[Moseley]

Is your argument now that Castle would only draw votes from registered republicans, and that independents and democrats weren’t among his supporters who would have stayed home?

You are trying to change the argument to avoid the point. I make no such argument, I am pointing to what the voters themselves said in the exit polls.

I think there is no reason to think that Democrats or Independents would have voted for Castle. Why vote for a phony liberal when you can vote for a real liberal, Chris Coons? As a Democrat, why vote for second best?

The issue in 2010 was control of the US Senate by the Democrats. Those content to tolerate Castle in Delaware's US House seat as a curiosity would have had a very different attitude of taking control of the US Senate away from the Democrats and their beloved Obama and Joe Biden (the local Democrat home boy).

The fact that Castle had won an uncontroversial seat in the past is NO indication that with control of the US Senate at stake Democrats would have handed control of the US Senate to Republicans by voting for Castle. Democrats would not have voted for Republican committee chairmen, a Republican Majority Leader, and a Republican agenda by voting for Castle.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I’m just trying to understand the argument. You claim that since republicans showed up at a higher rate than their registration, there couldn’t have been Castle supporters staying home who would have shown up and voted for him, and therefore the “44-43” exit poll results is an accurate reflection of the electorate you would expect had Castle been the nominee.

I believe you are wrong on multiple counts, because first the increase in Republican turnout was likely solid conservatives supporting O’Donnell who would probably have told exit pollsters that they would NOT have voted for Castle, and second because it is almost certain that had Castle been the nominee, more people who supported him would have shown up on election day than showed up for an election where he wasn’t running.

And in fact, it may even be true that Castle would have pulled the house seat to the republican side. That was another race where the establishment candidate lost the primary to an outsider, and having Castle to pull the establishment voters to the polls MAY possibly have helped — although it is just as likely that the kind of voters Castle brought would be the kind who would vote for a democrat for the house seat.

And of course, with polls showing Castle beating Coons easily, Coons wouldn’t have gotten all the support he got once the democrats realised they had the seat back in play.

And lastly, and this you should know because you were involved in delaware politics, in these “highly lopsided” states, registration is not indicative of where voters really are in the political spectrum. People who would register republican in a competitive state register democrat because often that is where the winning candidates are chosen, in the primary of the democratic party. It was the same in Maryland; you’d have a large democrat advantage, but when a sufficiently moderate republican ran, they would get a large part of the democrat vote.

IN this election, with a candidate who by every measure was to the far right of the political spectrum, and even with all the baggage real or percieved heaped upon her, and her lack of experience, and the jokes made on her behalf, she STILL managed to take 9% of the DEMOCRAT vote. Which, in terms of raw numbers, was almost as many democrat voters as she lost republican voters.