On election night 2014, we here at Odd Dominion headquarters sensed early on that Democrats were in for a very bad night.
On the national stage, the major TV networks called the supposedly contested Kentucky senate race (which pitted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell against Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes) the second that polls closed in the Bluegrass State. And in Virginia, when results (once again largely unavailable through the State Board of Elections’ website) finally began to trickle in, Republican margins were consistently higher than predicted. Races that were supposed to be close, like the 10th Congressional District showdown between Republican Barbara Comstock and Democrat John Foust, were turning into GOP routs, while expected Republican victories, like that of U.S. Representative Robert Hurt over actor and political activist Lawrence Gaughan, were shaping up to be embarrassing blowouts (Hurt ended up winning by 25 percent).
The most ironic thing about Gaughan’s loss? He’s the founder of GOV360, a nonprofit organization that seeks to increase voter turnout. Unfortunately for him (and every other Virginia donkey hoping for political victory), turnout in last week’s election was abysmally low, even for a midterm election, and most of that was due to Democrats staying home on election day.
As statistician Nate Cohn pointed out in The New York Times, Virginia’s voter turnout was lower than any other state with a competitive senate race. Only 37 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, an incredible 43 percent drop from the presidential election levels of 2012. Yet another telling fact, courtesy of the Virginia Public Access Project: The highest voter turnout came from right-leaning districts (46 percent showed up to help 7th District Republican Dave Brat triumph in his bid to replace former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor), while the worst turnout was seen in heavily Democratic districts (only 31 percent made it to the polls to reelect 3rd District Representative Bobby Scott, who was running unopposed).
All of this helps explain how Senator Mark Warner, who won 127 of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties during his 2008 run for senate, almost lost his job to GOP strategist and former George W. Bush crony Ed Gillespie.
Although pre-election polls predicted a Warner victory in the high single digits, his actual margin of victory wasn’t even 1 percent (he outpolled Gillespie by around 17,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast). Warner made a big show of campaigning in Southwest Virginia, but it didn’t help one bit. As many post-election dissections have pointed out, Warner’s “radical centrist” schtick probably did more harm than good, failing to win over the Obama-hating rural vote, while giving the Democratic base absolutely no reason to support him.
Of course, dispirited Virginia donkeys can try to find a silver lining by gazing longingly toward 2016, when the national electoral landscape will be tilted in their favor, and the traditionally higher presidential-year turnout will theoretically result in substantial Democratic gains. But all of this depends on a base of voters motivated by ideas and solutions that address core progressive issues like income inequality, reproductive rights, universal health care and immigration reform. All of these were barely mentioned on the campaign trail in 2012, and Democratic candidates paid the price.
Has the party of the New Deal and the Great Society learned a lesson from this debacle? We’d like to think so. But if history is any guide, probably not.