Actually, the Democrats can easily downplay this: The district goes out of existence in January 2013; their candidate doesn’t live in the district. Turnout was low compared to general elections (if it was?). The district is too large for Bill Clinton’s phone calls to reach everyone. People got “confused” by “negative campaigning.” Now the spin may be delusional, but it will be there.
If Republicans will fight for it the district can stay.
In ‘10, the Brooklyn portion of Nadler’s 8th district voted Democrat by only 53-47 (the Manhattan portion was 84-16 Dem).
In the 9th district, the Brooklyn portion was 52% Dem while the Queens portion was 65% Dem.
With 449 of 512 precincts reporting, the Brooklyn portion has voted 67% R while the Queens portion has voted 51% D. Turnout appears to be around 62% what it was for the ‘10 general.
Anyway, Turner does live in the Brooklyn portion. The Brooklyn 8th and 9th total about 500K residents - a seat in ‘12 will be 717K.
Now the cost of keeping Turner’s seat may be keeping Hochul’s seat also. The way I see that happening is that Hochul gets Slaughter’s seat, and Slaughter’s seat, instead of stretching from Rochester to Buffalo, stretches from Rochester to Syracuse or Ithaca.
Not necessarily. There had been a deal that the Dems would sacrifice a seat downstate and the Repubs one upstate. This win upsets that cart.
But in the back of their minds....“People feel betrayed, disappointed, furious, disgusted, hopeless,” said the source.
Forget the rest they are just excuses.
Democrats can say what they want, but in PR headlines are everything.