On Election Day, one of the joys of running the gauntlet of political operatives hawking their candidates before reaching the safety of the “no electioneering/lobbying beyond this point” sign is pointing out to them that they might want my vote to stay as far away from their candidate as possible because it’s usually the kiss of death.
This year actually turned out to be better statistically than is usual for me!
The ballot that I was offered is attached below and here’s the post-mortem:
- 26 total races / bond questions on the ballot
- 3 races were unopposed leaving 23 where theoretically a choice should be made
- Of those 23 races/questions, I picked the winning candidate in 10 and correctly predicted that all three bond referendums would pass.
- I picked the loser in nine of the contests and split one race that selected two candidates for Raleigh City Council guessing right on one and picking a loser in the other.
So my my sums, that’s 13.5 winners selected in 23 competitive contests for a winning percentage of… (drum roll please!)
58.6957%
That’s way better than my usual average somewhere in the 20% range!
Generally the judicial races went to the Republicans whilst the Democrats cleaned up in the local contests.
Wiley Nickel winning election in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District was a bit of a surprise given all of the outside spending dumped into that race but Ted Budd’s election to the Senate really wasn’t for much the same reason.
I’m thinking he might ultimately wish that he didn’t win election because he and Senator Tillis are likely to be my new stand-ins for Bill McCollum of Florida whose aides usually would cut short any questions from the audience if I happened to be in attendance because they knew full well his bragging about his record in Congress was about to face some embarrassing questions about the reality of his positions from the Congressional Record. If there was anyone who abused the “revise and extend my remarks” unanimous consent motion with statements in the Congressional Record that bore no relation to his statements made from the floor of the House, it was him.
I’m still working on the massive supply of postage stamps I recovered from my father’s house and my pen will certainly ruin a lying politician’s day! 🙂
One can dare to dream that those who won election will govern fairly and wisely but the pen and postage are there to provide perspective to those who choose poorly as I suspect our Senate delegation will do more often than they don’t.