Tag Archives: coakley

After Mass

Special Election in Mass./Credit: Flickr user Rob Weir

Special Election in Mass./Credit: Flickr user Rob Weir

The special election victory by Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley to fill late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts yesterday left a torrent of speculation and accusation in its wake.

Will the healthcare bill be put in jeopardy? What does this mean for the Democrats in 2010 and even 2012? Does the public trust the president to lead the country out of recession?

Patchwork Nation looks at what fueled Brown’s win, in economic terms:

Compared with candidate Obama, Coakley did worst in the six counties where unemployment rose by more than 3 percentage points in the last year. In each of those counties, she got 16 percentage points less than Obama did in 2008.

That suggests that Tuesday’s vote was a “change” vote motivated perhaps by disgruntlement. Voters may be punishing Coakley for what they perceive as a lack of focus on jobs and the economy on Obama and the Democrats’ part and overemphasis on healthcare reform.

Coakley lost votes in every county in the state compared with Obama in 2008. Unemployment is up in every county as well. That can’t be a comfort to the Democrats.

For 2010, some signs of recovery need to be apparent before voters retain their support for or swing towards the Democrats. Patchwork Nation’s Dante Chinni writes “Right now the state of the national economy is fragile. What we hear repeatedly from people we talk to in different Patchwork Nation communities around the country is: ‘We have not seen a recovery here, yet.’”

WBUR in Boston took an in-depth analysis of the election results from Tuesday night and took into account who was voting, compared with previous races.

Even in many communities where Obama had a narrow victory over McCain, Brown blew Coakley away. In Weymouth, for example, Obama got 53 percent of the vote in 2008. On Tuesday, Weymouth went red, giving Brown 61 percent to Coakley’s 38 percent.

EconomyBeat pulls from blogs around the web, on both the left and right, to assess response to the special election. Reader comments from beyond Massachusetts on sites including The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight brought out opinions on the democratic party, health care, and spending.