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The Rubber Meets The Road. Part 2

I’m not going to be able to stay up and see if Prop 8 wins or loses. Right now, with 24% of the precincts counted, it is close, at 53% for banning gay marriage, and 47% opposed to the ban. At first glance, that looks pretty bad. But here is the thing you have to remember. In California, the smaller, less populated counties, which consists of a majority of conservative leaning voters, are the first to get counted.

This is a map from 2004. The red areas voted dominantly for Bush, the Blue, for Kerry. There is a lot more surface area that is conservative. But here is the sticky wicket. The blue areas, though it takes up much less space, those voters are very, very liberal, i.e. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and are the urban meccas of the state. Note that Kerry won with a ten percent margin. That gives you some idea of the dominance of the blue areas in state elections.

The blue areas, as a rule, take longer to get into the final tally. Because they are so much more densely populated, it takes a lot more time to count the votes in those counties. It matters. When Bill Simon was running for Governor in 2002, we went to bed with him in the lead by seven’ish points against the later-to-be-recalled Grey Davis. We woke up to find he had lost by 47 to 42 percent. That is the difference the blue areas make. Plus, in this election cycle, some of those red areas have been leaning blue. So though the measure is behind right now, we will see what the morning brings.

In the mean time, this is how the Religious Right sees the outcome of this vote:.

“If we lose California, if they defeat the marriage amendment, I’m afraid that the culture war is over and Christians have lost,” said Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association. “California is a big dam, holding back the flood — and if you take down the dam in California, it’s going to flood 49 other states.”

Before the night is over, there will be a deluge of “No” votes from SacroFranAngeles. Here’s hoping for a flood of Biblical proportions.