A Post Mortem On The Primary Elections

03/06/10 08:25

Over the next several days I will be posting a series of guest articles analyzing the elections. I thought I'd start with this one by Alfa's John Pudner:

A Deeper Look At The Election Day Results
by John Pudner

3 thrilling finishes, other exciting runoffs, victims & survivors

1. The most exciting 3 races

GOP Governor for 2nd place and runoff - Robert Bentley 123,321 to Tim James 123,181 (still about 100 boxes left, so Beth Chapman is a genius again! Bradley Byrne is in the runoff at 137,093) - in our polling Bentley had gone from 9% to 20% by last week, so the surge continued, while James had slid from 31% to 25%). As stated, we polled Sparks pulling ahead last week and didn't believe it. So it's a playoff - Bentley vs. James to see who races Byrne, with the winner of that getting Sparks.

HD73 - GOP - David Grimes withstands a ton of money and attacks to hold his seat against Jeremy Walker 2,963 to 2,885

SD5 - GOP - Greg Reed withstands some late money to hold on against Thad Turnipseed 7,966 to 7,873

2. The exciting runoffs

Agriculture Commissioner - John McMillan 150,437 vs. Dorman Grace 144,747 - Dale Peterson fell 28,000 votes short of the runoff with 116,541. McMillan led the other two 33% to 17% to 17% in early May before Peterson hit 1.4 million internet users and then the TV audience with his commercial attacking Dorman Grace as a "dummy," but undecided voters responded by breaking heavily toward Grace as he more than doubled his vote to 35% while Peterson added only 11% from undecideds while attacking.

SD9 - Clay Scofield came from single digits a couple of months ago to passed everyone to finish 1st place with 6,531 for 32%, followed by Don Spurlin with 5,651 votes for second place 28%.

3. Other runoffs feature front-runners that just missed 50%

Five other runoffs we were tracking involve one candidate with between 47% and 50% starting out with a big lead. Those races include Giles Perkins trying to overcome James Anderson's lead for Democratic Attorney General, Sue Helms trying to overcome Mary Scott Hunter's lead for GOP Board of Edcuation District 8, Johnny Ford trying to overcome Billy Beasley's big lead in SD28, John McGowan trying to overcome Barry Forte's big lead for Democrat in HD84 and Claire Mitchell trying to overcome Lawrence McAdory's lead in HD 56.

4. Incumbents we tracked facing hard-hitting attacks (6 victims, 11 survivors)

With challengers emboldened this year to ride voter anger to go after incumbents, there were 17 races we were really monitoring due to hard-hitting challenges:

VICTIMS (6)

Charles Bishop - actually a sitting State Senator who was hurt by being viewed as the incumbent when he moved down to run for the House. We polled him behind two weeks ago, and he came out a narrow loser.

Steve French - we polled him ahead two weeks ago, but the attack was withering the final two weeks.

Mac Gipson - we also already had him behind two weeks ago.

Pat Moore - she had a very narrow lead a month ago, but not enough to hold up.

Yusuf Salaam - we polled him down three points and that proved right at 48% to 52%.

James Thomas - David Colston pulled off an unbelievable feat by winning without a runoff despite taking on an incumbent AND three other challengers.

SURVIVORS (11)

Scott Beason - survived a withering attack to win fairly handily.

Vivian Figures - a very lopsided win.

Blaine Galliher - lopsided win.

David Grimes - mentioned above - survived a ton of money being spent to attack him the final couple of weeks for a big win.

Ralph Howard - the 34 precincts in Bibb, Marengo and Perry broke almost exactly even, but they love Ralph in Marengo County, where the 18 precincts gave him a 2,456 to 784 victory.

Thomas E. "Action" Jackson - had to survive his opponents finding another Thomas Jackson to run against him, but survived.

Richard Laird - Topped 60% despite being attacked frequently.

Thad McClammy - lopsided win.

Johnny MacMorrow - easy winner.

Howard Sanderford - won without a runoff despite two challengers.

Pebblin Warren - won 2-to-1 despite a strong presence by her opponent at the polls.

This probably indicates a larger number of incumbents losing than in most years, BUT even in the hotly contested races the incumbents still won most of the races - and of course many other incumbents had easy wins.

For those of you who wanted more than the previous overview, here is more of a race-by-race breakdown of the ones we are following: