They’re *your *demographic now, and have been for half a century. They’re your *base *now, in fact. I think you know that.
This. To which I would add “… despite last-minute in-person campaigning from both Pence and [del]Barron-Miller[/del] Trump.” Which is perhaps far more embarrassing for the top of the nat’l ticket than for the state GOP.
Why is that “embarrassing for the top of the nat’l ticket”? He held a rally to push a candidate over the top in a close election and it worked.
… because arithmetic. We’ll never know how close yesterday’s election would have been in some alternate-universe timeline wherein Pence/Trump didn’t hold rallies, but the +14 R lean suggests pretty strongly that the answer would be “less close than it was here in this universe.”
Or maybe look at it this way: Trump won that district by, what, 12 points three years ago? (I honestly don’t recall, but I think that was the case – if someone with actual data wants to chime in on that, swell.) And this week, the efforts of the top of the national ticket helped their candidate to … a ~2% win?
Three possibilities come to mind; feel free to believe whichever you please:
[ol]Bishop would have lost decisively were it not for the efforts of Trump and Pence.
[li]This was an inherently close race, and the efforts of Trump and Pence had no significant effect.[/li][li]Bishop would have won by an even larger margin had Trump/Pence stayed away.[/li][/ol]
Two of those are embarrassing for the top of the ticket. One is embarrassing for Bishop and the state GOP. Hence my “perhaps” in my original post.
I 100% think Hurricane should take this as a victory. With Trump at the helm, success is assured, and he can rest easy. A 2% victory in a district that used to be a 14% or more Republican stronghold, a year before the districts will probably be redrawn so they’re not so badly gerrymandered? Both hunky and dory. Sleep well, HD, you’ve earned it!