5, November 2018
US: 30 million vote early in midterm elections 0
More than 30 million Americans have cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, eclipsing the 2014 early totals nationally and suggesting a high overall turnout for contests that could define the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.
At least 28 states have surpassed their 2014 early votes. And perhaps even more indicative of the unusual enthusiasm this midterm cycle, some states are approaching their early turnout from the 2016 presidential election.
Here’s a look at some highlights:
Massive turnout
The 30.6 million ballots includes data from 48 states, with several of those still collecting absentee ballots and welcoming in-person early voters. The total early vote in 2014 was 28.3 million in an election where more than 83 million Americans voted. That was a low turnout (about 36 percent) even by usual standards of a midterm, when there’s an expected drop off from presidential elections.
Forecasters aren’t predicting that overall turnout this year will hit 2016 levels (137.5 million; more than 60 percent of the electorate), but Democratic and Republican analysts, along with independent political scientists, say turnout could approach 50 percent, levels not seen for a midterm since the turbulent 1960s.
Booms in states not used to exciting midterms
It’s one thing to see Virginia more than doubling its 2014 early turnout. Voters there showed their intensity last year in their governor’s race, with record absentee ballot requests and returns and a solid turnout for both parties.
But then there’s Tennessee. The state has settled firmly into Republican-dominated territory. In 2014, there wasn’t a single statewide race that received national attention or a truly competitive House election.
But with an open Senate seat thanks to the retirement of Republican Bob Corker, voters are more than eager this year. Through Thursday, early turnout was 217 percent of what it was in 2014. It’s even approaching early turnout from 2016, at 80 percent of that presidential-year mark.
Several other states with competitive Senate or governor’s races — Texas, Nevada, Georgia, among others — are nearing double the 2014 early totals.
Democrats edging Republicans nationally
In states that require party registration, Democrats have cast 41 percent of the early ballots, compared to 36 percent for Republicans. Party strategists on both sides say they are far exceeding their usual numbers in key locales — urban strongholds for Democrats and more rural counties for Republicans.
A word of caution from prognosticators: The party analysis isn’t always an indicator of final outcomes. There are crossover voters, even in this hyperpartisan era. And there are independents and third-party voters, as well. For the record, those latter groups account for about 23 percent of the ballots in party registration states.
For the scorekeepers, though, Virginia, among the states that doesn’t have party registration, is replicating its 2017 voting boom — and Democrats swept the top offices last year even amid strong GOP turnout.
Young voters in Florida
Trends in Florida’s early voting suggest a surge in young voters, a group that historically has low turnout in midterm cycles.
Of the 124,000 Floridians aged 18 to 29 who had voted in person at early polling stations as of Thursday, nearly a third did not vote in the presidential election in 2016, according to analysis by University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. About half of those new voters were newly registered.
“There are newly energized voters who sat out in 2016, or have registered since then, who are turning out. There’s no question about that,” Smith said.
In contrast, for people 65 and older who had voted early and in person, about 7 percent didn’t vote in 2016.
New voters in Georgia
It cannot be said enough: It’s the voters who don’t often participate in midterms who can make the big difference. There’s plenty of evidence that both major parties’ bases are enthusiastic, but a frequent Election Day voter being so excited that they vote early doesn’t change the math.
So candidates like Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race are keeping their eye on how many non-2014 voters have cast ballots.
An analysis by Georgia-based data analyst Ryan Anderson finds that 36 percent of the 1.8 million early votes in Georgia are new voters. If that held through Election Day, it would be a huge number. Abrams’ campaign believes it would benefit them, though Republicans nationally note that President Donald Trump brought many new voters to the polls in 2016 — and those voters are still “new” midterm voters.
That said, at least in Georgia, the racial and gender breakdown of the new voters bodes well for Abrams, who is trying to spike turnout among nonwhites, women and millennials.
Anderson’s analysis finds that barely more than half of the new voters are white in a state where the GOP wants the white share of the electorate to be push toward the mid-60s. Among the other findings: new female voters outnumber men by more than 70,000.
The bright spot for Kemp: More than half of early votes come from voters over 65 (though that total includes all races), and there is intense turnout in many of the state’s most conservative areas beyond metro Atlanta.
(Source: AP)
Now that you are here
The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons. The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.
The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers. However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization. It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.
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6, November 2018
Oh Lucky Man: Can’t Find President Biya? Try Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel 0
Blinds were drawn at a back office of the Intercontinental Hotel one day last year, as a man known to staff as The General emptied a white cloth bag stuffed with euros. It was time to pay for one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.
For weeks, several former hotel employees recalled, the five-star hotel had been locked in a secret routine serving its best two customers, the first couple of an impoverished oil-exporting Central African country. Paul Biya, president of Cameroon since 1982, and his wife, Chantal, clock so much time on private visits to Switzerland that staff in the Intercontinental’s gilded corridors refer to them by simple code names: Him and Her.
As with other employees, this person recalled signing a nondisclosure agreement concerning the details of Mr. Biya’s monthlong stays: “If the Cameroonians are not coming, the hotel will close.”
The Intercontinental Hotel said it wouldn’t comment on guests for confidentiality reasons. “Our employees are fully trained not to disclose any information,” a representative said.
World leaders dropping top dollar at luxury hotels isn’t by itself unusual. What distinguishes Mr. Biya’s Geneva getaways is the abundant time and hard cash the 85-year-old and his dozens-strong entourage spend here. The president has passed a cumulative four years on personal travels since 1982, the vast majority in Switzerland, according to flight data collected by the website Geneva Dictator Alert, and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative group specializing in anti corruption and organized crime that has tracked his travels. In some years he spent a third of the year out of his home country.
“He always pays in cash,” said Herbert Schott, a retired Intercontinental manager who first hosted Mr. Biya in 1969. “Next year he will mark 50 consecutive years of patronage. It’s a record.”
Mr. Schott welcomed a quarter-century’s worth of American presidents and once gave Ronald Reagan a mattress to replace the White House bedroom’s harsher one. But he said Mr. Biya was his best client. “He prefers to come to Geneva and sit down and nobody would bother him.”
“Lion Man,” as Mr. Biya’s supporters call him, is currently the world’s longest serving elected leader, if counting from his June 1975 arrival as prime minister, the same week McDonald’s Corp. introduced its drive-through. Since 1982, he has served as president. He is Africa’s highest-paid leader, with a $610,000 official salary annually, according to Africa Review, a periodical.
In Mr. Biya’s fourth decade in power, armed separatists are battling soldiers in Cameroon’s southwest, while Islamist terror group Boko Haram seizes villages and kidnaps children en masse in the northeast. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes in the past two years. Cameroonian migrants now represent the fourth largest nationality sailing into Greece.
Last month, Mr. Biya won another seven years in office, taking 71% of the vote in an election in which riot police dispersed protesters. In some areas, less than 5% of the population voted. No Western government sent observers.
“We love him, we voted for him and there is nothing new in his habits,” said Cameroon’s Communications Minister Issa Bakary Tchiroma in response to questions about Mr. Biya’s Geneva hotel stays. “We ask everyone, all foreigners, to respect the will of our sovereign people.”
Mr. Biya has rarely given interviews to foreign media in recent years.
In Geneva, the president reserves the entire Intercontinental’s 16th floor, with some 20 rooms and two corner suites overlooking the United Nations’ Europe headquarters and Mont Blanc, said ex-employees, former Cameroon officials, and hotel reservation records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The staff haul armfuls of white flowers for his wife and fresh fruit platters—never cut, per presidential orders—for Mr. Biya, according to former hotel staff.
Mr. Biya’s trips cost millions of dollars apiece, said Christian Penda Ekoka, a longtime chief adviser to the president, turned opposition activist.
“He gets the money from Cameroon’s treasury” and pays in cash to keep the trips off books, said Mr. Ekoka, who used to be chief adviser to Mr. Biya and had access to trip details. “They want to avoid any trace.”
A hotel reservation receipt seen by the Journal shows the size of the president’s entourage. In one September 2017 stay, he booked at least 48 rooms. Other Cameroonians stayed in less expensive hotels, former employees said, depending on their standing with the president.
To the U.S. and Europe, Mr. Biya is a valuable if awkward ally against terrorism and migration. The U.S. keeps 200 troops and several predator drones at a base in north Cameroon. American and Israeli special forces train Mr. Biya’s troops.
The European Union has pledged 282 million euros in aid for Cameroon. The hope is the country will grow wealthier, creating jobs to lure Cameroonians back to Cameroon.
The first protests, violently repressed by the Cameroonian armed forces, broke out two years ago. Mr. Biya was at the Intercontinental. He stayed another three weeks after, according to publicly available flight data and Cameroonian state press.
In Geneva, Mr. Biya seldom leaves his corner suite, former hotel staff said. For privacy, the Cameroonian delegation installs its own internet connection and phone switchboard. He enters and exits through the service exit for daily jogs, according to former hotel employees.
Mr. Biya’s suite overlooks tranquil Lake Geneva and a boulevard with placards extolling the virtues of human rights, democracy, rule of law: Geneva is a global capital for humanitarian and pro-democracy institutions.
“I find there, each time, an excellent welcome,” wrote Mr. Biya in a 1998 letter to Intercontinental management.
His wife—38 years younger than him—is at times seen in the lobby, robed in fluorescent dresses, standing more than 6 feet tall thanks to a voluminous bouffant hairstyle nicknamed “The Banana.” A Cameroonian journalist recently called her “The Belle of the Banana Republic,” and was sentenced to two years imprisonment for insulting her.
Her aides and hairdressers tip doormen hundreds of euros to run errands. “Cameroon is like a cash machine for the hotel,” said one former employee.
“Everything we can sell them, we do,” said another.
Visits begin unannounced, said current and former hotel employees, when an advanced team arrives laden with oversize luggage. Hotel management ejects guests from the 16th floor and moves them to other rooms.
Next comes a kitchen team—the president’s personal chefs from Cameroon—hauling jugs of palm oil and equatorial spices. Housekeepers taking days off are called in.
An enforcer nicknamed The General roams the hallways on the president’s behalf, chastising hotel staff, former hotel employees said.
Last comes an uninvited member of the presidential ensemble, a factory worker from Birmingham, England, who makes YouTube videos of himself shouting at Mr. Biya from outside the hotel.
“Two months again? In Geneva? At the Intercontinental Hotel?” screamed Emmanuel Kemta, a Cameroonian-born dissident in one of his more popular videos. “What are you doing here all this time, Biya?”
Two days before last month’s election, Mr. Biya made his only campaign speech. “What we have to do now is ensure peace reigns,” he said in brief remarks.
Back at the Geneva Intercontinental, staff were watching the elections closely. “They were so afraid he wouldn’t get re-elected,” said one former employee. “They would have a heart attack.”
Culled from The Wall Street Journal
Now that you are here
The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons. The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.
The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers. However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization. It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.
Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Banking IBAN: GB51 BARC 2049 1103 9130 15
Swift BIC BARC GB22XX
SORT CODE 20-49-11, ACCOUNT NUMBER – 03913015 Barclay PLC, UK
The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.
Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors
Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com