Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Herring Now in the Lead; Take Aways From Virginia Elections





Virginia Attorney General Race: With three precincts still out, Mark Herring now has a roughly 600 vote lead over Mark Obenshain. One can only hope that, even if the gap narrows, Herring will come out the victory.  Virginia does not need a Ken Cuccinelli clone in the Attorney General's office where he could run a sabotage campaign against much needed progressive measures in Virginia.  


Is There a Message for Republicans?  With the win by Terry McAullife being narrower than expected, the big issue is whether or not the Virginia GOP will get the message that nominating darlings of theocrats at The Family Foundation and/or the thinly veiled white supremacists of the Tea Party is not the way of the future.  Personally, I suspect not.  The insane base of the GOP will continue to live in its bizarre alternate reality and pressure the Party to continue to nominate those who are in need of serious mental health care help.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at some possible "take aways from yesterday.  Here are highlights:

* Virginia isn’t for social conservatives. Ken Cuccinelli beat McAuliffe among voters who said the economy was the most important issue and among those who named healthcare as the biggest priority.  But, among those who said abortion was their most important voting issue — roughly one in five voters — McAulliffe crushed Cuccinelli by something close to a two-to-one margin. (Worth noting: Virginia voters were given four options to choose as their most important issue, only one of which — abortion — involved a social issue.) Half of Virginia voters said that Cuccinelli’s position on issues was “too conservative”  while fewer than four in 10 said he was “about right” on the issues. What those numbers tell us is that McAuliffe’s efforts — primarily through a blitz of campaign ads in northern Virginia — to paint Cuccinelli as a warrior for the social conservative movement worked . 

* The Republicans’ un-married people problem: Cuccinelli carried married men and married women by single digits. But, he lost among unmarried people by massive margins.  Unmarried men favored McAuliffe over Cuccinelli by almost two dozen points and unmarried women by more than forty.  The only solace Republicans can take — and it’s not much of one — is that Cuccinelli’s dreadful performance among unmarried voters was significantly worse than that of Mitt Romney in Virginia in the 2012 presidential election; . . .

* The Virginia white vote is eroding, rapidly: In 2009, 78 percent of the Virginia electorate was white — and Republican Bob McDonnell rolled up a 35 point win over Democrat Creigh Deeds among white voters. Four years later, the electorate was only 72 percent white and Cuccinelli led McAuliffe by 20 points within that demographic group, according to exit poll results. That trend of white voter erosion is nothing new.

* Republicans don’t need independents; they need moderates: Despite Cuccinelli’s loss, he actually won among self-described independents. At the same time, he lost by more than 18 points among self-described “moderates” — further proof that these two categories are hardly the same thing. 

* The path forward is clear for Republicans. They just have to convince their base: Christie’s win, contrasted with Cuccinelli’s loss, could hardly provide a starker contrast for the GOP and a clearer message about how it wins in the future. Exit polls showed Christie winning among women and running even with his Democratic opponent among Latinos. If Republicans could emulate that in other states, they would win just about all of them. Christie is a pragmatic, conservative politician who won a massive victory in a blue state; Cuccinelli was a very conservative tea party-esque candidate who lost to an unheralded opponent in one of the nation’s premier swing states. Tea partiers often argue that Republicans can only win presidential races with a true conservative on the ballot. The problem for the broader GOP is the definition of a true conservative has become increasingly stringent. . . . this message has often fallen upon the GOP base’s deaf ears (think Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Christine O’Donnell, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin) and it likely will again.

* And/but…Chris Christie ran as the un-Republican: Christie’s victory was much more about the Chris Christie brand than the Republican brand.  He spent very little time talking about his Republican credentials and much more time talking about his own accomplishments in the state. And the data in the exit polls proved that while New Jersey voters like (love?) Christie, they don’t like his party much. Just 38 percent of Garden State voters had a favorable view of the GOP while 58 percent had an unfavorable one.

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