This is my take on why Gillespie lost: 596,234 Virginians that voted for Donald Trump last year DID NOT VOTE this year!
Had Gillespie gone “All In” for the Trump message and allowed President Trump to campaign for/with him, the Trump voters would have turned out, and he’d have kicked Northram’s ass!
Northram only won by 321,966.
Here is the point: If Republicans want to maintain the House and Senate next year, they need to go “All In” for Trump. Wishy-washy, middle of the road GOP “establishment” politics will not carry the day!
BTW, I checked the number of votes that President Trump received in New Jersey, also; had the same people who voted for President Trump voted for Ms. Guadagno, she would have won, easily.
My takeaway? Republicans screwed up BIG TIME! By not going all-in for Trump in VA and NJ!
I sure hope the lesson that Republicans [should have] learned in 2016 and 2017 carry forward in 2018 - TRUMP WINS!
And that the would-be local, state and national politicos who run for office in 2018 fully embrace President Trump’s program. They will lose if they don’t!
What is worse, the American people will lose!
In Virginia the Democrats nominated a guy (Northam) who voted for Bush twice. If the Democrat voters were all right with that, the nominee stood a fairly good chance of winning over moderates and Republican defectors and carrying the state.
That's because Virginia's already become a Democrat state. Put together all the Democrats with upscale voters who might have voted for Bush but not Trump, and the downscale voters who voted for Bush, but then Obama (but not Trump) and Northam's on his way to winning.
The irony, though, is that if Virginia were a even more Democrat state and had more liberals, some of them would have stayed home or voted for third parties, and Gillespie might have won in spite of himself. But Virginia Democrats really wanted to give the Republicans a black eye -- and so many of them already work for the government that they weren't going to waste their votes on a third party.