So after a long night of refreshing news pages, clicking on maps, and getting very little work done, midterm elections for 2010 are more or less over. Votes are still being counted at this point, but most are set (more or less). Let's start with the nationals and work our way down.
The Democrats keep the Senate but lose the House. What can this mean? Honestly, they might as well have lost the Senate. With the House gone, we'll likely see gridlock for the next two years. Some say it'll be a replay of 1994--based on what many of the newly elected Republicans/TP's are promising, it may just turn out that way. The House may try to pass more right-wing initiatives (or as Boehner said, repealing health care is an option), but most won't even pass the Senate. And in the rare event that something works out, Obama will kill it. No matter what the Reps or Obama promises, even fewer of those will get done in the next 2 years than in the last 2. The Senate, with its near even split, is even more useless in that respect.
Of course, there's the possibility of cooperation, but we can ignore that for now. It will likely not happen--the numbers of the opposition party is just too large. With 2012 campaigns starting this very moment, no GOP elect will risk his job and turn back on his voters. Maybe something else will happen later on that would make cooperation more favorable, but right now that's not happening. In that case, the Democrats and Obama can potentially use this to their advantage. Many blogs say that they will be able to use the potential gridlock and uselessness of Congress against the GOP and blame them in 2012. This is a likely scenario and will probably play itself out over the next year.
State. Not much surprise here w.r.t. candidates--nearly every major state position has been won by a Democrat. The only exception is attorney general, but Kamala has some issues of her own that we won't get into here. What's more interesting is the fact that Californians rejected, in general, more conservative candidates who promised to bring a new face to Sacramento. Instead, they preferred incumbents, people with experience; they rejected big business and took in familiarity. While the winners cannot be really described as populist, it may be safe to say that CA was one of the few places that the Tea Party did not infiltrate. (About Newsom defeating Maldonado--no comment.)
Props? There were a number of interesting props on the ballot this time around, far more interesting than the candidates imo. 19 failed, but it's not surprising--with something this radical (such as gay marriage 2 years ago), it will take more than one election for the electorate to shift its attitude from the status quo. It actually lost quite miserably, given the lead that polls gave it over the summer. 23 also failed, but that's to be expected. Advertising for this one was very widespread, and of course this is California we're talking about. When faced with a decision between clean and dirty energy (with a ridiculously fantasized 5.5% unemployment rate), CA'ians will not choose dirty energy. Finally, the last important one was 25. Given the many past years of budget gridlock in Sac, 25 was also easy to pass. If there's anything that CA'ians are pissed about, it's that.
Finally, we have local elections. Candidates are all over the place, and frankly I don't care too much for them. There's the school board (shame that Starchild lost), some districts, and other random ones like Bart director and such. D10 is worth mentioning as that is my district--Tony Kelly is a decent candidate, and although he was not one of my choices, I definitely prefer him over a lot of the others. It is ridiculous how many candidates ran though--21 to be exact--and how spread out the votes were. Some people got ~40 votes, while Kelly numbered in the thousands. It would've been nice to have Marlene Tran win, but guess you can't have everything.
Finally, local props--AA and A we can skip, and B (not surprisingly) lost, but it did so pretty closely. While it does burden city workers, it does seem that there are many who feel the pain of lack of city funds, which explains all the yes votes. In a similar fashion, both J and K failed to pass, while N won. These all show how desperate the city is for money (and the state as well, with its other props not mentioned here). But it's curious how some passed while others didn't. J and K especially, even with the fact that one is a poison pill for the other. On the other hand, the city has decided to not favor Muni drivers anymore with the passage of G--yet another money-saving initiative, as well as a sentiment that Muni desperately needs reform. Also worthy of note are L/M--apparently, sit/lie garnered a lot more public support than polls indicated. It will be fascinating to see how the new law will play out.
In short, everyone won and everyone lost in this election, and with this over, 2012 has officially begun.
