That was fun; we’ll do it again in 5 months

Is Stanislaus County out of step with California or simply marching to its own soundtrack, perhaps provided by MoBand?

It’s hard to draw definitive conclusions from Tuesday’s election, especially with incomplete results; but it’s fun to try.

First, Donald Trump (25,059) got more votes in Stanislaus County than did Hillary Clinton (22,740). That was decidedly not the case across the state. According to the Secretary of State’s office, Hillary topped the Donald by nearly a margin of 2-to-1 statewide. For that matter, Bernie Sanders beat Trump handily, too.

So, if if you add Bernie’s votes in Stanislaus to Hillary’s votes, it shows that 41,899 people voted for a Democratic candidate. Not all of those burning for Bernie will begrudgingly climb onto Hillary’s bandwagon in November, but we think a significant number will. Trump, even if he gets all the Republicans who voted for those who had already dropped out of the race, probably won’t come anywhere close to doubling his number. And that means Stanislaus County could go for Hillary, aligning us more closely with the rest of the state.

Not that it matters if we’re in line with the many millions who live on the coast. Most of us couldn’t care less. We should, though, since those coastal Californians have a lot of clout. As we noted earlier this week, Los Angeles County alone has 4.9 million registered voters. That’s more than the number of people who live from Bakersfield to Stockton.

Fortunately, we see eye-to-eye on other statewide contests. Kamala Harris got the most votes for U.S. senate in Stanislaus (34 percent), and across the state (40 percent). The proposition allowing the state legislature to quit paying suspended members earned 79 percent approval here, 75 percent statewide.

Locally, we’re glad Jim DeMartini can finally get back to the business of being a county supervisor and not have to be distracted with campaigning – though we’re entirely certain that he doesn’t consider walking precincts, shaking hands, attending meetings and even kissing babies a distraction. It’s probably more like a hobby for him. DeMartini got 52 percent of the vote, and is very unlikely to be required to face Luis Molina in a runoff. Kristin Olsen, running to replace Bill O’Brien, and Vito Chiesa were unopposed.

It’s too bad Sen. Cathleen Galigiani can’t play by the same rules. Though she polled 57 percent of 5th Senate District votes, she’ll face Alan Nakanishi again in November. Yawn.

The race to replace Olsen in Assembly District 12 is more interesting. With five candidates and an open seat, we knew a runoff would be needed. It appears both will be Republicans. Heath Flora and Ken Vogel are clearly in the lead. If the primary was any indication, this one will be nasty.

With two strong Republicans, we figured Virginia Madueno would have a chance to slip into second. While Madueno is only a scant 172 votes behind leader Flora in Stanislaus County, Vogel’s strong showing in San Joaquin tops them both. And Flora got enough votes up north (4,665 compared to Madueno’s 3,759) to be in a strong second place.

Finally, we more or less expected what we got in the race for Congress. Two years ago when Michael Eggman challenged Jeff Denham, the incumbent won by 13 percentage points. With a few votes left to count, Denham is ahead by 20 percentage points. Still, we’ll get round two in November, when Eggman will undoubtedly try to emphasize Denham’s party ties to Trump.

For the record, we’ve already asked the Denham campaign to tell us whether or not he’ll endorse Trump. We’ll let you know when (if) he answers.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 4:08 PM with the headline "That was fun; we’ll do it again in 5 months."