It is very tough to unseat anyone in the House.
He is aUtah native son whose father was governor. So, no that wasn’t his only advantage. Democrat X wins 5 Congressional elections in a row in a heavily R state. The fact that he wins a 6th is hardly remarkable.
I dn’t know. It was a newly created district. You need to make the case that the new district was significantly different from the old one. But being a former Governor’s son means he has state-wide name recognition.
She’s a Republican. That’s all I see.
** John_Stamos’_Left_Ear** already corrected the “as red as it gets” (and even in the presidential election, there’s a lot more blue than in many states), but where do you get “female”? Both current senators are male, as well as the one Tester replaced (I’m not sure who Baucus’s predecessor was off the top of my head, but that pushes it back). The previous governor was a woman, but was a Republican. Are you maybe thinking of some other state?
LOL, that was sloppy of me. I meant North Dakota and was thinking of Heidi Heitkamp
Love and Matheson were running in District 4, which contains a large chunk of the Salt Lake City metro area, and less (by a huge margin) of the surrounding countryside than the other three districts. SLC has a large Democratic base, openly gay politicians, and Salt Lake County went over 38% for Obama. Matheson himself is a bit of a DINO, well to the right of the rest of the party, and many SLC Democrats bemoaned the lack of a “real Democrat” to vote for. In that demographic, Love was indeed viewed as an extremist and a bit of a loon (she promised to join the Congressional Black Caucus and destroy it from the inside).
Wow, so the best there is for Democrats in Utah is 20+ points for Obama and that is supposed to show how Democratic it is? Hell, Romney won Mississippi by 12 points! Does that mean Mississippi is REALLY Democratic-leaning by Utah standards? Or only when a Mormon is on the ticket? (Which is another whole ball of fish…)
You have a cite for this?
Even in her upset win, she was replacing a Democrat - Kent Conrad. Which by itself means North Dakota isn’t as Red as Utah is.
I don’t think anyone appreciates just how Red Utah is in this thread, actually. The demographic example that was brought up to show why Love lost was an area Obama lost by 20+ points…!
So Love’s labours lost?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Matheson#Electoral_history
There is a very simple method to prove or disprove the OP’s hypothesis, namely comparing Congressman Matheson’s results this year with those of 2010 when theoretically he should have had a closer race since 2010 was a strongly Republican year and his opponent was a white man. Instead results show us that in 2010 Matheson won by 5% over his opponent while this year he won only by 0.3%.
We’re all sure some non-zero number of voters did not vote for Love because she’s a woman or because she’s black. And?
Except it’s not the same district. And even if it was, midterms are quite different. And a year with a Mormon Presidential candidate makes it not very comparable in terms of turnout to even other elections where the White House was involved.
Do you feel that the evidence in a completely other election with a completely different district is more relevant than trends seen from the same voters in the same election?
Just pointing it out.
You keep talking about this “other district” as if it means anything. It doesn’t. We don’t know which district was more amenable to his campaign-- the old 2nd District or the new 4th District.
If you want to trot this out as some sort of meaningful debate point, you need to give it some, well… meaning. As it is, it means nothing.
It means that we can disregard the past election and that the current election trends might be a better comparison.
No, it doesn’t mean that. It means you need to go and do some research and find out how different the districts are. Throwing away 10 years of voting records is convenient for the case you’re trying to make, but it’s not a very objective way to go about it.
As someone already said, I doubt there is anyone on this MB who is going to say the residents of District 4 are color-blind. But the extent to which racism is involved is better deduced from past behavior of those or similar residents. We have a control study where Matheson ran many times against white men and won. If you want to understand how he could have one this time, then look at the make-up of the different districts. After all, part of the old district was incorporated into the new one.
I’ll grant that it’s not an easy thing to research, but it’s your thesis and if you want to defend it, you should be willing to do the leg work.
Salt Lake County is not the same as Salt Lake City; as I couldn’t find numbers for just the city, I thought that the numbers of the surrounding county might be suggestive to the thoughtful and open-minded. My bad. Also, as I mentioned, Matheson is a well-known Mormon well to the right of Obama. Obama, I might add, had the endorsement of the Salt Lake City Tribune.
For what, Mia Love’s position?
Or what the demographic thinks of her? Sorry, all I have for that is comments from SLC Tribune readers.
Sorry, her opponent being one of the Good Ole Boys is enough to account for this
As a former Mormon, former Utahn former Republican checking in (but not formally black or female, AFAIK):
I just looked at the gerrymandering and they’ve got Salt Lake County (where 57% of all of Obama’s votes came from) divided up into three different congressional districts. Matheson’s district includes some of the more conservative parts of Salt Lake County, none on the more liberal Salt Lake City, and the super conservative Utah Country (88% Romney).
However, any Democrat who does win elections in Utah does so by getting some of he Republican vote.
The Republicans could have done better than a black, female, non-native Utahn single term mayor of a tiny town.
How much of the Republican votes came from which one of these factors would have to be asked by polls, but Matheson and his father, the former governor have defeated Republican rivals with stronger resumes than Love’s.
To this outsider it looks like Love was moved forward into the “rising superstar” role before her time because to the RNC organizers she was already something remarkable to parade before the convention (“This black woman’s a Republican mayor! In Utah! And we’re running her for Congress!”), but back at home she was in a weak position against a formidable long-entrenched member of the state political class so THIS contest would not automatically favor any challenger just because of an ® after the name and it being Utah.
And voters in a particular district are not beholden to make the party look good. They’ll vote for the candidate that they feel is going to bring home the bacon.