UPDATED: with 6 of 2,000 or so precincts reporting,
Dem. Tommy Moore is ahead!
Moore (D) 2,709 55.17
Sanford GOP 2,201 44.83
Just read that on the Greenville News' web site (www.greenvilleonline.com), a prediction by the county elections supervisor. If we continue at this pace, he expects 65 percent turn-out, which seems hard to believe in a mid-term election with... I swear... no races expected to be competitive.
Yes, we're electing a governor, but most likely re-electing a Republican nobody likes. There is a group of Republicans for Tommy Moore, the Democratic challenger, but nobody really expected anything to come of that or any other race, except maybe Lt. Gov., but who cares about Lt. Gov.?
Double-checked -- last poll I found, dated mid-October, had Gov. Sanford (R) up 57 percent to Democratic challenger Tommy Moore's 34 percent. Found another poll that had the race at a 16 point spread.
So what are all these people doing at the polls?
I'm in a tremendously heavy Republican County. We're no doubt sending Bob Inglis back to congress, and nobody really gets excited by him, but they don't hate him, either, and he has no real challenger. (Except a Libertarian guy who was hounding him on being soft on Abortions, illegal immigration and not being a true conservative, but that guy got arrested for assaulting his wife over the weekend. No joke. Knocked her around at CVS, the police report said.)
So where are all these people coming from? And why are they voting in such heavy numbers?
I would love to think it's Republicans who are so pissed off, they want to vote for anyone but a Republican, even if we don't have any races expected to be competitive here.
Somebody tell me I'm dreaming. Because if South Carolinians are pissed enough to vote Democrat on a day like today, we'r e looking at a land-slide.
[Update:] Someone asked about a gay marriage amendment. Yes, we have one, but even that has hardly generated any campaigning or local coverage.
I mean, we've had some letters to the editor of the Greenville News, suprisingly balanced for and against. But there's been no huge cry of outrage and moral superiority and just noise in general from the anti-gay crowd.
It's been like there's nothing going on here.