Wednesday, November 3, 2010

This Election Season

This campaign we've fact checked multiple ads and covered all three candidates, although the most advertisements have come from the race for the U.S. Senate seat.

McClanahan ran an entirely positive campaign and while we have discussed whether one of her advertisement could be labeled as slightly negative, we believe that she has done a great job in being accurate and sticking to her promises in her advertising strategy.

Shoemyer was the incombant who strongly supports farmers in Missouri. While we feel he may have stretched the truth a little bit in one or two claims, we feel that ran a very truthful campaign.

Carnahan. What to say? Her race against Blunt got nasty. Insults were thrown from both sides and attack ads are almost the only ads played in this race. However, while a lot of claims by Carnahan stretched the truth significantly, she does not blatantly lie in any of her advertisements. So I guess that's something.

All three Democratic candidates lost in Missouri. Since they all ran differing campaigns it would be a stretch to say that it was because of their campaign strategy. The Republicans simply did a great job this year raising money and creating negative public opinion toward anything or anyone associated with President Obama.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Adair County Elections

The bad news is that I was not able to find wireless until now since I was running around to various places in Kirksville. The good news is that the election results for Adair County are in!


For U.S. Senate, Blunt won Adair County with over 58%
For U.S. Representative for 2nd district (our district), Wyatt beat McClanahan 54.5% to 43%
For the State Senate seat, Munzlinger beat Shoemyer by 9 points with 54% of the vote


The Republicans definitely have something to celebrate tonight.


On another note, I did get to visit a couple places including the Republican Headquarters, the Kirksville City Hall, and the Truman watch party in the Student Union Building. I wrote my reflections as I went even though I couldn't post them till now.




Republican Headquarters
            I went to the Republican headquarters first, where there were relatively few people at the start of the night. I sat in on an interview with Seth Shumaker, a local attorney, who talked about the hopeful outcomes of the night. He said he bet that the atmosphere at the RHQ was much more enthusiastic than the Democrat’s party that was occurring at Dukum, because he believed results would turn out more in the Republican’s favor.

            I had a chance to ask him a question myself and I asked how he felt about the record spending that was occurring this campaign. He told me that he thought it was terrible that someone had to have so much money to even consider running for office. However, when asked about his opinion over the roles of interest groups and organizations who create much of the funding that is used in election campaigns, he felt that they provided a needed outlet for people to get involved. 



Around Kirksville
            The atmosphere around Kirksville outside of the major watch parties was definitely lacking in political enthusiasm. While I was pleased to see quite a few “I voted” stickers, there were very few places even showing the election results. The Wooden Nickel was playing basic news on a small TV, while the main TV is displaying sports. 

Kirksville City Hall
           The Kirksville courthouse is filled with a couple dozen people in the main lobby. The atmosphere so far is uneventful while people are awaiting results. The people are primarily people who helped with a certain campaign or media. The atmosphere stirred up when results were announced, but quickly scattered afterwards.

Student Watch Party
          The event was definitely far from gathering a large crowd, but for the most part the students who were there were very into watching the election results. There wasn't much excitement, but rather more focus on the information being presented. News 36 was being broadcast and not many people seemed thrilled about the election results that were presented in Adair County. Many people were completely shocked that McClanahan did not win our district. 

To see a full list of Missouri races, click here to go to the Secretary of State's election results page. 

Exciting news!

I (Samantha) will be running around to a couple locations tonight checking out the election day scene here in Kirksville and covering the results of the elections as they come in. I will be posting these results and the descriptions of events in Kirksville on the blog several times tonight starting at around 8 pm. I will be dropping by the Republican Headquarters, an election watch party at Truman State's Student Union Building, and hopefully a couple other places if time allows. Check back in tonight for your election news or watch News 36 to see live television coverage of the election results!

Monday, November 1, 2010

ONE MORE DAY!

The midterm elections are TOMORROW! Can you believe it's finally here? I know I can't.

This midterm season has been absolutely ridiculous in terms of advertising. Even though it's only a midterm election, this season is set to spend a record breaking amount in campaign spending. Earlier this month the amount predicted was $3 billion according to an article by The New York Times, which was already a record amount. More recent estimates have placed the spending close to $4 billion dollars!!

What have we seen as far as ads for our area? The Carnahan-Blunt race for the U.S. Senate seat has spent over $17.6 million, with Carnahan spending just under Blunt with a little over $8.7 million in campaign spending.

The Missouri elections for state legislature positions have had less spending, since they are only financing for advertising in a single voting district and both McClanahan and Shoemyer are incumbents. Shoemyer has raised $285,076 for his campaign and McClanahan has raised $83,142. McClanahan's promise to not engage in negative campaigning and only have positive campaign strategies could account for the decreased campaign money since she doesn't have to worry about attack ads.

Now, GET OUT AND VOTE. This is a huge election, so make sure your voice is heard! If you want to compare candidates for their accuracy feel free to check our site for the Democratic side of advertisements, and our partner blog, The Republican Watchdogs, for the Republican candidates' advertisements.