California Dreamin’

Today’s election day in the Republic of Kalifornia, too. Polls all seem to show Schwarzenegger’s measures all going down to defeat, but based on some local on-the-ground info from yesterday and today, I’m not so sure.

Despite my worry earlier about the effectiveness of his campaign (I couldn’t find anybody in the Republican party or Arnold’s campaign with a sign for me to plant in my front yard, which wasn’t a good indicator of competence, to say the least) his organization does seem to be pulling out all the stops here at the end. For example, I’ve been hit with five very-well-constructed push polls in the last few days that were obviously calculated to get out the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage vote. (How they got my number’s a mystery since I don’t take either of those positions. I guess by registering Republican, we’ve been pigeonholed.)

Also, some of our local early ballot returns show Republicans voting in much higher percentages than normal.

[A neighboring county’s] top election official… said the number of people voting by mail is unprecedented and could delay a final tally of results. A higher percentage of absentee voters usually helps conservative casuses… because Republicans are more likely to vote by mail. Democrats represent 48 percent of voters in [the county], while only 30 percent are registered as Republicans. But as of Friday, Republicans had turned in nearly as many absentee ballots — 32,000 — as Democrats at 40,000. “There’s an 18-point spread in registration, and an 8 percent spread on returns, [the official] said.

–From the Tri-Valley Herald, my local newspaper.

Moreover, when I delivered the wife’s absentee ballot and mine to the polling place this morning (yeah, we didn’t mail ’em in on time) it was pretty much deserted. And there wasn’t a lot of activity at noon either when I drove by on my way home to lunch. Damn lazy Democrats. But in this case, that laziness is a very good thing, for Arnold and for our state.

Arnold may pull out a victory yet, on at least some of the measures. We’ll see… At least, my wife and I know that there were two votes for the Governator’s propositions from our household! California Conservative’s blogging the election here.