La vittoria della candidata democratica Kathy Hochul nella suppletiva del ventiseiesimo distretto dello stato di New York (quello del repubblicano cretino che si fece beccare mezzo nudo su Craiglist), una zona che per anni ha premiato solo candidati repubblicani, è probabilmente dovuta alla sua strenua difesa del Medicare (il programma di assistenza medica per gli anziani). Un brutto segnale d'allarme per il GOP.
Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare. “I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”
Come nota Nate Silver
Looking at the bigger picture, my view is that the two biggest wild cards so far this year have both broken in favor of the Democrats: one being the risk the Republicans took by voting almost unanimously for Mr. Ryan’s budget, and the other being the killing of Osama bin Laden. Even in an election that mostly comes down to the economy — President Obama and the Democrats, make no mistake, remain extremely vulnerable there — these could be important factors at the margins. Pick up an extra one percent of the vote here, an extra two percent of the vote there, and your strategy starts to look a lot more robust: maybe okay-but-not-good economic growth is enough to get the Democrats elected, in addition to good-but-not-great growth.
New York Times, FiveThirtyEight (New York Times)