The team at Redfish Emerging Markets congratulates Senator Obama on his victory, and congratulates the American Electoral System on another national election well on the way to being completed. 

As a bunch of data wonks, we can’t resist looking at some of the election related data points as they come into focus on this day after the election. 

“The Historic Youth Vote” appears this morning to have been a bust.  In 2004 voting among 18-29 year-olds was 17% of the vote; this year looks to be in the 18 to 19% range. 

“Historic Overall Turnout” appears to be another misnomer.  Clearly all votes have not been counted as of this morning (though it’s close); votes cast of 0800 this morning -118,354,922.  Compare that with the turnout in 2004 – 122,267,553.  Experts are predicting that this year’s turnout numbers will be in the 123 million range – again not an impressive increase, certainly not in a range that could be termed historic. 

“An Obama Landslide” has been spoken and written about in many different venues over the past twelve or so hours.  Is this an election that could / should be characterized as a landslide?  As of this morning – Obama has taken 52.34% of the popular vote, and McCain 46.67%.  It might indeed come down to how you wish to define the term landslide, though we’d opine that less than a 6 point spread isn’t a landslide.  Less than a six point spread in fact suggests that America remains a nation that is fairly deeply divided politically and ideologically, and that a candidate promising to “unite the nation as never before” has a lot of work to do.  

Control of congress is always an interesting issue to consider, and this year was not exception.  The democratically controlled congress (both the Senate and House) has enjoyed record setting low approval ratings for months now, and the trend continued right up to the election.  The Congressional approval rating in the most recent CBS/NYT poll conducted from the 25th to the 29th of October was 15% and was 18% in the most recent Fox News / Opinion Dynamics poll conducted the 1st and 2nd of November.  Despite these record setting low approval ratings, democrats extended their majorities in both the Senate and House, though not to filibuster proof levels in the Senate (even if Democrats take all four pending Senate races).  Go figure. 

Here’s a final comment on an aspect of the process that many folks in the adoring media haven’t really thought about much, courtesy of Ed –

The Democratic Party has complained bitterly for nearly eight years now about the person of George Bush and the politics of his party.  The Democratic Party has won the election – an election that was from the get go theirs to lose.  They’ve helped create the financial morass the country faces, and very shortly will have to make some incredibly intelligent, courageous, and deft moves to lead the country to recovery.  If Obama is able to pass the economic plans he’s discussed during the election – higher taxes and dis-incentivizing redistributive economics, today’s recession very well might be tomorrow’s depression.  They will soon have the reins, it is yet to be determined if they can ride this horse. 

This is probably the final general commentary we’ll offer on the election unless there are some other particularly interesting data points that come to attention over the next several days. 

We are in the process of surveying opinion from industry leaders as to what might be coming down the road for real estate investors, and look to present that information in the next copy of the newsletter. 

Technorati Tags: