Random Thoughts on the Elections

Following up on Robert's post:

-Yes, we need more info about the voting patterns of non-Cuban Hispanic voters. I assume that a lot of non-Cuban Hispanic immigrants are like New Yorkers who move to Florida: they tend to vote for Democrats, even though they migrated from places that were mismanaged by leftist governments. What's the state of knowledge on these issues?

-I was encouraged that Ros Lehtinen won by a large margin. She is a well-established incumbent, and she ran on a pro-environment, pro-constituent service, pro-warm fuzzies platform that didn't mention her party affiliation or support for the war. But Taddeo ran on an anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Republican platform and tried to associate Ros Lehtinen with all of those things. Even though she is politically inexperienced, Taddeo is personally compelling and seems reasonable, and I thought that she had a good chance to win on Obama's coattails. Did Taddeo fail to do better mainly because she was running against an incumbent? Her anti-Bush, anti-war partisanship struck me as shrill and opportunistic, and I wonder if it hurt her with voters.

-I was also encouraged that Margolis, the establishment candidate for Miami-Dade property assessor, who spent a lot of money on TV ads, couldn't break 50% in a four-way race and faces a runoff.