The problem is the conclusion the Republican Party will draw from this defeat will probably be “I guess our Tea Partier wasn’t crazy enough.”
Here’s a thought, guys, maybe we should run some sane candidates. It seems to be working for the Democrats.
Actually, this is the takeaway from the night. Virginia is now - in all actuality - a swing state, possibly even heading true blue.
If that’s true and borne out by the next several cycles that’s 13 electoral votes that republican presidential candidates desperately need to replace and there’s no idea where to find them. Toss in the weakening of North Carolina and even maybe Georgia and republican extremism is painting them into a minority status corner.
The big money men bailed on your guy left and right. Not a good sign for Team Red…
The narrow win is actually better for the Dems than a blowout would have beein – the experienced establishment Republicans conclude that they need to dial back on teh crazee, the Teanut Gallery concludes that their guy would have won if the party apparatchiks hadn’t stabbed him in the back, the Democrats pass the popcorn and watch the circular firing squad, the Republicans are big-red-capital-Superman “S” screwed.
Funny - I saw people predicting that the right-wing spin will be “the Democrats outspent the Republicans and that’s why they won” and here you are, right on cue.
Just accept that the Republican candidate was even more terrible than the terrible Democratic candidate, and rather than trying to figure out how to blame the Democrats figure out how to get better candidates on the ballot.
You would think that Republicans would take a good hard look at yesterday’s results and study why one conservative won a resounding victory and the other didn’t.
Surely, in the conservative view of the world, the fact that Cuccinelli couldn’t convince people to spend money on him is sufficiently damning in and of itself.
Results of November 2013 elections:
Tea Party candidates (e.g., Cuccinelli) lose.
Non-TP Republicans (e.g., Christie) win.
Progressive Democrats (e.g., De Blasio) win by a landslide.
There’s your warning sign.
6-7% lead in the polls, no turnout for Democrats. No turnout for Republicans, either, but we know Republicans always benefit from low turnout. I think you may be underestimating the effect of media coverage presenting this as a fait accopli - I mean, why bother voting when your guy can’t lose.
This is so wrong for so many reasons. It was an off year and thus a terrible comparison, but even so, McAuliffe maintained high turnout of black voters without Obama on the ticket.
I didn’t see where he specified black people.
He didn’t specify. It ought to be obvious to everybody that more people show up to vote for president + senate than for governor. (It looks like twice as many Virginians voted in 2012 vs. 2013.) I thought the issue here was not raw turnout, but who turns out. There was a great deal of discussion in 2012 about whether the electorate was going to look the same it did in 2008 - the theory being that minorities weren’t going to show up for Obama this time. They did, and Republicans lost again. And here we see that McAuliffe maintained a high turnout among black voters, and very high support among those voters, without Obama on the ticket. So by any sensible standard, “no Obama, no turnout” was false.
As was said in a different context: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the ONLY thing.”
It’s even more true in politics than it is in sports.
Pundits can be ignored because they never know what they’re talking about anyway. Next year’s election can be ignored because it’s a whole year away and who knows what will happen between now and then. The only thing that is important is who won yesterday.
Then why are you only talking about minority turnout? 
By the way this means Virginia is likely to accept the ACA Medicaid expansion and a whole bunch of poor people will get health insurance that they would not have received under McDonnell and Cuccinelli.
It looks like they did come out without Obama on the ballot.
I didn’t see/hear a single McAuliffe ad that didn’t contain a reference to Obama. Either as “McAuliffe is Obama’s friend” or “Cuccinelli is Obama’s enemy”.
Without Obama, McAuliffe would have lost.
The only redeeming quality MCAuliffe had was the D next to his name, that he won in an off year with a Democrat president is a huge huge upset, trying to spin it otherwise because the polls tightened near the end is standard Adaher delusional history.
Are turnout numbers available yet? What was the demographic makeup of the electorate?
I linked to some details from exit polling in post #50. It looks like the electorate was about 20% black, the same as in 2012, and black voters went for McAuliffe at the same kind of clip they voted for Obama. While the electorate was pretty similar to 2009 (maybe a bit more liberal and moderate), that part of Obama’s coalition seems to have turned out even though he wasn’t on the ballot. Here are the raw totals from the exit polls.
Wow. Black voters turned out. On the bright side for the GOP, Cooch did win the 18-24 group.