It wouldn’t be an election without day after analysis, now would it?

There weren’t too many surprises yesterday but there were a couple.

First, the surprise inside the not so surprising voucher vote.  I expected vouchers would win somewhere in the state.  Vouchers didn’t win in a single county in the state.  Not one.  Think about that – in the most conservative, Republican state in the nation, after spending millions of dollars of Patrick Byrne’s money and piles of out of state money from the Amway and WalMart families, vouchers didn’t carry a single county.  The best “loss” came from Washington County where voucher supporters captured almost 49% of the vote (I’d like to see some polling about why this county’s voters supported vouchers); Utah County voters gave just over 47% of the vote and Uintah county almost 46%.  Other than that, vouchers received 40% or less (the low was under 20% in Beaver) of the vote.  Broadly speaking, I expected vouchers to win at least one place (I was betting on Utah County) to provide voucher supporters rhetorical cover for a 2008 Voucher Bill.  This issue isn’t dead – it will come back folks.  Parents for Choice in Education has invested way too much money buying out legislators to let this issue go away.  If you want it gone, vote for the Democratic candidate in next year’s legislative races.  (Tooele county results will be available later, per my phone call to the Lt. Gov’s office.)

I wasn’t surprised that Prop 1 lost – it had gotten little coverage and I heard voters yesterday who weren’t sure which was the voucher proposition so they voted against both.  But, I was surprised it failed by so few votes.  Come on, 291 votes out of almost forty thousand?  That’s less than 1%.  That’s astonishing to me.  As I said, I expected it to lose – it was also a pretty steep hike in property taxes and few strong arguments in favor of the hike were publicly heard. 

Last but not least, Luke Garrot absolutely crushing Nancy Saxton.  It’s a truism in politics that the incumbent has the advantage and I think that’s generally true.  He or she can run on their record.  But Nancy Saxton lost by a wide margin – 15% of the vote.  She ran on her record.  The Trib endorsed her on her record.  And the voters in her distrcit said, “No thank you we’d like to try someone else.”  I think Nancy did an okay job for her district – she didn’t particularly fail at anything.  Nor did she particularly succeed at anything.  Central City (I know this because I’ve walked it) is an interesting and quirky area.  There’s a rich mix of middle and upper income families, working poor, immigrants and students crowded into the area.  A progressive activist like Luke Garrott is a much more natural fit than Nancy Saxton, who despite her liberal politics has never struck me as terribly progressive.