Elections discussion post
Pluto has suggested (and I agree) that there was a discussion started by Marie regarding the 2025 elections that is worthy of continuing. So, I am going to post here a link to the comment that started the thread and if folks feel like continuing the discussion, well, have at it.
If the discussion continues after it slides down the list a bit, I will pin it up at the top until it looks to be concluded.
Have fun!
Here's the text of the original comment from Marie if you need it to get (re)started:
At this risk of being wrong,
The 2025 NYC election was a potential game changer. A thirty-four year old, NYC Democratic-Socialist Muslim mayor elect couldn't have been conceivable a year ago by almost anyone (moi included). The Dem-Reps are praying that this is a one-off and will do their best to trash Mamdani and his public policy efforts every day. Their only problem is that their answer is Trump and the Dem-Neolibs which is exactly what opened the door for Mamdani, and Cuomo lost twice to Mamdani. AIPAC is clearly an identifiable loser in this election.
Drilling down, there are some interesting elements. Independent primary expenditures supporting Cuomo were $16 million and opposing Mamdani were $7.5 million. Comparatively a negligible $1 million pro Mamdani and anti Cuomo. Candidate primary expenditures were $6.3 for Mamdani and $5.5 for Cuomo. Candidate general election spending will be approximately $7 million each, but expect the independent expenditures for Cuomo and against Mamdani will be even more.
Turnout in the prior last three mayoral elections was approximately 1.1 million. Yesterday 2.0+ million. Would guess that NYC GOP voters turned out in their usual mayoral election numbers of just over 300,000 and over half of them voted for Cuomo. If that's correct, Cuomo only added 262,000 votes from his primary total. Mamdani added 462,000 votes.
Trump was a big loser in New Jersey and Virginia this year. While it's common for the party in the WH to have losses in the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, can't recall that recent ones have been this large. Still, the candidates in those two states most likely won, but just not with such large margins which means they are more of the same instead of different.
Comments
good idea joe
.
Thanks!
Zionism is a social disease
It makes you want to believe
we can accomplish something. From what I’ve read, Mamdani got out thousands of volunteers who went door to door, and people were reading about it because the media covered it, which probably increased the number of volunteers.
At Consortium News this week Jon Queally wrote that Mamdani “ran a campaign focused on making life more affordable for the workers who make the nation’s largest city run and thrive.” That issue resonates from Eastern Europe to San Francisco. It has a lot to do with what happened in Ukraine. The second largest country in Europe, half again as big as California, Ukraine had before the war about the same population as California, a highly educated workforce, and vast mineral and agricultural resources, again, similar to California. And yet, unlike California, Ukraine had the second lowest standard of living, after Moldova, in Europe. Because of the war, Ukraine now has the lowest standard of living, of course. But the comparison between Ukraine and California is interesting because each place demonstrates what happens when a State’s natural resources are used to provide benefits to an oligarchy, or to the workforce.
California is in a slide toward Shock Doctrine status, I think, because the people who do the work of producing food and maintenance and care of children are living in cars, San Francisco teachers can’t afford to live in the city, and the rich get richer. But Ukraine is in the advanced state of Shock Doctrine, total destruction, out-migration of nearly half its population, authoritarian corruption, and military industrial death.
Mamdani’s volunteers create hope for peaceful change. I hope with all my heart they succeed.