Tagged: election 2012

The status quo has got to go? Not in Missouri.

Based on election results this past week, Missouri voters might be better described as gung ho for the status quo.

Numbers released by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office show 65.7 percent of registered voters across the state, or approximately 2.7 million people, turned out for this year's presidential election.  That’s a decrease from the record number of participants in the 2008 presidential election, where a record 2.9 million voters (69.4 percent of registered voters) turned out.

In the August primary, Boone County had the lowest voter turnout rate of any county in Missouri at 16.7 percent.

Jonathan Dine, the Libertarian candidate for Missouri senator, took 6 percent of the vote in his race against Democratic Sen.  Claire McCaskill and Republican congressman Todd Akin.

Missouri congressman Todd Akin called it his "six-second mistake." But his brief remark about "legitimate rape" was more than enough to sink his U.S. Senate campaign.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill defeated her Republican challenger with nearly 55 percent of the vote to Akin's 39 percent in Tuesday's election. It was the largest margin of victory in a Missouri Senate race since 1994.

California voters defeated Proposition 37 [PDF] on Tuesday night, the ballot measure that would have required labels to indicate the presence of genetically modified foods. At the polls, 53 percent of Californians voted against the proposition, while 47 percent voted for it.