I am nervous as hell. How about you?
Discuss.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Numb, frankly. My husband and our mailed in our ballots a couple of weeks ago, and received acknowlegement emails. I suppose there’s something in that California doesn’t seem to be quite as fucked up as say, Arizona, but that’s all.
Numb as well. Not my fault if Dems can’t motivate their base. Already voted.
Voted this morning, so anxious I can barely hold down food.
Voted last Friday. While there are reasons to be nervous, I remain optimistic that the aggregated polls are skewed by too many conservative-favoring junk polls, and also aren’t accounting for the unusual number of younger people registering to vote in an off-cycle year, presumably because they don’t want to lose any more rights. We’ll see if that optimism is justified.
Which also unfortunately has to be balanced against the increase in the number of county clerks with open MAGA associations since 2020, and who knows how many of those will try to mess with the election totals. And if there is a clear and strong Democrat win, well, there might be a little violence, so that will be fun. [It will not actually be fun]
Very nervous about the outcome but also about the people who will not accept the outcome if they lose. I am seriously afraid there will be violence.
Exhausted enough that I’m anesthetized for the moment against apprehension—the polls were my first stop in a chain of errands. I was fortunate in that my neighborhood isn’t at high risk for the sort of armed intimidation I’ve heard horror stories about, and that I had the benefit of a transport driver (who was kindly, patient, accommodating, and generally a godsend.)
Where I live, they’re saying it will take days for a final tally. I can’t think of that ever happening in the past. Yes, I voted.
The local Rs had a “men in girls sports” sign amidst their signage supporting various repugnant candidates outside the local polling place. I can’t remember ever having seen anything but the generic campaign signs there before. It’s getting vicious.
Though it’s always baffled me that telling defamatory lies about an individual is legally actionable, but if you disparage an entire class of people in ways that are likely to result in violence, you can evidently get away with that, regardless of doing more actual damage.
I am convinced that if the Repubs win this election, there will not be another.
I’m not American but I’ve ended up being in the US for four of the last six elections — including this one. The rest of the world are also crossing our fingers.
I showed up at my chosen polling place thinking the wait would be around 15 minutes, since that’s been the usual time for such things at this location. It was about 40-45 minutes before I got to the actual polling booths. I’m told the waits at the other polling places in this city were around the same as here, and the waits at many of the other places in the county were at least an hour. And I showed up here around 3:40p my time, before the after-work rush really hit.
I’m told the problem in part was that the folks in charge of arranging polling workers did not expect anything close to this level of turnout for an off year. Busy than usual, yes, but not ‘wait in line for almost an hour all day’ busy. (This is a rural area, so a wait this long to vote is quite unusual here.)
What that means for this election I don’t know. This is Indiana; the longest this state ever contemplated turning anything blue was .000000001 microseconds, so…. :/
I’m a bit worked up. As I mentioned in one of the other threads, when I voted, about a third of the time there was no option except Republican, so it feels like everything was weighted to begin with. Not to mention the Republicans are doing their damndest to suppress the mail-in votes, which as I understand it, are the preferred method of voting for the Democrats in the first place. I have a sinking feeling we are going Red everywhere whether we like it or not.
One reminder for those watching: States differ in how and when the votes are counted, but in general – early in-person votes are counted first, which moderately favor Democrats, then the in-person election day votes, which favor Republicans, and then finally the mail-in votes, which strongly favor Democrats. As a result, close races are going to start out with the dem in the lead, then swing to the repub, and then head back to the center where it’s anyone’s game, and might not be resolved for a few days at least, as some mail-ins won’t have arrived yet (in most states it’s the date of postal mark which is the cutoff, not the date of arrival). So don’t give up hope if it looks like the repub won tonight by the thinnest of margins, it’s likely they didn’t.
And then if the dem wins days later by a narrow margin there’s definitely going to be endless fraud allegations and demands for recounts, which will [not] be fun.
So far as I can figure out, there is no Red Wave. Everywhere except Florida, Dems are doing better than forecast. The issue is that Republicans are sweeping the field in Florida, and DeSantis is going to take that to mean that he has a mandate to persecute LGBT people there. He’s probably right.
Republicans will declare any majority a “red wave” and insist that it’s a mandate for absolute rule. That’s always what they do — it wasn’t long ago that they had a Senate majority based on an election in which they got fewer total Senate votes than Democratic Party candidates, but they still insisted that this was a “mandate from The People” to adopt the entirety of the GOP platform and proof that anyone who disagreed with them was an anti-American criminal.
Very excited that Fetterman won in Pennsylvania. He seems like a great guy. I’m from a town that’s about 5 miles from Braddock, a blighted former steel town, where he was mayor for many years. He’s a privileged guy with a degree from Harvard. He could have done a lot of things with his life. Thank the Great Goddess he chose to live in Braddock and become mayor there. He won his first mayoral race by one vote.
A lot less excited by DeSantis’s immediate victory in Florida. Also Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s victory in Arkansas.
That said, it’s turning out not to be a red tsunami. (Who knew.) Or even a red wave. Take it from Lindsey Graham:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/08/republicans-midterm-election-poor-preformance
I just love it when Republicans concede anything. Anything at all. Because they’re mostly known for taking victory laps before the race has even begun.
Lauren Boebert might be losing. So sad. Sarah Palin is down by about 20 percent. What a pity.
…though I’m happy to see at least a few Republicans admitting that the election results weren’t what they’d been telling everyone to expect, and I’m optimistic that the “it’s all a conspiracy” Big Lie plurality won’t be able to get too much traction.
Well, it’s virtually guaranteed at this point that Republicans will not gain any seats in the Senate, and there’s a decent chance of Democrats getting +1 (possible but far from certain) or even +2 if we’re really lucky. And unfortunately, we really need that +2 to ensure that neither Manchin nor Sinema are a significant factor in Senate votes. (Incidentally both are up for reelection in 2024.)
The House is not looking so good. Unless Democrats in Arizona, Nevada, and California do really well, then the Republicans take over, though probably with only a very slight majority. And yes, California is a factor here; there are some red districts which went blue in 2018 and 2020, but aren’t necessarily going to stay that way this time around. Which would be… not a catastrophe, but hardly ideal, particularly if we end up with Kevin McCarthy as speaker and he keeps trying to impeach Biden.
Fingers crossed to all people in the US, especially the marginalized. Hope it’s going well.
Although Kevin McCarthy probably means a dysfunctional House that impeaches Biden and proposes Don’t Say Gay bill after Don’t Say Gay bill, such a House would really help Dems in the next presidential election. There’s nothing that will get Biden back on his feet like free news on how crazy Republicans are.
While the broader federal bits still have me nervous I’m hugely relieved with the state level stuff here in NY
Most notably Kathy Hochul beating Lee Zeldin because the later had me terrified
I was a poll worker in Southern California yesterday. Things went very well at my location—we had plenty of help, and even when things got busy in the late afternoon there was never a line (though people had to wait for an open voting booth a couple of times). California has a hybrid of everyone-gets-a-mailed-ballot-but-can-vote-in-person-if-they-want system (since Covid), with iPads to check everyone in that are nifty and quick. Everyone votes on paper unless they want to use the machine, or there is an issue (wrong polling location, newly registered, etc.). The combo of mailed ballots and a streamlined check in system has really sped up the whole process for us, since less people are actually voting in person, but are mailing their ballot or dropping the mail ballots off on Election Day (which they can do at any location). Democracy is still working here, and I’m grateful that I live in this State.
Maybe beside the point, but the man in that picture looks too much like Phoenix Wright and I don’t like it
I voted by mail and got the message it was counted, now I wait and hope. I’m disabled and on SSDI and every election feels like a referendum on whether or not I’m allowed to exist.
I think AZ is getting bluer with time, so if this election is okay, we’re closer to being safe.
Sinema must be primaried and the Dems better be on it already.