Welp, that didn’t go quite as pollsters had predicted…
On the positive side, voter turnout in this election was somewhat impressive, with just over half of registered voters turning out to the polls (nevermind that means that half of them didn’t).
On the other hand, Kevin trounced Hofmeister, garnering nearly 200,000 more votes than she did and Ryan “Sactuary Cites” Walters taking Jena Nelson to task with more than 155,000 votes in his favor.
Sen. James Lankford dominated Madison Horn two-to-one at the polls and Kendra Horn earned 300,000-plus fewer votes than Rep. Markwayne Mullin for the other U.S. Senate seat, and the U.S. House of Representative races followed a similar pattern, so it looks like the expected national “red wave” was largely contained within Oklahoma state lines.
If there’s anything resembling a tsunami on our horizon moving forward, it’s educated Oklahomans (and particularly educators) kicking up dust as they make a race for the state lines.
Kevin and Walters can rail about the “Biden party” and “radical leftists” all they want, but it’s been 12 years since Oklahoma had a Democrat as governor. The state Senate has been controlled by Republicans since 2004 and it’s been 18 years since Democrats had a House majority.
Oklahoma Republicans can call being a top ten state an aspirational goal all they want, but being stuck in the bottom ten and sinking is a reality that they’re solely responsible for in this century.
This article appears in Not The First Rodeo.