Did Corey Stewart Cost Trump Virginia?
Of course, Hillary Clinton won the Commonwealth with about 200,000 votes… but there’s no question that Trump underperformed in certain localities.
Prince William County was a surprising location for failure given that Corey Stewart — a former Trump co-chair in Virginia before an ill-timed support for a protest outside of RNC. One can endlessly speculate as to the reasons why PWC failed while the rest of the nation (and most of rural Virginia) produced a tidal wave of support for the Republican nominee.
…but the numbers do the explaining far better.
2000: Prince William
Gore: 44,745
Bush: 52,788 (52.5%)
Margin: BUSH 8,043
2004: Prince William
Kerry: 61,271
Bush: 69,776 (53.7%)
Margin: BUSH 8,505
2008: Prince William
Obama: 93,435
McCain: 67,621 (46.3%)
Margin: OBAMA 25,814
2012: Prince William
Obama: 103,331
Romney: 74,458 (47.2%)
Margin: OBAMA 28,873
2016: Prince William
Hillary: 112,986
Trump: 71,588 (36.50%)
Margin: HILLARY 41,398
The kicker in all of this is that Prince William County’s population has exploded over the last 16 years, from an estimated 284,000 to a current estimated 437,000 — a 65% increase of population while the delta between the Bush 2000 turnout and Trump 2016 in a county where the chairman of the Board of Supervisors is was your national co-chair increased by a measely 12.1%. If Stewart had produced Bush 2000 levels of turnout — improving nothing other than allowing the natural lift of the population to fill the ranks — Trump should have pulled down 81,226 votes with 18.3%. Not enough to win PWC outright, but at the very least improving on Romney’s logical track upwards.
Can’t blame turnout on this one. Virginia turnout for Trump? 70.4% — while back in 2000? Turnout was 68.5% according to the Virginia Department of Elections — a 2.9% change.
Go deeper on this.
PWC population in 2000 vs. the Bush 2000 vote? 18.3%
PWC population in 2016 vs. the Trump 2016 vote? 12.1%.
If Stewart had produced Bush 2000 levels of turnout — improving nothing other than allowing the natural lift of the population to fill the ranks — Trump should have pulled down 81,226 votes with 18.3%. Not enough to win PWC outright, but at the very least improving on Romney’s logical track upwards.
So why am I spending so much time on this? It’s because Corey Stewart catastrophically failed to deliver Virginia much less his home locality for the Trump campaign, thus gutting any narrative that Stewart might have frontrunner status in the 2017 gubernatorial contest. Stewart’s campaign for governor is over before it began — completely carved out by hard, unfeeling math.
Grandma will give you a live demonstration of Stewart’s “frontrunner” status in about two weeks.
This turkey is fried. Not even the dignity of a little bit of bacon on the top… just carved out, stuffed, and in desperate need of mashed potatoes to make it edible.
How bad is it? Check out the Washington Post:
Gillespie, who came close to toppling Sen. Mark R. Warner in 2014, has positioned himself as someone who can unite a splintered GOP and appeal to swing voters. During and after his Senate bid, he courted tea party activists as well as the GOP establishment, racking up campaign donations and endorsements.
Stewart contends that Gillespie will pay for keeping his distance from the nominee. “Ed Gillespie treated Donald Trump like he had typhoid,” Stewart said.
Gillespie seemed pretty active in supporting the Trump candidacy from this perch. Question is, how does the Trump campaign feel about Stewart?
Mike Rubino, Trump’s senior Virginia adviser, said Stewart should not expect support from the president-elect.
“To be honest, Mr. Trump doesn’t even know who Corey Stewart is,” Rubino said. “He went rogue. He never followed orders. He never did what the campaign asked him to do. He was so preoccupied with running for governor that we had to fire him…. This guy was a cancer to the organization in Virginia, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”
Does anyone need a graphic representation of that Rubino quote?
Rubino in a previous life.
Talk about scorched earth, no backup, President-Trump-doesn’t-even-know-you type harshness. That is so dark, so ruthless, such an absolutely metal quote. . . the translation is pretty clear: Trump’s machine is actively blaming Stewart for Trump losing Virginia. Not positive, folks.
In short, the Trump machine is letting folks know that Stewart is hostis humanis generis (that’s Latin for “has typhoid”). Just in case anyone has any illusions about what the current Virginia Trump chairman has to say about it? Yeah… he RT’d the WaPo article.
From @LVozzella at WAPO: Va Trump’s Mike Rubino: “To be honest, Mr. Trump doesn’t even know who Corey Stewart is..” https://t.co/QikCifI6Ej
— John Fredericks (@jfradioshow) November 10, 2016
. . . and that should do it, folks.
Stewart’s PWC numbers put him in serious danger of losing a campaign for re-election, never mind running for statewide office — and certainly not a frontrunner.
