Map of California's 16th Senate District
As
I noted earlier this month, much was made in the press about trying to divine electoral "lessons" from the special election victory on May 7th that propelled Appalachian Trail devotee and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford back into political life.
Lessons, in that particular case, seemed pretty hard to come by. Republicans were quick to state that this was an epic failure of the Democrats, who had dropped quite a bit of coin on the special election in SC-01, where polls showed that their candidate (university administrator Elizabeth Colbert Busch) had a very respectable shot at victory. Democrats were quick to dismiss any lessons for 2014, delighting instead in the idea that they could build part of their 2014 message around making Sanford "the face" of the Republican Party.
As I wrote three weeks ago, the primary lesson appeared to have been a very simple one: In a heavily Republican district, being something of a turd of a husband and public figure costs you roughly 10 percentage points of support. Romney won the district by a handsome margin, and Sanford defeated Colbert Busch by about half that amount.
A couple of weeks later, and well under the radar, another special election was held, one which actually had a much more critical lesson for 2014. Follow me past the jump to learn about California's 16th state Senate district, and why you should give a damn about it.
That election in California's 16th state Senate district flew under the radar not only because it did not have bankable media backstories like the return of Mark Sanford or the electoral launch of Stephen Colbert's sister, but also because it was a state legislative special election (of which there are several each week, it seems).
What's more, in this particular race, the stakes were pretty small: California Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the state Senate, one whose two-thirds Democratic edge would not be threatened even with a switch to the GOP.
And, for a time, it looked like a party switch was in order in the 16th Senate district, a sprawling mass of terrain in California's farm-rich Central Valley. On Election Night, it looked like Republican Andy Vidak (who gave Rep. Jim Costa all that he could handle during the GOP landslide election in 2010) had scored over 50 percent of the vote to earn the seat once held by Democratic state Sen. Michael Rubio.
Late vote tallies, however, gave the Democrats a breath of life, and took Vidak just a fraction below 50 percent. As a result, Vidak and Democrat Leticia Perez will now advance to a runoff on July 23rd to determine the next state Senator from the Central Valley.
Last-second reprieve aside, however, there should be some alarm bells going off for Democrats in this case. While Vidak, well-funded and with ample name recognition from his congressional bid, is as good a prospect as the GOP could've hoped for, the Democrats weren't exactly running a slouch, either: Perez is a county supervisor in Kern County.
Nevertheless, she came only a handful of votes away from elimination in what, on paper, is an extremely amenable district for Democrats. Barack Obama thumped Mitt Romney in the district by a 58-40 margin, almost precisely the margin by which Romney beat Obama in the Mark Sanford district (in this supplement to the Vote Count, the district appears to be misidentified, as the counties housed within the 16th district are listed here as the 14th).
For those who might be thinking this fails as a relevant example because of the fact that this is a state legislative seat, it is helpful to remember one small detail: state Senate districts in California are massive. There are only 40 of them in the entire state, despite the fact that there are 53 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives allotted to the state. So, with the exception of a few at-large seats in the smaller states (Montana comes to mind), the California 16th state Senate district is actually more heavily populated than any House seat in America.
Therefore, the Democrats losing (or nearly losing, as Perez now has a shot at redemption in the runoff) a district like this is worth exploring. And, with a modest amount of digging, a key culprit comes to the fore: base turnout.
The 16th state Senate district is a district with a decidedly split personality. Democrats tend to clean house in the heavily populated parts of the district in Kern County (where the district takes in the heavily Latino, reliably blue parts of Bakersfield) and Fresno County. Republicans are able to make up some ground in Kings County and a modestly red patch of Tulare County (the portion of Tulare County which lies in the 16th district gave Romney a narrowly edge over Obama in 2012).
The official returns from the first round of the special election should be what Democrats focus on.
Those results show that, amazingly, more votes were cast in Kings County on May 21 than were cast in Kern County. This should concern Democrats, as Kern was Perez's home turf. But it should concern them even more, because the Kern County portion of the district has over 25,000 more registered voters than does the Kings County portion of the district.
Now, critics will note (accurately) that voter registration does not necessarily equal voter participation. But consider this: In the 2008 presidential election, Kern County cast considerably more votes in the Obama-Romney showdown than did Kings County (37,474 votes to 31,351).
To put it another way, Team Vidak was able to turn out 48.2 percent of the 2012 presidential turnout in this special election in Kings County (which he carried with over 70 percent of the vote). The Democrats, meanwhile, were only able to turn out 39.4 percent of their 2012 presidential turnout in Kern County (where Perez beat Vidak by roughly 20 points).
Not only is this something that the Perez campaign team needs to address before next month's runoff in the Central Valley, it is something Democrats need to be aware of nationwide. One of the most obvious, and overlooked, aspects of electoral politics in America is the chasm that exists between turnout for presidential elections and turnout in midterms. In the last few cycles, the dropoff has been in the 40-45 million range, or just a tick under one-third of the presidential electorate.
This, of course, happens in every election. But which party elects to stay at home is as important as how many voters elect to stay at home. In 2006, the dropoff was more even between the parties than normal (it is an article of faith in political circles, and justifiably so, that occasional voters lean left). The Democrats enjoyed their best midterm cycle in decades. In 2010, the dropoff was substantially less equal. No one needs to be reminded of that result.
One of the least reported stories of the 2012 election cycle was the fact that a historically high percentage of voters in the Obama-Romney tilt self-identified as liberal (25 percent). 2012 proved that Democrats can win base elections. The party may well be served by spending a little more time preaching to the choir. After all, at the end of the day, that's how you get them to sing.