TRENDING UP
Students registering to vote:
Student voter registration is up by about 7,000 people statewide according to Katy Murray, president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona.
About 2,000 of those newly registered voters came from the UA. After months of campaigning, the Arizona Students’ Association wrapped up voter registration efforts on Tuesday. It was the “largest student registration drive Arizona has ever had,” according to Murray.
Despite some tumult over misspending allegations levied by student leaders at Arizona State University earlier this semester, ASA gets a tip of the hat for doing its part in helping Arizona students participate in an election largely driven by young voters.
Pollster getting it right:
New York Times blogger Nate Silver was the real winners of the election.
As the campaign drew near its end, some political pundits derided Silver for his polling forecasts, which showed Obama in the lead. Silver and NBC’s Joe Scarborough went so far as to bet money on Silver’s predictions.
But the joke’s on his critics, as Obama performed nearly exactly the way Silver’s statistical models predicted. Even Fox News acknowledged Silver’s accuracy.
TRENDING DOWN
Republicans are trending down, nationally:
As Rick Tyler, a past aide to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said, “The party is clearly in some sort of identity crisis.”
The failure to reclaim the presidency has the GOP doing some introspection. Some strategists have said the party needs to move closer to the center in order to appeal to a more moderate voter bloc. Others have demanded party leaders resign so that the GOP can shift even further to the right.
But not all is lost. In a HuffPost Live segment, conservative Grover Norquist pointed out that the GOP controls more governorships and state legislatures than at any time since 1920. Just look at Arizona.
Florida just keeps being Florida:
On election night, the U.S. once again waited for Florida’s votes to come in. And waited. And then waited some more, on into the day after election night.
It’s been a dozen years since the Bush-Gore Supreme Court debacle involving hanging chads. Since then, Florida has taken steps to improve its voting systems, and it seemed to function OK in most counties. But for whatever reason, it continues to fail in larger counties.
This time it’s not such a big deal — President Barack Obama was able to capture a clear Electoral College majority without the state.
But even so, someone’s got to say it: Get it together, Florida.
