on a public that often hears “just slogans.”

The panelists were: Seth Klamann, reporter Denver Post, covering statehouse, policy and elections
Kevin Flynn, Denver City Councilman, District 2 (southwest), former Rocky Mountain news reporter
Krista Kafer, opinion columnist The Denver Post
Greg Sobetski, chief economist for Legislative Council with Colorado General Assembly
Floyd Ciruli, panel moderator, pollster, Senior Fellow, CU Denver School of Public Affairs

Check out the CU Denver School of Public Affairs’ website
for more information on the November 8 First Friday Breakfast:
What Happened and What Lies Ahead
panel here

READ:
CU Denver Panel Reviews Our Tumultuous Election Year Oct. 3, 2024