Republican Incumbent Erik Paulsen takes on Democrat Jim Meffert
Friday, November 5, 2010
The Results Are In!
The people have spoken, the votes have been tallied, and new leaders have been chosen. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of US citizens flocked to the polls to vote. In Minnesota's third district a total of 274,093 votes were cast distributing among Erik Paulsen and Jim Meffert, as well as the Independent candidate and write in votes. Not surprisingly, the Republican incumbent, Erik Paulsen, won the House seat once again. However, Paulsen did not beat out the DFL candidate, Jim Meffert, by the large margin that most had expected. Paulsen took 161,178 votes while Meffert was not significantly behind with 100,240 votes. According to the earlier election forecasts one would have thought Paulsen to win the election by many more votes.
Undoubtedly, Jim Meffert put up a substantial fight against the Republican Erik Paulsen within the midst of a poor Democratic performance. The national outcome resulted in Democrats taking 189 House seats, while the Republicans increased their representation to 239 seats, a gain of more than sixty seats in the House! Such an upheaval has not occurred for over the past decade. Subsequently, this shift of political control in Congress is most likely going to lead to complications among the Democratic President and the Republican majority House.
While Paulsen won, what about Meffert's campaign led him to a closer defeat than expected. Since past posts indicate that he did not have nearly as much funds for advertising and get out the vote efforts, was there a last minute surge in donations or ad tactics that compelled democratic voters to try to turnout for Meffert?
That is exactly why Meffert's closer than expected defeat was so surprising to me. I have found no evidence why this could have happened considering the polls showed Paulsen ahead of Meffert by such a significant margin. Perhaps voters had changed their decisions, the polls were quite inaccurate, or more people voted than expected. We may never know...
While Paulsen won, what about Meffert's campaign led him to a closer defeat than expected. Since past posts indicate that he did not have nearly as much funds for advertising and get out the vote efforts, was there a last minute surge in donations or ad tactics that compelled democratic voters to try to turnout for Meffert?
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly why Meffert's closer than expected defeat was so surprising to me. I have found no evidence why this could have happened considering the polls showed Paulsen ahead of Meffert by such a significant margin. Perhaps voters had changed their decisions, the polls were quite inaccurate, or more people voted than expected. We may never know...
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