In Greenhills The impact is nearly $230K

The drawdown of the estate tax means approximately $230,000 in the Greenhills budget, as a resuhttp://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111111/NEWS0108/111120309/No-SB-5-Local-governments-shruglt of the Governor's budget.

Issue 21 and Issue 22 Pass

Both levies pass with healty margins: 

Local Congressional Races Featured

The Daily Kos features the local races, including Wulsin and Driehaus>

This ought to be a tossup right until election day, and Chabot has staved off serious challenges in the past, but things look great right now.

Greenhills Streetview Available On Google`

Okay, so it's only Winton Road. But it seems significant.

Greenhills Voting Trends - Last Three Primaries

There has been some commentary elsewhere on the Internets suggesting that it might more likely to consider crossover voting with the intent of mischief in Greenhills, more so than the voters' consideration for the "current state of affairs" (e.g. War in Iraq, gas prices, housing market, flat wages, health care costs, etc.) driving the larger Democratic turnout. I had indeed made what I think would be a fairly sound assumption that the movement to the Democratic side of the ballot could actually result from the assessment that the community's own view of the situation would drive a better turnout. Challenged on this point, I'll post my thoughts in more detail over the next few days, as time permits.

One method of validation will come once the actual registration patterns are revealed at a household level. I would guess that we will see some of the mischief described above (R->D switches among long term Republicans, following Rush Limbaugh's directive), but not at the level that would account for the difference. Voter turnout, along with the number of new registrants will be another element to look at as well. Each will be a a topic for a later post. And a final point to consider will be declared voting patterns over the past 3 primaries.

To that final point, I think the chart, with vote totals from the last three presidential year primaries, suggests that there might be something happening in Greenhills. There has been a 305% increase in declared Democratic ballots cast in the village at the same time the Republican tally has decreased by nearly 24%.

One election is an anomaly. Three election cycles suggests a trend. More to come on this topic as well.

Greenhills: Total Presidential Primary Votes Cast

A breakdown for all candidates across both parties is shown at right for the community of Greenhills in the March primary. The story here is the overwhelming number of votes for the Democratic candidates - - nearly doubling up on McCain. This was March, so at the time, Romney had dropped, but I think Huckabee was still in the game, possibly dropping out soon after Ohio.

There was some compelling commentary on NPR this morning regarding whether the Obama will be able to pull in the Clinton supporters by November. It will be intriguing to watch over the next couple months, to see if in fact, as the contest becomes a two person race, whether Obama can overcome what has been an unhealthy and divisive (for Democrats) aftertaste of the campaign, up until the last couple of weeks. If McCain can be saddled with the "third Bush term" yoke, and those Americans with a racist chip on their shoulder can nonetheless see through broader benefits a more comprehensive change provides, we may see history made in November.

Update: I realized the chart might be hard to read:

Clinton 383
McCain 380
Obama 350
Huckabee 172
Romney 25
Paul 25
Edwards 8
Thompson 6

Greenhills Democratic Presidential Primary Votes

Clinton and Obama came out of the primary neck-and-neck, reflecting the competitive nature of the Democratic presidential primary throughout this election cycle. Given the demographics of the community, I'm actually a bit surprised by the strong turnout Obama has within the community. You'd think the way the media has portrayed in the more recent election cycles, I never would have guessed there were that many Elites (or for that matter, African Americans) in Greenhills for him to get 350 votes.

Kidding aside, I think this might, in our own little corner of RedState America, bode well for Obama.