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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

The Connecticut Contests

There is some rather astounding data in the results of yesterday's elections in Connecticut.

First of all, it seems pretty clear that the country club Republicans abandoned Donald Trump and overwhelmingly chose Hillary Clinton.  Normally, the Republican candidate can count on the wealthy Fairfield County suburbs for a good base of support.  Yesterday, that support wasn't there.  A good example is the town of Greenwich, one of the wealthiest towns in the country.  GOP voters outnumber Democrats according to the registration figures by a large amount.  The state senator, state legislators and local government are dominated by Republicans and have been for many decades.  Donald Trump used to live in Greenwich years ago.  Despite that, Hillary Clinton won the vote of the town by a margin of roughly two to one.  The other wealthy towns in Fairfield County like Darien, New Canaan, Westport and Wilton which normally vote Republican went strongly for Clinton.  Now it is true that much of the wealth in these towns is tied to Wall Street and that is a group that gave Clinton almost total backing, but it is still surprising to see such a high level of support for the Democrat. 

Second, despite the results in Fairfield County, it was not a good night for the Democrats (at least by Connecticut standards.)  The state senate elections resulted in a tie in that chamber which will remain in Democrat control because the Lt. Governor is a Democrat.  It has been a very long time since we have seen a situation like that.  To be fair, the big pick up by the GOP in the senate is due to the high level of unpopularity of the governor.  He has raised taxes repeatedly only to see ever bigger deficits hit the state.

 

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