California 36

In yesterday's special election for Congress in the 36th district of California, the Democrat won as expected. What was surprising, however, was how close the numbers were. In a district where Democrats have an 18% edge over the Republicans in registration, the victory margin was only 9%. When Jane Harman resigned and opened up the seat, the expectation was that the primary would result in there being two democrats who fought it out in the general election. Instead, the GOP candidate came in second, beating out the Democrat state Treasure of California for that position. The winner of the primary was, however, far ahead with a margin that was a multiple of the 9% that was yesterday's victory margin. That means that going from the primary to the general election, the Democrat picked up just a few percentage points while the GOP candidate moved up by about doubling his percentage from the primary. In a highly Democrat district like this, it is not a good sign for the Democrats that independents and even many Democrats went to the GOP candidate.

Of course, the main question is not who got certain numbers of votes, but rather who won. The Democrats held onto what should be a safe seat with jusst a mild scare that it could be lost. If this is a harbinger of elections to come, however, it could spell trouble for Democrats in seats where they do not have such a large registration majority. The next test will come in Anthony Weiner's district in NY. That district has a larger Democrat majority, but we will see how many, if any, of those voters are turned off by the Weiner escapades.