18 Point Swings

By Fester:   

Wow an 18 point swing in MS-1 from 2004's Presidential result to last night's special election result.  The Democratic candidate, Travis Childers trounced his generic Republican opponent by 8 points in a district that should favor a generic Republican by roughly 10 points.  Yes, I know that this is a special election where both parties were able to pore massive sums of money into it, and candidates were free to be as good or as bad as they personally could be, but something is going on here. 

At first we had an anomaly in IL-14 where a Democrat (Ed Fallon) picked up a R+6 seat against an incompetent opponent, and then we had a curiosity as a couple of months later in LA-6, Democratic candidate Cazavoux (sic) beat a weak opponent in a R+7 district.  Now we have a trend as an R+10 district flipped despite the Republican candidate actually being relatively competent. 

So what does this mean?

The Republicans need a new advertising and branding strategy as their kitchen sink attempts to tie Childers to Obama failed and failed miserably.  Childers actually increased his margin from the open, non-partisan primary.  He also increased the net Democratic margin from that primary.  Massive voter turnout means that someone's GOTV operation is running smoothly and is finding a very receptive audience that wants to go out and engage at the non-Presidential level.  And this I think could have the most significant long run impact on partisan composition as the Democratic primary campaigns energized a lot of occasional or new voters and they are still coming out to vote once the circus left town. 

Finally, this increases the resource demands on the NRCC as more and more GOP incumbents are looking at their R+5 or R+7 seats and are getting worried.  However the NRCC has very little cash on hand and due to the incentive of covering one own's ass first, vulnerable GOP congresscritters will not want to either transfer their current campaign funds to the NRCC or fundraise from their lists for the NRCC.  Time to enjoy a reality based incentive conflict!

Comments

[Kyle E. Moore]

Very interesting win last very interesting. Actually, you nailed the kitchen sink bit dead on. I've heard more than a few rumors that one of the things that killd Davis was that his air strategy was almost 100% negative, and the only part he played in them was the "I approved this message" bit.

As for the monetary strain, yup, that's exactly why the message to house GOPers is, "you're on your own."

From national to local, Republicans are running on a message of, "Democrats suck," and nothing else, and they're doing it with very little money. As this whole endeavor marches on, the potential pick ups just get bigger and bigger.

For instance, you look at my district, Va-2, which is comprised of Virginia beach and the eastern seaboard... a lot of that went to Bush by close to twenty points in 2004.

Thelma Drake is now incredibly vulnerable, and I suppose it's also worth noting that Obama about doubled the votes McCain got in that region.

So yeah, GOP is hurting this time around, which means here comes the smear machine in full force. Ironically, I think that will kill them even deader.