Imagine Democrats failing to remind seniors of their work to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and you get the picture. Even where Democrats did deliver-as on the student loan front-they did a lousy job of communicating about their accomplishments. While there have been some important initiatives with regard to student loans, and while the federal stimulus bill did a lot to keep colleges open and affordable, there was never a sense that 18-to-29-year-olds were a central-or even prominent-concern of the Obama administration or the aging Democratic leadership in the House and Senate.ģ. Democrats have not done enough for young people. That’s no small matter when we recall that Kirk won by just 65,000 votes statewide.Ĭhampaign County Clerk Mark Shelden says: "Virtually everything that drove college kids to turn out for Obama kind of got ignored."Ģ. Overall, in Illinois, 54 percent of voters over 30 cast ballots November 2, while just 23 percent of voters under 30 did so. Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk easily won Champaign County, as he did a number of other parts of the state where campus turnout collapsed. That’s represent’s a 65 percent drop in turnout in precincts were young voters make up most of the electorate. This year, according to a survey by the Politico, the figure fell to 2,615. In Champaign County, Illinois, home to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the ten precincts identified by local election officials as "entirely campus" turned out 7,535 votes in 2008. Those numbers are significantly worse than initial exit polling suggested.Īnd the picture on ground is even darker. The Circle study suggests that turnout among young voters in 2010 was down almost 10 percent from the last midterm election year, 2006, when Obama was not even on the ballot. And the down-ballot losses were even more significant, as close contests for legislative and local races tipped to the Republicans after young people failed to show. That cost Democrats Senate and House seats across the country. But only 20.9 percent of them bothered to vote.ĬIRCLE director Peter Levine said, "For liberal students, this election felt, at best, as a defensive move, protecting a Congress they don’t like that much." Look for a more detailed analysis from Sutherland of the 2010 elections and state tax issues in the near future.In 2010, polls showed that young people were still supportive of Obama and the Democrats. At the federal level, Republican gains may hamper the Main Street Fairness Act because some right-leaning policy groups view the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement as a “new” tax. Of course, Republicans’ historical temperance towards new taxes will be juxtaposed against the states’ ever-present budget shortfalls. These results will affect states’ willingness to enact significant state tax legislation, such as combined reporting, sales tax base expansion, and aggressive nexus legislation, to name a few. Only the Oklahoma Senate switched from Republican to Democrat controlled. Further, the following state legislative chambers switch from “D” to “R” – Alabama (House and Senate) Indiana (House) Iowa (House) Ohio (House) Maine (Senate) Michigan (House) New Hampshire (House and Senate) North Carolina (House and Senate) Pennsylvania (House) New York (Senate) Minnesota (House and Senate) Montana (House) Colorado (House). All six Republican incumbents won Republicans defeated Democratic incumbents in two of the seven other incumbent races. Of the 37 gubernatorial races held in 2010, Republicans won 23. At both the federal and state levels, the GOP won a number of game-changing races that will impact state and local tax policy in 2011 and beyond.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |