Trying To Find Obama--Analysis of the Lee County Election

Editor's Note: There are still provisional ballots to count, but there are no races likely to change in result. Meanwhile, the task of analysis has been a large one and has depended on information becoming available. The Board of Elections has cooperated completely. Today,starts a three part series of what happened here in Lee County and what it means. Also check the Uncommon Sense Column in tomorrow's Sanford Herald for additional perspective. Pass the news around that the analysis is finally coming in three parts.

One should be careful in applying the the tons of analysis of Obama's election when examining what happened here in Lee County. During the 1960's Democrats began to fear that the liberal national candidates for President would at best reduce the party's appeal to otherwise straight-ticket Democrat voters or, even worse, lengthen the coat tails of the Republican national tickets. For example, they did not want North Carolina's voters' preference for Ronald Reagan to “flow down” the ballot to help candidates for governor, statewide offices, and local officials. So the Democrat's own rules cost them at the ballot box. They barely benefited from the new voters Obama brought to the polls. This was not the major shift away from the Republican Party here as it was across the state and much of the country. Lee County was caught up in Barrack Obama's blue tide but he still finished 2000 votes behind John McCain. Well-established statewide Democrats like Attorney General Roy Cooper and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, and candidates running in gerrymandered districts like Congressman Bob Etheridge and State Senator Bob Atwater were able as usual to gather significant margins, but Republicans led for some Council of State positions. Local GOP candidates lost but were not wiped out.

According to the national exit polls, (click here) Republicans pondering their fate and future have noted that while there was a partisan shift in voter turnout this year, there wasn’t an ideological one: Conservatives still outnumber liberals by 50 percent.

Thirty-four percent of voters in the national exit poll identified themselves as conservatives and 22 percent as liberals, with the plurality, 44 percent, as moderates. That makes this more a center-right than a center-left country – a reason Democrats, even with all the advantages they can muster, don’t win presidential elections by double-digits.

The Democrat ticket collected 6079 straight ticket votes to the Republicans 3725 here in Lee County. That gave the Democrats a margin of 2354, a percentage proportional to the difference in party registrations. Most all that advantage was gained in the early voter turnout mounted by the Democrats and went a long way toward deciding local races. When it came to the commissioners' race, 12, 792 votes went unused as voters cast votes for less than the three votes permitted. Some were, no doubt, deliberate single shots for a single candidate, or other voters found only two candidates acceptable. Discounting the ticket leading Richard Hayes, a democrat, less than 2000 votes separated the second and sixth place finishes. The leading Republican, Larry C. “Doc” Oldham finished only 1376 behind the ticket leader. Not exactly a run-away for anyone when 12, 792 votes were left on the table. In short, the margins for the democrats were primarily in the straight-ticket voting that gave them a 2354 head start. Had the election lasted another week the outcome locally would have changed as more and more voters were angered by the tactics of Jamie Kelly, but in the early days the now-famous signs did take a toll. Voters obviously had caught onto the Reives-Lemmond connection and sent the message loud and clear that the days when officials and county employees had to kiss Mr. Reives' ring were coming to an end. Despite his usual vigorous campaigning, this time Robert Reives was Jerry Lemmond's biggest liability. And as the abuse of election reporting laws was finally forced out of Jamie Kelly, significant damage was done and Kelly's path as heir apparent collapsed. Of course for those who live by the belief that anything can be bought with money haven't given up and the final chapters of that story are yet to be written. Kelly has already one new commissioner to see if seeds of ambition could be planted to start a contest for the chairmanship that would give him and Reives a way to leverage themselves back into a controlling position. But not everyone has that gene for power and recognition that is really a mask to cover insecurity and Kelly struck out.