Livingston County voters on Tuesday (January 15, 2008) turned out to be a lot like voters elsewhere in Michigan, only more so.
On both the Democratic and Republican side, voters gave bigger margins of victory to the winning candidates than did voters statewide.
According to figures from The New York Times, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, Sen. Hillary Clinton carried the county with 59 percent of the vote. Uncommitted, which essentially means Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, came in with 36 percent, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich claimed 4 percent. Statewide, Clinton had 55 percent of the vote.
The uncommitted vote was much higher in Wayne County (46 percent) than in Livingston County, as African American voters apparently expressed their preference for Obama. Without a significant African American population, that didn't happen in Livingston.
(To get the figures, use the maps and place your cursor over Livingston County.)
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney claimed 45 percent, John McCain 26 percent, and Mike Huckabee 13 percent. Across Michigan, Romney had just 39 percent.
What does that tell us about Livingston County? One interpretation may be that Livingston County evangelicals did not turnout for Huckabee. Or if they did, there are a lot fewer of them than we've been led to believe.
McCain's personal appearance in the county did him little good. On television, the guy looks old. He may look even older in person. Nothing wrong with being old, but voters this year seem to want change and McCain's age is a reminder of how long he has been around Washington.
Most likely, it was Romney's promise to bring back auto industry jobs versus McCain's admission that the jobs are gone for good that helped him in Livingston County. People actually bought Romney's promise. Maybe he'll resurrect the Rambler and American Motors, the car company his dad used to run.
No comments:
Post a Comment