I know there's a maelstrom of all sorts of emotions and writings going on after last night, but I just want to point out one quirky result, courtesy of my home state Michigan:
MI-Sen:
Gary Peters: 1,693,781 votes, 54.58%
Terri Lynn Land: 1,283,850 votes, 41.37%
MI-Gov:
Mark Schauer: 1,469,375 votes, 46.83%
Rick Snyder: 1,598,922 votes, 50.95%
(source: AP)
So let me get this straight: the voters of Michigan elected a Democrat to hold the US Senate, but re-elected Republican Rick Snyder?
It must speak a lot for how much more the voters hate Terri Lynn Land than they do Snyder? Out of all of this, Peters ended up with the most votes; are you telling me if Peters ran for Gov and Schauer for Senate, Democrats would have won both?
About 220k more Michiganders voted for Peters than Schauer. Schauer Only needed about 130k to beat Snyder. What happened?
Of course, the conventional wisdom is that Republican-leaning voters outnumbered Democrat-leaning in Michigan yesterday; and they specifically voted against Terri Lynn Land. Again, are we supposed to think that Land is that much more unlikeable than Snyder? That she wasn't Republican enough??
In the state where Barack Obama won in 2012 by almost a full 10%, or 450k votes, it is especially surreal.
I know the Democratic Party has a lot of analysis to do after these elections, but if someone can give me an explanation for these results, one that doesn't make me die a little bit inside, that would be greatly appreciated.
I know that this is just gonna be one of many similar diaries and sounds a lot like belly-aching, but really, how does something like this happen?