Looks like the turnout was actually lower, but different people voted... from MSNBC... ________ THE FIELD POLL estimated Tuesday that as many as 10 million California voters, about two-thirds of all those registered, would vote in the election on recalling Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. But with 7.6 million voters casting ballots, turnout ended up being 49 percent of registered voters which was less than in last year’s election in which Davis beat Republican Bill Simon. LOWER TURNOUT THAN IN ’94 In non-presidential election years, the recent high point for voter participation in California was 1994, when 60 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Much of the excitement that year centered on Proposition 187, the ballot initiative which made illegal aliens ineligible for social services and public education. This year’s crusade to recall Davis was initially driven by veteran anti-tax crusader Ted Costa and later bankrolled by Rep. Darrel Issa, but the movement took on a life of its own, prompting more than 200,000 Californians to register to vote in the past six months.
My mistake. I went to a website that listed the vote totals for all the candidates from last year, etc., and the total number of votes cast in the Gubernatorial election was something like 7.167 million. Plus, when Arnold's 48% of the vote is more votes than the roughly 48% of the vote that Davis got in 2002, that tends to imply to me that more people voted yesterday than in 2002. But I admit math isn't my strongest subject.
And now for the rest of the story... Pride in Austria on Schwarzenegger, but Less Joy Elsewhere By RICHARD BERNSTEIN The New York Times BERLIN, Oct. 8 The party went all night in Graz, the town in Austria where Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) was born, and a great deal of apple strudel was consumed it is reportedly Mr. Schwarzenegger's favorite Austrian dish. In the wee hours, when news reached the revelers that Mr. Schwarzenegger would be California's next governor, the mood, as in the rest of Austria, was joyous, amazed, and prideful. "It just proves everything is possible in the U.S." Austria's president, Thomas Klestil, said on Austrian radio, adding that Mr. Schwarzenegger's emergence in American politics would be good for Austria. "We are proud of you," Mr. Klestil said, addressing the absent Mr. Schwarzenegger. "Your repeated references to your youth in Austria have considerably raised the profile of our country in the United States." Similarly, Austria's foreign minister, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, a member of the conservative People's Party, said, "His success first in sports, then professionally and now in politics demonstrates to America and the world how good Austrians are." Elsewhere in Europe, the news of Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory prompted a far less joyous, often more jaundiced reaction. Confirmation of his victory came too late here for it to be reported in the morning newspapers. Television newscasts in Europe today treated Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory as a major event, but, so far, they have reported it in a straightforward way, without much commentary on what it means in terms of American politics. Still, judging from the commentary in Europe that has appeared so far, and that appeared in the weeks during the California campaign, there seems little doubt, as the French daily Le Monde put it some days ago, that Mozart is no longer the most famous Austrian in the world. Throughout the campaign, which was closely followed by the European news media, there has been both amusement and bemusement at the prospect of Mr. Schwarzenegger's becoming governor of the biggest American state, a sense that by electing him, California's voters were continuing an American tradition of raising celebrities above their level of competence. The commentary that has appeared since the California vote mingles several themes: the shallowness of American political commentary and the power of celebrity are certainly among them, but so is the openness of American society and American politics. The United States now has what many Europeans see as both a cowboy president and a muscleman governor, but, in the European view, it is also once again the place where opportunity still reigns. "The victory of the man from Muscle Beach is bizarre to outsiders," the German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported on its Web site today. "Schwarzenegger is the first U.S. governor who posed as a pinup, sometimes with a `boykini' and at times even stark naked," Der Spiegel wrote. "But in this state nobody is surprised anymore. The citizens never believed that one needs political experience to be a politician. If Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) was capable of doing it, Schwarzenegger can definitely do the job." The Italian daily Correre della Sera ran a long feature piece on Mr. Schwarzenegger today, highlighting both his difficult childhood, particularly his relationship with his distant and sometimes violent father, as well as the personal tenacity that, the paper said, lies behind his remarkable success in American life. A less-admiring comment came from a center-left politician, Giovanni Melandri, who called Mr. Schwarzenegger "vulgar and aggressive" and a man whose "main strength, apart from his exceptional muscles, is to be the best paid actor in the world." The leftist British daily, The Guardian, anticipating Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory, carried an article ostensibly listing lessons that the Conservative Party opposition leader Iain Duncan Smith could learn from Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign. These were among them: "Have no policies," "Marry into political royalty," and "Act like a winner." "Unlike other actors turned politicians, he has done nothing to distance himself from his movie roles," the paper said, referring specifically to Mr. Schwarzenegger's adoption of the saying "hasta la vista," from his most famous movie role, "The Terminator," in reference to California's car taxes. But The Guardian's economics correspondent, Mark Tran, pointed out in an article today that Mr. Schwarzenegger's promise to eliminate the car tax will increase the state budget deficit. "Do not be surprised if he ditches his campaign promise not to raise taxes," Mr. Tran wrote. In a strongly negative editorial scheduled for Thursday, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung argues that Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory was a combination of celebrity and the generally popular gambit in the United States of appearing to run against professional politicians. But the newspaper strongly criticized Mr. Schwarzenegger for what it portrayed as an intentional avoidance of substance. "Schwarzenegger replaces politics with entertainment this is his primary sin," the paper says. "The man lets himself be wrapped up for the voters as a governor, without allowing them to take a look inside the package. He reduced the campaign to the secret motto: vote for me because I'm famous."
