Have The Democrats Peaked In Northern Virginia?
Tim Craig looks at some interesting numbers for Northern Virginia Democrats:
First the bad news.
President-elect Barack Obama received 60 percent of the vote in Fairfax County and 72 percent in Arlington County and Alexandria, giving him a trove of support that made it nearly impossible for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to carry the state.
Now, the good news.
Obama drew 60 percent of the vote in Fairfax and 72 percent in Arlington and Alexandria, which are about the same percentages that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Sen. James Webb (D) received in their races in 2005 and 2006.
So if Northern Virginia has leveled out all eyes then turn downstate.
For a while now Republicans have argued that if they can appeal to the Conservative base, the small government, fiscal responsibility base, they can win. When they don’t, the base stays home. These three races help demonstrate that – John McCain and Jerry Kilgore failed to excite the base and lost by larger margins than George Allen, who did excite the base but also hurt himself greatly with the M-word fiasco.
Virginia isn’t blue and is hardly purple. It still leans red. But there have been very few Republican candidates statewide to excite that color to come to the polls. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine won not by being blue but by being purple themselves, by coming to the center to suck off some of the more purple right of center vote. That combined with a Republican challenger who did not move the Republican base red votes to get out to the polls has led to a strong run as of late for the Democrats.
If Northern Virginia has peaked, then the Republicans have a way forward. But it will take a candidate who can walk the walk and reinvigorate the party to make it happen.
Category: Campaigns and Elections
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Right. Look at the Geo Allen example. In the First District – ALONE – if he had run even with Marriage or with Cong. Jo Ann Davis he would have won. He was more than 9,000 votes behind on both accounts in this one district.
The other issue that often gets missed is the growing number of self-professed “independents” which is growing rapidly in the burbs. I would characterize most of this voters as “split ticket: voters more so than true indepedents though. This can easily be indentified in the wide gaps of margins between the Obama victory and Warners victory. Many Republicans I have spoken with post-election voted McCain/Warner. There are some underlining issues that the GOP must work out if this is to be cleansed anytime soon and it certainly starts with the candidates and of course the process (primary better than convention). There were also many in the 7th Congressional that supported Eric Cantor (R) but cast a vote for Obama over McCain. Again split ticketing has been it seems increasingly an issue based on the voting data. How the GOP goes about bridging this gap is crucial for the future.
Slightly different view
There is a chunk of people that always vote Red
There is a chunk of people that always vote Blue
I think many here think to win you need to turn out the Red Chunk. I agree that the Red Chunk is bigger than the Blue Chunk.
However, as Alter alluded to I think the Purple chuck is pretty big too and you can’t win without them.
The purple chuck for me is Western Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince WIlliam, Henrico, Chesterfield, Rockingham (Area in and immediately around Harrisonburg) and some parts of HR/TW which people who live there know more about than I do. Basically the suburbs.
Here is the issue then. The people invovled in the committees at these localities are obviously from the red chunk. Then the question becomes how do you broaden out the message to convince people from the purple chunk to support you.
The democrats know they can’t win by just being Blue they need to appeal to the purple. While debatable I belive the Republicans cant win by just being Red. They need to appeal to the purple as well. Perhaps we can be redder (more partisan than the Ds can afford to be blue) but you still have to figure out what drives the purple people and bring in a decent chunk of them on board to win.
As a follow on
Where did Obama spend the most money and time????
Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax (nope)
It was Prince William
The democrats get it they are pushing outward and tailoring as they go
Well said, nmm. As someone on the front lines it is painfully apparent that being super “conservative” is not the winning ticket. At least not up here.
It’s not a matter of being “super conservative” to win. Its a matter of sticking to the principles that matter to Republicans and Virginians – fiscal responsibility and smaller government. Democrats have had to shift to the Center to compete here. They aren’t making new Democrats, they’re appealing to the folks that want fiscal responsibility Republican leadership has lacked in a while.
Agreeeded fiscal conservatisim (red chunk) is a very strong plank of the purple people. Effective government is as well (unfortunatly this has been ceded to the blue chunk). When you look at the house of delegates both are lacking fiscal conservatisim and effective government are both lacking
Thankfully McDonnel has done a great job so far. His education comment was spot on. Watching spending AND providing effective solutions. That right there is what has been lacking. We do that we have a supermajority and a Red state again
Nova we are the only folks whio look at the House and those dynamics. Most of the voters do not. The buck stops at the Governor regardless of whom has control of the Assembly. Effective “leadership” has not been ceded to the blue chunk (Kaine) ; in fact given the shortfalls of government I would say the executive is void of any effectiveness. They do have a great hand at spin though.
Ask yourselves, why is it a GOP Governor like Mitt Romney could work with a liberal legislature in MA with some success and yet niether kaine and to a lessor extent Warner have never even approached the vicinity of the success that Romney had. Is our Assembly that much harder to deal with than the legislature during Romney’s time as Governor in MA? I wonder.
Alter of Freedom,
Romney was effective in Massachusetts because he was centrist in his leadership at the time. Mind you that being a centrist in New England is actually fairly liberal.
Romney the centrist might have won my vote. But when he ran for President he endeared himself to conservatives by suddenly changing course. Not only was he less then a genuine conservative he was a turncoat against centrism. It didn’t matter what he thought yesterday, all of a sudden he found the light and there was not a conservative issue around he was not in favor of.
What is the lesson here? New England Republicans should not have aspirations for the Presidency. You can’t balance what got you elected locally with what it will take to get elected on the national stage.
True Little David, but it begs the question today if we should expect anything different from say the folks Obama is surrounding himself with from the Clinton days. Leadership is about making choices and providing direction to ones vision through influence and inspiration regardless of what the issue is or shift in the issue. In the end, the real issue is and always will be is whether the people at the end of the day were better served or not with the policy regardless were the idea or plan originated. Those that advocate from that perspective are true “leaders”, the rest are mere partisans.
[...] suspect there is a lot of truth to that. H/T to Jason Kenney at Bearing Drift, who adds some valuable insight of his [...]