Pierce County Feels a 3% Bern

Finally stole enough time to look at the Pierce County election statistics from the March 1st Presidential Primary!

And, as expected, the results are not pretty.  These numbers were found from a Blackshear Times article of March 9, 2016.

The gap between the number of Republicans vs. the number of Democrats in the county continues to increase almost as rapidly as the income gap is in the country as a whole.  In the 2014 general election, roughly 13% of the vote was Democratic.  This March primary, the Democratic votes cast is a whopping 9%.  I think a disbalance that large is very, very damaging.

We did have a 45% turnout of eligible voters.  By recent standards, that is fairly large.  Isn't that a sad commentary when less than half the registered voters showing up is considered a better than average turnout?  Not to mention the substantial number of people who could register but don't bother too.  The reality is, though, that voter registration is neither made easy or even encouraged, except through some of the Christian Right churches.

Trump won with 40% of the Republican vote.  That's mortifying enough, but that other pillar of the apocalypse, Ted Cruz, won 31% of the Republican vote, and won my own precinct two to one over Trump. For those keeping score, that's 71% of the Republican vote, and two thirds of all votes, going to two of the most reprehensible political candidates of the last few decades.

Hillary Clinton won 67% of the Democratic vote, and my candidate of choice, Bernie Sanders, won only 31.8%.  Did I and my incredible influence make a difference in my own precinct?  Not really.  He got slightly better, at 33.2%, but nothing to write home about.

Could it have been the African American vote that gave Clinton the edge in Pierce County?  Probably, although eight years ago, she also beat Obama here by 70% to 30%.  So there is an attachment here that I don't quite understand.  And frankly, I know of maybe only one Pierce County Clinton voter that chose Hillary, so it's hard for me to get an explanation.  Most of the Democratic voters I knew were voting for Bernie Sanders.

When you combine it into an overall vote, then the statistics get really horrible.  Clinton received 6% of the overall vote, and Sanders a miniscule 3%.

The Sanders voters I meet are quite enthusiastic, even if we are a tiny minority.  And we are fairly diverse, at least by age and gender.  Many of them, are open to me, but are very quiet about it to others.  It's hard to fly in the face of 91% opposition.

Every election, I hope that the trend toward extremist right wing and Christian Dominionist positions will have peaked and that some balance begins to be restored in the county.

And every election, I am proven wrong.