Off-Year Elections - Lessons Learned?
wesmorgan1Well, the pundits are in full flower today. Some look at the gubernatorial results in New Jersey and Virginia and name them a stinging rebuke of the Democrats, while others point to the Congressional race in NY-23 and suggest that a smackdown has been delivered to conservative Republicans.
I'm going to disagree with both suggestions, and here's why: ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said it, and we see it proven again and again. Here's the lessons of which I saw confirmation in yesterday's results, in no particular order:
1) As a rule, off-year elections belong to the local bases of each party. Campaign managers on both sides talked about "campaign fatigue" and its effect on their get-out-the-vote efforts this time around. The wave of young and/or first-time voters we saw in 2008 did not materialize in these elections; they were largely decided by the never-miss-an-election faithful. (Early analysis of Virginia turnout indicates that GOP turnout was on a par with last year's, but that Democratic turnout crumbled.)
2) "Coattails" don't last beyond one election. Obama's/Biden's campaigning didn't help Deeds or Corzine, and Palin's endorsement didn't carry Hoffman to victory. Exit polls (apply salt as desired) in both NJ and VA indicated that Obama's campaigning only affected about 40% of the electorate, with those folks evenly split between voting "in support of" and "in opposition to" the President. 40% doesn't make a referendum...
3) Voters simply behave differently in state-level elections. It might surprise you to learn that "deep blue" New Jersey, since 1980, has elected Republican Governors more often than it has Democrats. (Christie's win makes it 5-4 GOP) The same level of contention/turnover is found in Virginia, where McDonnell's victory gives the Governor's Mansion to the GOP for the 4th time in 9 chances since 1980. (Compare that to a state like Kentucky, which has only elected two Republican Governors since World War II!) Here's where the disconnect becomes clear...New Jersey elected Christine Whitman to the Governor's Mansion, then turned around one year later and went for Kerry by 15 points!
4) Candidates who talk convincingly about local issues win. Here's where Hoffman dropped the ball in NY-23, as far as I'm concerned. When you not only fail to answer questions about local issues, but have your handlers dismiss those concerns as "parochial," you're digging yourself a hole. Owens basically stayed on message (particularly where support for FT Drum was concerned) throughout the Scozzafava/Hoffman circus, peeled off a bloc of Scozzafava's supporters after her withdrawl, and now a big chunk of NY-23 has a Democratic Congressman for the first time in a century.
5) None of the above can save you from lousy performance as an incumbent. Frankly, I'm amazed that Corzine made the race all that close, given his job approval rating of 40%.
6) Candidates have to campaign across the entire state, and do so aggressively. Here's where I think Deeds failed in Virginia; he didn't cover large swaths of the state, and wound up losing all but about 10 counties.
I think it utterly ridiculous to suggest that candidates are "not liberal enough" (as seen over on DailyKos) or "not conservative enough" (as seen over on RedState). The simple fact of the matter is that there is no single definition of "liberal" or "conservative" that applies across 50 states, thousands of Congressional districts or hundreds of thousands of cities. Both parties would do well to learn that particular lesson, or 2010 is going to be Grade-A Ugly...for both sides.
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (8)
I think you'll see Hoffman again; Owens only won the NY-23 seat for one year, and Hoffman will be much better served by going through the GOP primary process than he was by the "you didn't pick me, so I'm going over to THIS party's ballot line" he tried this time...
I learned that some of the media saw the NY 23 loss as losses for the Palin and Limbaugh types, but at the same time the Democrat losses had no correlation to Obama and his policies. None whatsoever.
Yeah, that's the kind of nonsense (from both sides) that prompted my article, Beef. Then, again, they don't get paid to hold rational discussion, right?
I think our little website here is going to go wild by next November...
I can't even imagine how crazy things will get come November 2012.
Let's see. The Democrats did lose two State House corner offices. OTOH they picked up more votes in the House for health insurance reform, one of them in a district where the last time they won, they accomplished it by launching attacks on Abraham Lincoln. If this is defeat, I'll happily take it.
"Stinging rebuke."
I wasn’t aware that Jonah “Liberal Fascism” “Doughy Pantload” Goldberg’s even less-accomplished brother just lost his bid for a NYC council seat.
Very, very, very badly, apparently. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Lesson 1:
A last minute conservative candidate runs the republican candidate out of the race who in turn, endorses the democrat who barely wins. Seeing how there was only about 100,000 votes here, I'm not sure what can be learned here.
Lesson 2:
Republicans win two governorships with 7 million votes cast with 2/3 of independents voting republican. Not sure here either.
Analysis:
Unsure.
People dissatisfied.
People angry.
Both dems and repubs in denial.