North by Northwest

By Anonymous -
I spent last night fretting over the South Dakota House race, while in the next room my teen-age daughter got educated in movie history by watching "North by Northwest" (another South Dakota cliffhanger).

Herseth-Diedrich was also a cliff-hanger, but we won. Because the story wasn't covered extensively by the national press (and even the official Democratic blog went to bed before the counting started) I got a lot of my insight from Daily Kos.

Here is some of what I learned:

  • Republican Diedrich's claim he would be lucky to get within 5% of Herseth, made over the last weekend, was a ploy aimed at holding down the Indian reservation vote, and it almost worked. Those counties went heavily for Herseth, but turnout was down.
  • Contrary to what you might think, Republicans are heavily-motivated to beat us. Some GOP counties in South Dakota turned out 65-75% of their vote yesterday. The total vote exceeded 50% of registrations, which is awesome for a special election.
  • Maybe there's something to this Kerry rope-a-dope strategy. Herseth won narrowly, but she won. Meanwhile Dean-ites like Mike Nelson failed to even get through their primaries.
  • It was a fair fight. Despite paper ballots, the votes were counted within about five hours of the polls closing.
  • No one will ever replace Cary Grant.

What did you learn?

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