{"id":7269,"date":"2016-11-03T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2016-11-03T01:53:35","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T05:53:35","slug":"mocos-two-electorates-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7269","title":{"rendered":"MoCo\u2019s Two Electorates, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Montgomery County voters are some of the most progressive people in the nation.\u00a0 They elect only Democrats, and almost all very liberal ones.\u00a0 They celebrate diversity and respect civil rights.\u00a0 They support a large, active government that passes liberal laws, provides excellent schools and generous social services and has extensive environmental programs.\u00a0 Perhaps most importantly, they are willing to pay the taxes that support all of this.<\/p>\n

Is the above a true statement?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 And maybe no.\u00a0 It all depends on which electorate you\u2019re talking about.\u00a0 Montgomery County has two of them.<\/p>\n

The first electorate is comprised of those Democrats who vote in the closed primaries for County Executive, County Council and members of the General Assembly.\u00a0 Many of these are liberals who vote for candidates with similar views.\u00a0 Indeed, there is an old aphorism that it\u2019s nearly impossible to run too far to the left in MoCo elections.\u00a0 Most elected officials here regard these voters as their political base and tend to be highly responsive to them.<\/p>\n

But there is a second electorate: those residents who vote in general elections.\u00a0 These voters come from all political parties and have significant ideological diversity.\u00a0 For the most part, they tend not to reject the nominees of the Democratic Party for local and state office.\u00a0 (The last Republican elected officials here were defeated ten years ago.)\u00a0 But they can and do weigh in on charter amendments and ballot questions, and they do not always behave in accordance with the county\u2019s progressive reputation.<\/p>\n

This blog series examines the differences between these two electorates on the eve of the general election, when a landmark ballot question on term limits will be decided.\u00a0 Of the two electorates, only one \u2013 the general election voters \u2013 will decide whether term limits will pass.<\/p>\n

First, we examine the party composition of the two electorates.\u00a0 The Democratic primary voters are of course 100% Democrats since Maryland uses closed primaries.\u00a0 The general election voters are roughly 60% Democratic, slightly more than 20% Republican and slightly less than 20% unaffiliated or members of other parties.<\/p>\n

\"party-affiliation\"<\/p>\n

Are liberals a majority of the general electorate?\u00a0 That\u2019s hard to say, but a little math can help.\u00a0 If just a fifth of the Democrats, who comprise 60% of general election voters, are not<\/em> liberals, then a majority of the general electorate would probably not be liberal.\u00a0 (There are a handful of Green Party members in MoCo, but not enough to change the basic math here.)\u00a0 So while a majority of Democratic primary voters may be liberal, it\u2019s difficult to apply that characterization to the entire electorate.<\/p>\n

Another factor that can be easily seen from the data above is the relative size of the electorates.\u00a0 There are about three times as many voters in gubernatorial general elections as there are in gubernatorial Democratic primaries.\u00a0 Presidential general election voters outnumber gubernatorial primary Democrats by five to one.\u00a0 So while Democratic primary voters pick our elected officials, the presidential general voters are a much closer gauge of the political sentiments of the entire community.<\/p>\n

We will begin contrasting MoCo\u2019s two electorates in Part Two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Montgomery County voters are some of the most progressive people in the nation.\u00a0 They elect only Democrats, and almost all very liberal ones.\u00a0 They celebrate diversity and respect civil rights.\u00a0 They support a large, active government that passes liberal laws, provides excellent schools and generous social services and has extensive environmental programs.\u00a0 … Continue reading MoCo\u2019s Two Electorates, Part One<\/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":[151,63],"tags":[1545,1493],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-montgomery-county","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-montgomery-county"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1Tf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","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=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7285,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions\/7285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}