Precinct vote totals tell interesting tale in Mathis-Golding Senate race

_ Finally had a chance to pore through the precinct-by-precinct votes in the big Iowa Senate District 18 race and one things stands out clearly: Democrats like to vote before Election Day.

Run down the tallies by precinct from Tuesday's voting and you'll see Republican Cindy Golding holding serve in several precincts. In fact, she collected 415 more votes from people going to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 8, than Democrat Liz Mathis received. Yet, she lost to Mathis 13,184 to 10,283, according to unofficial results pending a canvass. That's a 2,901-vote margin.

What happened?

Mathis bagged the win with absentee and early voting when 5,422 people voted for her. That is 3,316 votes more than the 2,106 Golding collected. (Constitution Party candidate Jon Tack got 42 early votes to go with his total of 151 overall.)

You could argue that rainy weather kept people from the polls but you'd have to concede that the weather would be equally bad supporters of both Mathis and Golding. Rather, Democrats had strong motivation to keep control of an Iowa Senate in which they hold a 26-to-24 majority and apparently did something about it early so that nothing that happened Tuesday would stand in their way.

Lively live chat

A lot of people chimed in on the election Tuesday night during a TheGazette.com live chat, even as our website crashed at such an inopportune time. A web host for data on our site broke while results were coming in. Still, those in the live chat were engaging and interesting.

Gazette columnist Todd Dorman and UNI political science associate professor Christopher Larimer were on hand to interact with people interested in the race.

Among the interesting tidbits:

-- Larimer pointed out that party registration for Senate 18 as of Nov. 1 was approximately 30.3% Democrat; 30.9% Republican; 38.6% No party. "How will No Party folks vote, and many cross-party voters will we see?" Larimer asked. The answer: they helped Mathis, who has name recognition from her days now past as a television news anchor on KCRG-TV9, which is owned by the same company that owns The Gazette, and before her TV9 stint, KWWL-TV.

-- Also from Larimer: "Why is it that Democrats don't like to vote on Election Day relative to Republicans?" From a participant: "I think Democrats place more of an effort into absentee ballots. Its easier to lock those up and then focus on undecided / independents instead of driving your base to the polls." From another: "Maybe it is the fact they have to work that day." And yet another, with humor: "Chris, it's to keep their postal carriers employed."

-- From Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson, a Marion Republican, about whether Republicans would be open to an early voting drive: "Chris, no weather concerns.  GOP voters tend to like the formality of going and casting their vote.  Younger GOP is open to absentees." By the way, Golding won several Marion precincts.

-- From John Hedgecoth, a Des Moines lawyer and frequent Democratic Party advisor: "The race in SD18 was a simple matter of organization and grassroots politics. The D's piggybacked on the rapidly growing Obama '12 organization and were unified with not much else going on statewide, while the R's were in disarray in the Sen caucus and are divided among their many presidential candidates, not to mention distracteby the caucuses 9 weeks from now."

If you are interested in all of the comments here's a link to a replay of the entire live chat.

Here's a link to Larimer's blog at IowaCaucus.com, where he writes about the Iowa caucuses.

And, of course, a link to 24-Hour Dorman.