# Scott Walker drawing huge throngs in support of Cooch in Virginia (not) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 3, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996 "2013-11-03T17:42:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/61 "2013-11-07T03:01:19Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Wow. Black voters turned out. On the bright side for the GOP, Cooch did win the 18-24 group. A whole one third of one percent of the electorate. I find myself somewhat less than blinded. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/62 "2013-11-07T03:05:46Z")
True, but it does show that the GOP base isn’t doomed to die off, as has been said by some. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/63 "2013-11-07T03:23:24Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > A whole one third of one percent of the electorate. I find myself somewhat less than blinded. > [@adaher](#): > > True, but it does show that the GOP base isn’t doomed to die off, as has been said by some. That’s a very optimistic interpretation. He did win that narrow age group, but it was 45%-39% with Sarvis doing much better than he did overall. McAuliffe won every group from 25-49 and Cuccinelli’s best results were with voters over 50. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/64 "2013-11-07T03:31:21Z")
It’s only one race, but it is interesting. Those are people who became elgible to vote mostly during the Obama administration. Voters who came of age in the Bush years were overwhelmingly Democratic. Looks like Obama’s alienating those young voters as surely as Bush did. let’s see how that all shakes out in 2014. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/65 "2013-11-07T03:37:58Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Voters who came of age in the Bush years were overwhelmingly Democratic. Looks like Obama’s alienating those young voters as surely as Bush did. :rolleyes: Last year Obama won 60% of voters 18 to 24, 60% of voters 25 to 29, and 55% of voters 30 to 39. You cannot seriously be suggesting that has reversed itself based on an off-year election in one state. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/66 "2013-11-07T04:02:56Z")
You know how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? Sometimes a state election is just a state election. Reading it as something more seems like the sort of things pundits do because they need something to talk about. This result and these exit polls have little to do with national fortunes. They have to do with two weak candidates and different groups deciding what they were more annoyed at and pissed off about - and bottom line who they disliked more. Turns out people disliked one goofus more than they disliked the other one. Sure national events impacted … if not for the shut down Cooch may have done better and if not for the klutzy [healthcare.gov](http://healthcare.gov) roll-out McAufiffe might have. But from I can tell this was less a proxy war for Obama and the TP than a slapfest between two particular stooges few liked either of. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/67 "2013-11-07T04:39:09Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > :rolleyes: Last year Obama won 60% of voters 18 to 24, 60% of voters 25 to 29, and 55% of voters 30 to 39. You cannot seriously be suggesting that has reversed itself based on an off-year election in one state. No I cannot. But in 2012, 18-24 year olds weren’t getting screwed by ACA yet. But no, this one race means nothing. We’ll see what happens next year. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/68 "2013-11-07T04:49:02Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > No I cannot. But in 2012, 18-24 year olds weren’t getting screwed by ACA yet. I’m pretty sure Republicans campaigned against the ACA in 2012. By the way, do you remember that standoff on student loans last year? Do you remember the relative positions of the parties on college costs and student loan debt? How do you think voters 18 to 24 feel about that issue? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/69 "2013-11-07T04:55:10Z")
Campaigning against something and people actually seeing how much ACA will cost them are two different things. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/70 "2013-11-07T05:04:52Z")
Sure. By the way, most people get health insurance through their jobs, and the ACA allows people to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they’re 26. If you think the ACA is (for real this time) about to alienate hordes of young voters, you’re likely to be disappointed again. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/71 "2013-11-07T05:06:22Z")
So this one was just a fluke? Maybe. Given the large support for Sarvis among the young, maybe it was the NSA scandals. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/72 "2013-11-07T05:09:59Z")
I’m really not sure why other than to say McAuliffe lost more votes to Sarvis in that age group. It’d be interesting to know the reason. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/73 "2013-11-07T07:32:41Z")
I’d also be interested in knowing why Virginian voters kept the legislature in Republican hands. The democrats gained 1 net seat. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/74 "2013-11-07T07:36:38Z")
I’m also noticing that the Doper community seems to be at odds with the pundits on what the Virginia election meant: > **[McAuliffe's Victory Doesn't Mean a 2014 Landslide for Democrats](https://newrepublic.com/article/115486/midterms-2014-mcauliffe-victory-doesnt-augur-democratic-landslide)** > > Ken Cuccinelli was justifiably written off as dead: Thirty-eight consecutive surveys showed McAuliffe ahead, ultimately by about 7.2 point in the final HuffPost Model Estimate. This was the race that was supposed to highlight how the Tea Party and... > [@](#): > > Ken Cuccinelli was justifiably written off as dead: Thirty-eight consecutive surveys showed McAuliffe ahead, ultimately by about 7.2 point in the final HuffPost Model Estimate. This was the race that was supposed to highlight how the Tea Party and the shutdown endangered the GOP’s iron grip on the House, offering the perfect contrast to Christie’s rout in New Jersey. But in the end, McAuliffe won by a slight margin: Only 2.15 points, at the moment. It doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2014. > > Unfortunately, I don’t have a great explanation for how the race got so close. Twitter is already attributing Cuccinelli’s apparent surge to a backlash against the Affordable Care Act, but I’d be far more amenable to that explanation if there was, you know, any evidence. One bit of circumstantial evidence could have been a shift in the polls back toward Cuccinelli after the shutdown, but there just wasn’t much movement. Moreover, Geoff Garin, the McAuliffe campaign’s pollster, said their final poll showed McAuliffe up by just 3 points. All considered, the likeliest explanation is that McAuliffe never had a lead as large as the public polls suggested, raising more questions about whether non-response was helping inflate Democrats in the polls. > > Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether there was a last minute shift, or whether the polls were just wrong. No matter what, Cuccinelli was relatively competitive in race where everything went wrong. He was decidedly outspent. His party never unified around his candidacy and a libertarian candidate was there to take advantage. The government shutdown probably didn’t help. And, of course, Cuccinneli was a pretty flawed candidate in his own right, and that was before he was bedeviled by ethics challenges (including those that weren’t his own). Cuccinelli had no business being in the race, and yet the margin is quite close. There aren’t many occasions when the results demand “Wednesday morning quarterbacking,” but this is a race that the GOP probably would have won if it only made half as many mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/75 "2013-11-07T10:10:06Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I’m also noticing that the Doper community seems to be at odds with the pundits on what the Virginia election meant That’s one pundit… and in any case, that pundit is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/76 "2013-11-07T10:18:40Z")
It still boils down to voters choosing the lesser of two assholes. But I think we should apply the **adaher** technique to the New York mayoral race: “Voters chose a man who wants to tax the rich to pay for more public services, therefore this is a clear indicator that Americans want a socialist country!” Also, the New Jersey election indicates that Americans love fat guys. How’m I doing? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/77 "2013-11-07T10:42:42Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > That’s one pundit… and in any case, that pundit is wrong. That’s one I linked to. And no, he’s not wrong. Outspending a Tea partier in a swing state and winning by 2.5 points does not bode well for races in 2014 in which Democrats may not face Tea Partiers or have more money. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/78 "2013-11-07T11:10:07Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That’s one I linked to. And no, he’s not wrong. Outspending a Tea partier in a swing state and winning by 2.5 points does not bode well for races in 2014 in which Democrats may not face Tea Partiers or have more money. McAuliffe was a worse candidate for the Dems than Cooch was for the Republicans. You are wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/79 "2013-11-07T11:33:59Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I’d also be interested in knowing why Virginian voters kept the legislature in Republican hands. The political opinions of someone unfamiliar with the concept of “gerrymandering” carry the same weight as the scientific opinions of someone unfamiliar with the work of Sir Isaac Newton. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996/80 "2013-11-07T13:28:18Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That’s one I linked to. And no, he’s not wrong. Outspending a Tea partier in a swing state and winning by 2.5 points does not bode well for races in 2014 in which Democrats may not face Tea Partiers or have more money. Swing state sure but then again with a strong pattern of how it has swung in the governor’s office - this is the first time they’ve elected someone of the current president’s party since 1977. With a current president whose current approval ratings are, well, [not so hot](http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx). If I _was_ to read anything more from this election than that more voters came out to vote against Cooch than were motivated to come out and vote against McAuliffe it would be focused on that fact - even with Obama’s approval ratings in the dumpster VA bucked its usual trend. That said I think the pollster wonks will need to do some serious critical analysis. Why were the polls so off? Obviously they did something wrong either in sampling or in having a good model for likely voters in this particular election. Does it inform as to how mid term polling gets interpreted when we get near there or was this a one-off off? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-walker-drawing-huge-throngs-in-support-of-cooch-in-virginia-not/672996.md?page=5)