{"id":11210,"date":"2018-06-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11210"},"modified":"2018-06-21T21:33:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T01:33:10","slug":"what-will-term-limits-voters-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11210","title":{"rendered":"What Will Term Limits Voters Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

MoCo Democrats are not monolithic.\u00a0 There are several segments of them.\u00a0 There are the 40,000 or so Super Democrats<\/a>, the ones who vote in every mid-term primary.\u00a0 Then there are the sixty percent of MoCo Dems who are women<\/a>.\u00a0 There are the voters who live in the Democratic Crescent<\/a> \u2013 the area from Takoma Park over to Bethesda and Cabin John \u2013 who disproportionately turn out to vote.\u00a0 And of course there are people over age 60<\/a>, who account for a majority of regular voters.\u00a0 Candidates are aware of all of these groups and target their communications to them.\u00a0 But there\u2019s one group \u2013 potentially a big one \u2013 which few people are talking about.<\/p>\n

Term limits voters.<\/p>\n

In the 2016 general election, 70% of voters approved term limits.\u00a0 We know that a majority of the Democrats who voted in that election supported term limits because of simple mathematics.\u00a0 In that election, 62% of the voters were Democrats<\/a>.\u00a0 If all 38% of the voters who were Republicans, third party members or independents voted yes, then the other 32% must have come from the Dems.\u00a0 Divide 32% by 62% and you get 52% of Dems voting for term limits.\u00a0 If a few of the non-Dems voted no, the Dem percentage goes up.<\/p>\n

The other thing we know about term limits voters is where they live<\/a>.\u00a0 Every part of the county voted for term limits except Takoma Park.\u00a0 In most Downcounty areas, term limits support ranged from 60% to 70%.\u00a0 Upcounty areas were more supportive with term limits getting 80% or more of the vote in Clarksburg, Damascus, Derwood, Laytonsville, North Potomac and Poolesville.\u00a0 Upcounty areas have greater concentrations of Republicans than elsewhere.\u00a0 We ran a correlation coefficient between Republican voter percentage and term limits vote percentage at the precinct level and it worked out to 0.6 \u2013 meaning that partisan status was associated with most, but not all, of term limits variability.\u00a0 In other words, other things were at work too.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about all we know about term limits voters from public data.\u00a0 There\u2019s a whole lot we don\u2019t know, including:<\/p>\n

How many people who voted for term limits in that general election are going to be voting in this mid-term primary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have said it before<\/a> and we will<\/a> say it again<\/a>: MoCo Dem primary voters are not the same people as MoCo general election voters.\u00a0 Just because a majority of presidential general election Dems voted for term limits does not mean that a majority of this year\u2019s mid-term primary Dems will have voted for them.\u00a0 In fact, we bet it will be a lot less purely because the 40,000 or so Super Dems will be somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of this year\u2019s electorate and we are skeptical that they disproportionately voted for term limits.\u00a0 That said, the number of term limits voters this year won\u2019t be zero \u2013 they are definitely out there.\u00a0 Even if you split the difference and assume that a quarter of this year\u2019s Dem primary voters supported term limits, that\u2019s a big enough chunk to swing an election.<\/p>\n

Why did people vote for term limits?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is another question to which there is no answer outside of polling. \u00a0We tend to agree with former Council Member Steve Silverman, who told Bethesda Magazine<\/a>, \u201cIt was a combination of interests that created the perfect storm that led to the passage of term limits.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, there were many factors that drove those votes: anger with the nine percent property tax hike, concerns over land use, unhappiness with traffic and cost of living or maybe a simple desire for change, however nebulous that might be.\u00a0 While we believe that the Dem primary electorate is indeed different from the general electorate of two years ago, we don\u2019t believe those concerns have gone away.<\/p>\n

Who will they support this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s an easier question.\u00a0 Whatever the reason, it\u2019s hard to interpret the vote for term limits as anything other than a call for change of some kind.\u00a0 The current Democratic field for Executive contains three term-limited Council Members and three people who are not term-limited Council Members.\u00a0 That\u2019s a little simplistic \u2013 Marc Elrich is running as a progressive change candidate despite his 31-year history of elected office.\u00a0 But since Takoma Park is Elrich\u2019s home base and that is the only area in the county which voted against term limits, we are hesitant to believe that many term limits supporters are Elrich voters.\u00a0 Rather, we believe they will lean to the three outsiders \u2013 Delegate Bill Frick (D-16), former Rockville Mayor Rose Krasnow and businessman David Blair.\u00a0 And of those three, Blair has by far the most resources with which to communicate with them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Blair, we found his recent exchange<\/a> with Washington Post reporter Jennifer Barrios fascinating.<\/p>\n

When asked about his political base, David Blair considers the question then poses one of his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy political base,\u201d he says after a pause. \u201cSo does that mean who\u2019s going to come out and support me?\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that tend to gravitate to me are the ones that believe Montgomery County is a great place to live but we\u2019re slipping,\u201d Blair said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a level of frustration, and it could be related to transportation, schools, social services and this \u2014 why can\u2019t a county with this level of wealth pay for the services that we need? \u2014 and a recognition that a healthy community needs a vibrant, growing business community.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those people sound like term limits voters and they have the makings of a political base.\u00a0 Marc Elrich knows exactly who his base is: progressives, development opponents and people who live in and around Takoma Park.\u00a0 Elrich\u2019s messaging smartly concentrates on those voter segments.\u00a0 His troops\u2019 ability to get out those votes is a major reason why he might be the next Executive.<\/p>\n

Term limits voters won\u2019t be a majority of the Democratic mid-term primary electorate.\u00a0 But they might be large enough in numbers to rival the size of Elrich\u2019s base.\u00a0 If Blair can organize them \u2013 and if there are enough of them \u2013 we might be staying up late on election night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. MoCo Democrats are not monolithic.\u00a0 There are several segments of them.\u00a0 There are the 40,000 or so Super Democrats, the ones who vote in every mid-term primary.\u00a0 Then there are the sixty percent of MoCo Dems who are women.\u00a0 There are the voters who live in the Democratic Crescent \u2013 the area … Continue reading What Will Term Limits Voters Do?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,492,84,287],"tags":[1545,1627,1938,1508,1869],"class_list":["post-11210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-county-executive","category-marc-elrich","category-term-limits","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-county-executive","tag-david-blair","tag-marc-elrich","tag-term-limits"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2UO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11211,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11210\/revisions\/11211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}