The Review has long argued that liberals and progressives should be far more careful about how they handle issues like gun control and other cultural matters that increase anger among conservatives without helping liberals. Here is a case in point from Maine:
Mike Tipping, Bangor Daily News - Emily
Shaw, formerly a Maine-based political scientist and now national
policy manager at the Sunlight Foundation, recently took a look at the
results of the [Maine] 2014 election and came up with an answer to a
persistent political question about what role a citizen-initiated
referendum banning the use of bait, traps and dogs in the hunting of
bears in Maine had on the state’s gubernatorial race.
“So what
was the effect of the highly contentious ballot measure on turnout and
support for LePage? Was it a game-changer?” asks Shaw in a post on her
personal blog.
“It totally was,” she concludes.
Shaw’s
analysis indicates that the referendum drove turnout, especially for
voters favoring the re-election of Maine governor Paul LePage.
“Controlling
for people in the town who voted for LePage in 2010 and the power of
median municipal household income, every four votes against Question 1
predicted an increase of 1 vote in support of Gov. LePage,” writes Shaw.
High
levels of opposition to the referendum (and in favor of keeping bear
baiting legal) were predictive of 17% additional turnout in municipal
totals.
Shaw hasn’t yet done the math on whether the referendum
alone could have tipped the election in LePage’s favor (LePage won by
about five percentage points over Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud),
and other factors certainly affected the race, but referendum-inspired
turnout certainly seems to have had a measurable, positive impact on his
vote totals.
1 comment:
Populist Huey Long believed that only a fool would campaign on divisive social issues.
Huey's state of Louisiana was culturally divided between socially conservative Baptists in the North and party-loving Catholics in the South. Huey told his audiences how as a boy he would get up at six o’clock on Sunday mornings, hitch the family horse to the buggy and take his Catholic grandparents to mass. After he brought them home, he would turn around and take his Baptist grandparents to church.
At the end of the day, a local politician complimented Huey and expressed his surprise at learning he had Catholic grandparents, To which Huey Long replied: "Don’t be a fool. We didn’t even have a horse."
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