Not surprising to me. I am sure 99% of the people who voted for Kaine mindlessly voted for a straight democratic ticket. Similarly for Kilgore.
It means that a very popular governor (70+ approval) was succeeded by his hand-picked successor. It means that Virginia continues the tradition of electing a governor that is politically opposed to the president.
And they said the same thing when Warner won in 2001. Yet Democrats continued to lose seats in 2002 and Bush easily won Virginia in 2004. I see no evidence that things will be different in 2006 or 2008.
You’re not very good at math. Given the split between Kilgore and Bolling, for instance, what you describe as being the behavior of voters is impossible.
But then I don’t believe you anyway. It was not two days ago that conservatives scoffed at the idea of Byrne coming even within 10 points of Bolling. And yet in hte end she came so close that a little more money and name recognition could have done it for her. Now, suddenly, the fact that she and Deeds were so close is treated as if it was expected. That, simply put, is a dishonest changing of the story after the fact.
Hunh. That was the Democratic spin over the course of the campaign, yes. But Republicans were saying that Kaine is no Warner and gloating about how Warner’s public endorsements had little effect.
If Warner is the nominee, then it will be very different. Even if he doesn’t seriously plan on winning Virginia, his popularity would allow him to make it competative enough for the Republicans to have to spend money on those very pricey media markets. That would be a disasterous drain on their resources country-wide.
I should note that FoxNews’ intro into the stories of last Tuesday began: “Republicans win a big victory!” They were, of course, talking about Bloomberg. Then they went on to talk about Democrats swept the big targets everywhere else without missing a beat from their original headline declaration.
Apparently, the Bush line is that Kaine won because he’s basically a consrevative. That’s pretty hamhanded considering that Kaine was repeatedly descriebd as the most liberal guy to ever run for Governor in Virginia, and that all his policy proposals (defending the biggest tax increase in Virginian history, universal pre-K, defending the right to have an abortion, making taxes for schools more income based than property based) were pretty darn liberal. Do people actually BUY this sort of nonsense?
Republicans do. What I don’t understand about the argument that he won because he ran as a conservative is this: What the hell did Kilgore run as? If people wanted to vote for a conservative, why didn’t they? Especially when the real conservative candidate was touched on election day by the Kompassionate Konservative himself.
Both sides are spinning this thing to absurd lengths. Pelosi is saying this is a repudiation of Bush’s policies, when anyone looking at state politics can see that these races hinge on local issues.
This elections means absolutely nothing on the national level. It’s not good for Bush and the Republicans, but it certainly isn’t bad, either. Sorry, folks, but we’re going to have to wait until the '06 elections for a referendum on the national incumbent party.
I don’t think it was a repudiation of any specific Bush policy, but it very clearly was, in part, a real sign of the weakness of his coatails and of Republican morale. If Bush had kept his re-elect vigor, he could have stumped for Kilgore left and right and made this an easy win. But that didn’t happen: couldn’t happen. The party was split, angry and bitter over things like Katrina and Miers. Infighting was exploited by the Dems. Kaine debated both Kilgore and Potts in the same night, and at the end turned to the cameras, referencing both of them, and asked voters if this kind of angry divisiveness from both Republican candidates (both against him and against each other) was really what Virginia wanted.
Republican morale was low and the Democrats here did a great job of running under the table with mail and subtle message to make the case that the sort of crony corruption and incompetance in the news naitonally dragging down the GOP was Kilgore in a nutshell (which, as a matter of fact, is probably the case). They leveraged national feelings INTO the local issues. They used a mailer of a rabid anti-tax group and sent it around to Republicans statewide to show the sort of infighting within the party. They sent out mail linking Kilgore’s problems to the failures and self-contradictions of the national GOP.
Full disclosure: I spent many many months working on this race. This election was a training ground for a lot of things that Democrats have wanted to try out and work on getting right going into the big season next year.
Lets just say we’re pleased with what we learned and how it all worked. We won huge in areas that were supposed to be Republican strongholds: areas lost even by Mark Warner.
Amen. The “Kaine voluntarily defended the guy who killed my son” ad (sneering at the whole concept that the accused is entitled to present a defense) left me wondering if Kilgore has a special aide to walk behind him and clean up the slime trail. As for the phone calls, being woken up at 9 AM on Saturday after a sleep-deprived week would have killed any chance of voting for the perpetrator even if I otherwise agreed with him (if he has that much contempt for me when he is still angling for my vote, what can I expect afterwards?).
I wonder how many message-board wits will say Kilgore automatically lost when he Godwinized his campaign. Nazi attack ads, a sure sign of desperation.
Republicans thought it would suffice if Kilgore just said loudly enough he’s sooo conservative. Never mind offering anything positive to run the state well. Kaine came across like an actual human being. It looks like a sign of conservatism running out of ideas, taking its dominance for granted, which is how arrogance leads to stupidity.
The Band sang, “You can’t raise a Kaine up when he’s in defeat.” Hmm, that sure doesn’t fit this election. Raising Kaine.
I have seen no Republicans holding up Kaine as a conservative. He was clearly a liberal, and IMHO, rode Warner’s coattails to victory. Tax increases are not always such a bad thing. Kaine did a better job of convincing Virginians (especially in Northern Virginia) that higher taxes were necessary in order to address the problems in the state, such as traffic. Commuters sitting in traffic for 90-120 minutes a day all too readily agreed with him. Kilgore should have put forth a better plan to deal with the issues of the state.
I just think it’s hilarious that liberals are getting on a high horse saying “We won!”, when in the end, they merely maintained their governership, and lost their Lt. governer. They gained ONE seat in the Virginia house of delegates (with the Republicans still holding a majority). In summary, it is simply too early to tell if this local election had any national ramifications. YMMV.
It is too early to tell if this is part of a trend, I agree. But it isn’t the only bit of data out there. Certainly a lot could happen over the next year, but there were other races, other votes on Propositions, and lots of polling data that the Virginia governors race aligns with. YMMV as well.
Has anyone found an overview of the results of smalltime races? Was there a significant trend towards electing democratic dog catchers, or republican weed board candidates?
Does anyone have election results from VA and NJ for yesterady vs 4 years ago? Fred Barnes was saying that the VA governor’s race split the vote almost exactly the same as it did 4 years ago (Dem vs Rep) and that the Dems won in NJ by a smaller margin than they did 4 years ago. If true, that would belie the “big win” for the Democrats, since Bush’s approval rating was sky high 4 years ago.
Now, I know you it’s dicey to compare elections with different people running, just looking at party results, but can someone tell me how this is a big victory for the Democrats? Seems that Bush is irrelevent in the equation. In fact, the Dems did better 4 years ago when Bush’s approval rating was twice what it is today.
And very importantly, this victory by the Democrats four years ago did not lead to tremendous gains in the congressional delegation or U.S. Senate seats here. In fact, in these years Democrats lost ground.
In 2000, Virginia was represented in Congress by six Republicans, one independent and four Democrats. Today, it’s eight Republicans and three Democrats. Throughout this time, we’ve had two Republican senators. The last Democratic one, Chuck Robb, was beaten in 2000 by George Allen, who is pretty popular here himself.
The delegate races have already been mentioned.
I have said that it was a good night for Democrats. However, in this state it wasn’t a great night for them, and these standings show that the Democrats have a long hard road ahead of them here.
