Breaking down the Tuesday election results

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Well, where should I start? I haven’t had enough time to let all the results soak in, so I guess I’ll just jump in and start running down the results, and compare those to my predictions.

For president, I called it for Barack Obama, but I said it would be close. It wasn’t. Obama kicked Hillary’s butt something like 69 percent to 31 percent 56 percent to 41 percent. I think Hillary won WNC, but I haven’t studied the numbers to see who Asheville and Buncombe County went for.

In the U.S. Senate primaries, I correctly called Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole and Democratic challenger Kay Hagan, a state senator.

I missed the U.S. House 11th District Republican primary. I picked Spence Campbell, but it was Asheville City Councilman Carl Mumpower who won. He’ll take on U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler in November.

I was right on the winners for governor – Beverly Perdue for the Dems and Pat McCrory for the Repubs. I also called it right for the lieutenant governor primary – Walter Dalton for the Dems and Robert Pittenger for Repubs.

I missed the Democratic primary in the state treasurer’s race. I thought Buncombe County Commissioner David Young would win, but Janet Cowell beat him out.

Finally, I was 100 percent correct on my Buncombe County commissioner picks: for the Democrats, it was Holly Jones, K. Ray Bailey, Carol Peterson and Bill Stanley, in that order. For the Republicans, it was Joe Dunn, John Carroll, Don Yelton and Ron Mckee.

Overall, looks like I missed just two. Not bad.

I also have to hand it to WLOSers, who had reporters sprinkled across the state to cover all the big campaigns: Terrie Foster was at N.C. State with the Obama campaign; Carolyn Ryan was in Charlotte with the McCrory campaign; Russ Bowen was in Raleigh with the Perdue campaign; Frank Fraboni got stuck with a bust of a Hillary Clinton non-party at Cinnebar in Asheville; and Holly Headrick covered Carl Mumpower at his Asheville offices. Good job all those folks, and to Darcel and Larry for handling all the reporters and results professionally.