Grab and Keel

A first look at how the counties voted and a chance to compare presidential votes with those of Prop 8 and others.

The California Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified the election for the state on December 13th, 2008. As she said, more than 13.7million California voters voted, making it a 79.4% of total registered voters in the state, the second highest ever, after the Johnson- Goldwater contest in 1964. Highest turnouts were 93.4% in Sonoma, 90.4% in Marin, and 88.6% in Amador counties.

Information on various aspects of the process, and other information, like CA Senate and House can be found  as pdf, HERE.

A look at the presidential election results is interesting  and is in pdf, HERE.

The final certified vote for CA was Obama, 61.1% @  8274,473 votes over 37% McCain @ 5,011,781 votes.

They can be compared on the county-by-county results of the ballot measures in this pdf, HERE.

For example, while Marin County voted 78% for Obama, they were only 75.1% opposed to Proposition 8. Sonoma County’s vote for Obama was 73.7% versus, against Prop 8 @ 66.5%. Solano voted 63.5% in favor of Obama, and 55. %, in favor of Prop 8.

I’m sure wiser people than I, will identify issues and deconstruct what happened in the passing of Proposition 8, prohibiting same sex marriage. For example, Solano County probably has a higher and more traditional Latino population. However, I do think the economic downturn, and resulting loss of alternative information sources such as: cable, dish DSL access and newspapers, cannot be discounted. Neighborhoods have struggled for the last year and half to keep homes, ending expensive subscriptions of media is the first to go. Solano County was barraged with crazy anti Prop 8 ads on regular TV until the very last moment, when Diane Feinstein finally put out some counter ads.

 For a look at how the US Representative elections went, go HERE.

In April, Bowen will issue a Supplement to the Statement of Vote with more details on how votes were cast by Senate Assembly, board of Equalization, County and City districts.

I Own My Vote, PUMA, The Denver Group, The New Agenda