UPDATE: More recent absentee ballot numbers are here, and a precinct-level analysis of the early voting is here.
Absentee ballot requests and returns continue to favor Democrat Liz Mathis over Cindy Golding, her Republican opponent in the Iowa Senate district 18 special election.
The latest numbers from the Linn County Auditor’s Elections office are after the jump, along with recent comments about marriage equality by the Senate district 18 candidates.
At close of business on October 31, the Linn County Auditor had received 9,147 absentee ballot requests for the November 8 election. According to the Elections Office, 89.6 percent of those ballot requests came from voters residing in Senate district 18. The other 10 percent were from people planning to vote in local elections elsewhere in the county.
Of the 9,147 ballots issued so far:
4,555 (49.8 percent) went to registered Democrats
2,332 (25.5 percent) went to Republicans
2,249 (24.6 percent) went to no-party voters
Eleven went to to voters with some other registration.
At the close of business on October 31, the Linn County Auditor’s office had received 5,388 absentee ballots for the November 8 election. That number includes people who voted early in person at the auditor’s office as well as those who filled out their absentee ballots at home. The returned ballots broke down as follows:
2,910 (54.1 percent) came from registered Democrats
1,366 (25.4 percent) came from Republicans
1,108 (20.6 percent) came from no-party voters
Four came from voters with some other party registration.
UPDATE: Here are the numbers released at the end of the business day on November 1. Of 9,362 absentee ballots issued so far:
4,631 (49.5 percent) went to registered Democrats
2,422 (25.9 percent) went to Republicans
2,298 (24.6 percent) went to no-party voters
Eleven went to to voters with some other registration.
Of 6,044 absentee ballots that the Linn County Auditor’s Office had received from voters at the end of the day on November 1:
3,187 (52.8 percent) came from registered Democrats
1,602 (26.5 percent) came from Republicans
1,250 (20.7 percent) came from no-party voters
Five came from voters with some other party registration.
The proportion of absentee ballots from Democrats, Republicans and no-party voters has changed little since last Tuesday or the end of last week. We can’t determine from these numbers whether the independents voting early are evenly split or are leaning toward Mathis or Golding. That said, it’s a safe bet that Mathis has banked more votes than Golding with a week to go.
Both political parties and several outside interest groups have been working on GOTV in Senate district 18. Mathis has to hope her absentee ballot lead reflects greater voter enthusiasm on the Democratic side. Golding has to hope the discrepancy comes from Republicans’ tendency to vote on election day, not by absentee ballot. A strong conservative turnout on November 8 could put Golding over the top, so Democrats are in no position to celebrate victory yet. But of course it’s always better to go into election day leading by a thousand or more votes.
Several people have asked me how large turnout is likely to be for the Senate district 18 election. The short answer is that I have no idea, but I’ve been thinking about some possible educated guesses. Here are the turnout numbers for the most competitive 2010 Iowa Senate races (pdf):
Senate district 1: 15,329 votes cast
Senate district 5: 23,572 votes cast
Senate district 13: 20,569 votes cast
Senate district 37: 29,139 votes cast
Senate district 45: 23,733 votes cast
Senate district 47: 19,751 votes cast
Note: the Senate district 37 race between Democratic incumbent Staci Appel and Republican State Representative Kent Sorenson had significantly higher turnout than the other closely-fought Senate races last year. In part, that reflects rapid population growth in Warren County during the past decade. The Appel/Sorenson race also resembled the Senate district 18 campaign in that it was “ground zero” for the battle over marriage equality in Iowa. Appel’s husband was one of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who concurred in the Varnum v Brien ruling on marriage. Sorenson was one of the legislature’s most outspoken critics of same-sex marriage rights and sought to bring back elections for the state Supreme Court. Republicans, Democrats and outside groups spent large amounts of money advertising and organizing in the district, just as they are now doing in Senate district 18.
One could argue that there’s no way turnout will be as high for this year’s special election as it was for a general election when the governor and members of Congress were on the ballot. The last highly competitive special election for the Iowa legislature was the 2009 race in House district 90. Voters cast 8,092 ballots in that race, which also involved heavy advertising and GOTV on both sides. An Iowa House district is half the size of a Senate district, so if turnout in Senate district 18 is comparable to what we saw in House district 90, we could be looking at around 16,000 votes cast.
On the other hand, there’s much more at stake now, because the November 8 result will determine whether Democrats retain a 26-24 Iowa Senate majority or have to share power in a chamber deadlocked 25-25. The 2009 race in House district 90 was high-profile because it came only a few months after the Iowa Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on marriage, and Republicans were hoping a win would give them momentum going into the next election cycle. But even if Curt Hanson hadn’t carried House district 90, Democrats would have maintained an Iowa House majority for the 2010 session.
Looking at the 2008 election results for all Iowa Senate races, I noticed that Senate district 18 had the second-highest number of votes cast. (Democrat Swati Dandekar defeated Republican Joe Childers in that open-seat race.) Strong population growth in the Cedar Rapids suburbs put more voters in Senate district 18 than in most other Iowa Senate districts. The summer 2008 floods were relevant too, because they displaced an unknown number of residents from downtown Cedar Rapids to suburban neighborhoods. It’s also possible that demographic factors such as relatively high income and education levels in Senate district 18 are linked to above-average voter turnout there.
Another way of approaching this question is to look at the proportion of Iowans who prefer to vote early. According to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office (pdf), 587,561 women and 537,824 men cast ballots in the 2010 general election. Of those, 201,638 women and 158,829 men voted with absentee ballots (that includes people who voted early in person at satellite stations). In other words, about a third of the electorate cast early ballots. I don’t know whether a similar proportion of Senate district 18 residents voted early.
My hunch is that absentee ballots will make up more than a third of the total votes cast in Senate district 18, because local elections are the only other game in town on November 8. Typically turnout is much lower for city races than for statewide and Congressional elections.
The Linn County Auditor’s office has sent out 9,147 ballots, 90 percent of them (roughly 8,200) to voters living in Senate district 18. Does that represent half or more of the total votes that will be cast for Golding and Mathis? Your guess is as good as mine.
I will say confidently that if Mathis wins, she can be grateful for high name recognition and superior organizing on the Democratic side. Her campaign rhetoric isn’t going to inspire anyone. Yesterday both candidates met with the Cedar Rapids Gazette editorial board. Look how Mathis answered the questions about same-sex marriage in Iowa:
Q – Do you believe that Iowa voters should determine whether or not the state constitution should declare that marriage should be between a man and a woman?
Mathis – “I think we’ve both answered that, three, four, five, six times or something. And a couple of times by your two reporters. So, I’ll say it again. Iowa should not discriminate. I don’t believe in discrimination. I believe in the Iowa State Supreme Court, their unanimous ruling, appellate ruling on gay marriage. Varnum v. Brien is constitutionally sound. And I’ll just leave it at that.” […]
Q – How has the ruling changed the state? (To Mathis)
Mathis – “I think it’s changed the state because we’re back to one-issue voting. I think there are people who are going to vote on that and vote on that only. They’re missing a chance to really be informed about a lot of other things that are very, very, very important to our economy. You know, we need to look at the economics of our state and, um, that’s what I see most. That people are putting blinders on just one issue.”
Q – So no positive change?
“A positive change in a way that people are becoming politically active, if that’s the type of politics I think that you prefer. There are people who are looking more clearly at the process and understanding and being more involved. If that’s an upside. I’m not sure if you’re looking at this issue in particular.”
So, Mathis thinks the court’s ruling was “constitutionally sound,” and she’s against discrimination. But asked how the Varnum v Brien decision changed the state, the first thing that popped into her head was a negative: a lot of people became single-issue voters. Pressed to name a positive impact, she said the ruling made people more politically active and involved “if that’s an upside.”
Way to make all those One Iowa donors and volunteers feel great about helping your campaign, Ms. Mathis.
Helpful hint: Iowa has an estimated 4,000 same-sex households. About a third of those include married couples, who now enjoy the same civil rights as married heterosexuals. And whether they are partnered or not, thousands of LGBT Iowans know that they are not second-class citizens in this state.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and then House Speaker Pat Murphy didn’t hesitate to welcome the positive impact of Varnum v Brien on April 3, 2009:
“Thanks to today’s decision, Iowa continues to be a leader in guaranteeing all of our citizens’ equal rights.
“The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.
“When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.
“Today, the Iowa Supreme Court has reaffirmed those Iowa values by ruling that gay and lesbian Iowans have all the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as any other Iowan. […]
“In the case of recognizing loving relationships between two adults, the Iowa Supreme Court is once again taking a leadership position on civil rights.
“Today, we congratulate the thousands of Iowans who now can express their love for each other and have it recognized by our laws.”
It shouldn’t be hard for Mathis to think of a positive way marriage equality has changed Iowa.
Not that Golding’s answer to the same questions will please conservatives trying to paint her as the savior of “traditional marriage” in Iowa. She told the Gazette’s editorial board,
Golding – “And I have said very clearly that I believe that the citizens of Iowa should vote on this issue. We are in the spotlight and continue to be in the spotlight on an issue that we chose not to be there. The Legislature voted on a bill that was by representative government. I understand the bill was poorly written. It was then voted on by the judges to determine the constitutionality of that bill. And now we need to go to the people, which is the final step. And I believe that once we vote on it, whether we vote it up or down, the spotlight can come off Iowa for that issue and we can focus on business, we can focus on jobs, focus on education. We can focus on the things we really need to be taking our time and energy. Because nobody in our district, it was not a huge issue to either one of us as we were going around. It became an issue to us by the national media.”
Q – How do think the ruling has changed Iowa?
Golding – “I don’t know how the ruling has dramatically changed, but I can see changes in the schools. I am a volunteer in the high schools. And in my daughter’s high school, they have a scholarship for a gay student. And I am curious what the sexual orientation of a student should be for a scholarship in high school. That troubles me.”
Q – Is that the only criteria for the scholarship?
“Well there’s academics, but you must be a declared GLBT student in order to apply for it. That troubles me.”
Q – So if the impact hasn’t been dramatic, I guess, how do you think the state’s made better by having a referendum? It’s obviously going to be pretty contentious, pretty divisive. How is Iowa made better through that process?
Golding – “I think across the nation where the voting has come up, in those states it is contentious until the vote is done. And then regardless of whether the state voted up or voted down, the spotlight came off them. We need to take the focus off Iowa.”
Yet again, Golding downplays the issue and says people should be able to vote on marriage without claiming that same-sex marriage has harmed Iowa in any material way. She may score points with conservatives by implying that an LGBT agenda influences public schools, but she’s wrong about the Matthew Shepard scholarships. Those predate the Varnum v Brien ruling.
Any comments about the Senate district 18 race are welcome in this thread.
P.S. Bonus points for ignorance go to Jon Tack, the Constitution Party candidate in Senate district 18. At last week’s League of Women Voters forum, he said this about same-sex marriage rights:
“With the issue of gay marriage or same-sex marriage, marriage is actually a religious ceremony,” Tack said. “It is not part of a government function and, as such, it therefore violates the First Amendment upon which the government shall not make any laws respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibit the free exercise thereof.
“The decision handed down by the Iowa Supreme Court should be nullified because the government has no business dealing with religion and telling them how to operate, who to accept in terms of marriage in Christianity, which is what we are in Iowa – primarily in Iowa; mostly [this is] a Christian nation. Marriage is between one man and one woman.”
Guess again, Mr. Tack. Excerpt from pages 66 and 67 of the Varnum decision (pdf):
In the final analysis, we give respect to the views of all Iowans on the issue of same-sex marriage–religious or otherwise–by giving respect to our constitutional principles. These principles require that the state recognize both opposite-sex and same-sex civil marriage. Religious doctrine and views contrary to this principle of law are unaffected, and people can continue to associate with the religion that best reflects their views. A religious denomination can still define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and a marriage ceremony performed by a minister, priest, rabbi, or other person ordained or designated as a leader of the person’s religious faith does not lose its meaning as a sacrament or other religious institution.