So why did Student Action get their butt kicked?

It seems to me like a combination of two factors. First, CalSERVE ran a campaign at least as organized and energized as Student Action's. SA seemed lethargic this year, too long in power without a serious challenge to bring everyone alive. CalSERVE had plenty of volunteers out there at all times, top-notch lit production, etc.

But this doesn't explain why CalSERVE won all the Execs. The exact same message could be said of last year, but Mr. Gee and Ms. Holland still lost conclusively. And that's largely because of a lack of ties to some of the biggest vote centers on campus: Greeks, Dorms, Engineers, Whites & Asians to some extent. Their base is energized and reasonably large, but never quite big enough to beat Student Action.

I blame the Primm factor: Mr. Primm ran the most effective vote-getting campaign anyone on this campus can remember. He not only turned out all the voters he picked up last year, but successfully integrated all the CalSERVE voters. And in exchange he provided what no CalSERVE campaign has ever been able to do: 1. Substantially increase the size of the base and 2. transfer votes between Executives. Look at the numbers: Kriss ended up with some 4200 votes before dropping other candidates, almost exactly equal to CalSERVE's vote last year + Primm's vote. All the other CalSERVE Execs ended in the low 3000's. If half of Primm's voters voted for the other CalSERVE Execs, it would push them over the top. I expect it was this Primm effect that gave the rest of CalSERVE, with the probable exception of Mr. Mata, what they needed to win. And, of course, the voters that they gave to Primm gave him a comfortable victory and the ability to campaign for transfers.

The Senate figures seem to bear this out. With the exception of Mr. Kashmiri, who had Boalt behind him to an unprecedented degree, CalSERVE did not do exceptionally in this year's Senate. They got what the size of their base usually gets them-- 5-6 people. Since Mr. Primm was not pushing CalSERVE Senators, it seems like the Primm effect extended to Execs but not Senate.

I haven't looked at the numbers, so this is all conjecture. But, if true, it suggests that CalSERVE has a couple of new priorities if they want to maintain dominance. The first is to continue to keep an eye on an Executive slate that transfers between each other well. The other is to find charismatic candidates from outside of the Party core that have proven they can bring in big new bases that will vote for the whole slate. The big worry is probably that that figure won't be Progressive enough, but Primm has probably proven that isn't necessarily true.

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