Posted on 11/13/2013 5:52:03 AM PST by 1010RD
The dust has settled (mostly) from last week’s elections, so I thought it time to present a very different assessment of what happened in Virginia than the snapshot I’ve seen from others.
For example, Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices, Women Vote Action Fund distributed a wholly self-serving and unconvincing memo titled “Unmarried Women Cast Deciding Votes in Virginia Election.” It’s unconvincing, of course, because Republicans always lose unmarried women, regardless of an election’s outcome. Unmarried women are more liberal than most voters and are not part of any winning Republican coalition.
NBC’s Domenico Montanaro and The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart credited African-American turnout for Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s victory, as did Jamelle Bouie of The Daily Beast. Wrong as well, I’m afraid.
Others have noted, quite incorrectly, that the partisan makeup of the 2013 electorate wasn’t very different from the makeup of the 2012 electorate in Virginia, suggesting that Democrats have found some formula for turning out key voting groups in lower turnout elections that could help them offset what most expect to be a less Democratic-inclined electorate for the 2014 midterms.
While these assessments tell a part of the story and certainly should force Republican voters and strategists to take a clear-eyed look at the long-term prospects of the current GOP coalition, they don’t explain last week’s results in Virginia, nor do they offer meaningful insights into 2014.
While African-American voters made up one-fifth of the Virginia electorate in both 2012 and 2013 and Democrats held a partisan advantage in both contests (7 points in 2012 and 5 points in 2013), McAuliffe did not win because of the makeup of the electorate or the GOP’s weaknesses with black voters.
He won because Republican Ken Cuccinelli failed to get the same level of support from the normally Republican voting groups that Mitt Romney had a year earlier. And any complete comparison of the 2012 and 2013 electorates in the commonwealth suggests turnout problems for Democrats in next year’s midterms.
The 2013 Virginia electorate was older, wealthier, more married and, surprisingly, more male than the Virginia electorate during the presidential race just a year earlier. In other words, it was a measurably more Republican-looking electorate than the one that turned out in the commonwealth for President Barack Obama’s re-election, even with the impressive black turnout.
In 2012, the Virginia electorate, according to exit poll data on CNN’s website, was 53 percent female and 47 percent male. This year, the exit poll showed an electorate that was 51 percent female and 49 percent male.
Voters age 18-29 constituted a strong 19 percent of the electorate in 2012, but made up only 13 percent of this year’s electorate. On the other hand, voters 65 and older were 18 percent of this year’s Virginia electorate, 4 points more than the 14 percent they constituted in 2012.
This year’s electorate was also much wealthier. In 2012, 34 percent of voters made $100,000 a year or more, but this year 40 percent fell into that income category.
In 2012, only 62 percent of the electorate was married. This year, 67 percent said they were married.
So, in many important demographic categories, the 2013 electorate was much different than the one that showed up to the polls last year. And the differences should have favored the Republican ticket. That wasn’t true of race and partisanship, of course, but there is no reason to pull out only two categories for examination, especially given the richness of the exit poll data.
The survey data are pretty clear on why Cuccinelli lost. He lost because he was unable to match Romney’s percentages with key demographic groups that almost always vote Republican. Those voters showed up at the polls, but too many Romney voters crossed over to cast ballots for McAuliffe or Libertarian Robert Sarvis.
The Republican nominee for governor won a plurality of male voters (48 percent), but well below the 51 percent that Romney won in the state last year. Cuccinelli would have gained an additional 48,000 votes if he had matched Romney’s percentage, much of which would have come from McAuliffe, thereby completely erasing the Democrat’s 55,100 victory margin. (See Virginia’s total vote here.)
Add in white women (Romney won 59 percent of them in the state in 2012, while Cuccinelli won only 54 percent this year) or wealthy voters (Romney won 51 percent of voters earning at least $100,000 a year in Virginia in 2012, while Cuccinelli drew just 43 percent of them and lost the category to McAuliffe) and the Republican would have had a comfortable victory last week.
And if you don’t want to focus on gender, the marital status numbers tell the same story. Romney won 55 percent of married voters in Virginia last year, while Cuccinelli won only 50 percent of them this year. That’s about 75,400 fewer married voters than a Romney-like Republican gubernatorial nominee should have drawn.
Though you hear a lot about the changing face of the electorate, both nationally and in Virginia, that’s not why Cuccinelli lost last week.
The Virginia election in 2013 was one where the Republican nominee would have won merely by attracting the votes of the same people who voted for Mitt Romney. The party’s candidate for governor did not need to improve his showing among young voters, African-Americans, Hispanics or unmarried women. He just needed to get white guys and their wives.
That conclusion, which is based on an evaluation of all of the data, not on merely cherry-picking one or two variables, ought to be little comfort for Democratic strategists worrying about the makeup of the midterm electorate.
Correction Nov. 12, 12:49 p.m.
An earlier version of this post misstated one reference of the income range of wealthy Virginia voters who supported Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney won 51 percent of voters earning at least $100,000 a year in Virginia in 2012.
Of interest.
Any postmortem will be flawed which ignores the documented presence of large and intimidating Black thugs outside polling places.
And of course, there’s the usual voter fraud that puts the Democrat over the top.
Notice how there was just enough votes for Mcauliffe to avoid the mandatory recount. How convenient.
That’s excuse making. We need to win, despite the thuggery of the other side.
If that’s their SOP, then we need to operate within those parameters. If we were talking strategy/tactics of a military campaign we’d simply account for the enemies tricks and beat them harder.
Virginia has gone blue.
It has not. Reread the article. Cuccinelli needed a better campaign than Romney.
The takeaway on the Virginia election is - McAuliffe won on a plurality. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, it took a “spoiler” to tip the election his way.
But McAuliffe is no Bill Clinton, and he will not make much of a mark as governor.
Still, it is a great springboard for a Cabinet position under Herself, Madame Benghazi, the Cold & Joyless.
My take away is that the 3rd party killed the Republicans, again.
Though I heard that the 3rd party voters second choice leaned Democrat.
BTTT
Pretty much sums it up, and unfortunately demographics is destiny.
It's time to punch back fast and call them out as Demonizers and Anti-Americans. And this includes the Lamestream Press.
Here in Northern Virginia, Cuccinelli was almost invisible on mass media because he was swamped 5:1 or more by Democrat advertising.
Also we are normally solicited by mail and telephone to contribute to the (R) candidates - if that occurred in this election I didn't see it.
Without money, it's next to impossible to win any statewide election in VA.
I live in Virginia and what happened was McAwfull flooded the airwaves with attack ads starting in the summer. There was no response. It was very disheartening. The low info types were brainwashed for months, to make it worse it was a cartoon smear campaign that was engineered for the low IQ types. The non response even made Cuch look “guilty”, even to me - it was ridiculous to not respond.
That's less than Cuccinelli got in his run for governor.
What you are saying might make sense if Romney had actually won in Virginia. Too bad he didn't though.
I have the same observations. They didn’t try to get the message out and when they did, it was too late to get them over the top. The libretardian didn’t help, but he wasn’t the reason Cucc lost.
If it’s true that pubs stayed home in decisive numbers for this election, they were the sore loser, Bolling crowd, I surmise.
In the future, Bolling = toast
Correction - should have said the spread between Cuccinelli and McAuliff was less than that between Romney and Obama.
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