The Vote Count

Patriot-News

Thousands of Republicans who came out to vote on Tuesday left the polls without supporting one of the GOP's top priorities: U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's re-election.

Statewide, the Republican incumbent unofficially came away with more than 21,000 fewer GOP votes than gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, with 98 percent of votes counted. Neither faced a primary opponent, but both will be immersed in contested races in the fall.

That's terrible! A 21,000 vote difference!

"For that many voters to go in and deliberately push the button for one candidate and not the other in uncontested races does raise some eyebrows about why voters made that choice," said Christopher Borick, a Muhlenburg College political science professor. "I think that gap is noteworthy."

"It has to be an ominous indicator for Santorum," said Michael Young, managing partner of Michael Young Strategic Research.

In the southeastern part of the state, Santorum received about as many GOP votes as Swann. But in the southwest, an area that analysts agreed is critical for the senator's re-election bid, Santorum received 6,000 fewer votes than Swann.

That has to be a concern because the southwest is Santorum's home base, Young said.

I'm kind of wondering why there wasn't any mention of the difference between Rendell and Casey. The results were on the same page.

Ed Rendell was alone on the ballot and got 646,397.

Casey: 621,233; Sandals: 47,982; Pennacchio: 65,828; for a total of 735,043 Democrat voters.

With no other selection than Rapid Ed Rendell, that means that 88,646 didn't pull the lever, push the button, or touch the screen for him.

Does that mean that Governor Rendell is in four times the trouble that Santorum is in? Of course not.

Me? I'm waiting to see all of the county by county results.
That's where the interesting numbers lay.

For example, my county. Montgomery.

Lynn Swann got 25,454 votes versus Santorum's 25,829. The Senator beat the Steeler by 375! ... and this is in somewhat moderate Montco, with Lynn Swann's running mate Jim Matthews being the commissioner! To be fair, Jim Matthews got 26,789.

Let's go to the left.

Governor Rendell got 24,981 votes, compared with Casey's 20,155. The total Dem Senate vote was 25,573. 592 did not vote for Rendell.

I ran for Montco GOP committee this year (my first time). Out of 167 voters, I don't recall the exact numbers, but I might have gotten a hundred. The results aren't online.

So what does it really mean?

I don't know.

Maybe it means that given a choice of two people, people will vote, otherwise, myself included, they just say "bah!"