How Did Bearing Drift Do With Primary Predictions?
It’s the morning after the night before so it’s time to turn our bleary eyes to the 2017 Primary predictions made by some of Bearing Drift’s writers. How did we do? First, let’s look at the final results as provided by the State Board of Elections.
GOVERNOR – Republican
| Edward W. “Ed” Gillespie | 160,039 | 43.71% |
| Corey A. Stewart | 155,716 | 42.53% |
| Frank W. Wagner | 50,345 | 13.75% |
LT. GOVERNOR – Republican
| Bryce E. Reeves | 142,141 | 40.02% |
| Glenn R. Davis, Jr. | 61,157 | 17.22% |
| Jill H. Vogel | 151,849 | 42.76% |
GOVERNOR – Democrat
| Ralph S. Northam | 303,429 | 55.90% |
| Tom S. Perriello | 239,383 | 44.10% |
LT. GOVERNOR – Democrat
| Justin E. Fairfax | 252,319 | 49.14% |
| Gene J. Rossi | 60,008 | 11.69% |
| Susan S. Platt | 201,154 | 39.17% |
The surprise of the night was the tight race between Republicans Ed Gillespie and Corey Stewart, a nail-biter that went down to the wire before it was called for Gillespie.
The other tight race was between Republicans Jill Vogel and Bryce Reeves who battled for LG until Vogel pulled ahead. While many voters seemed to wrangle over the LG decision of who to vote for, the undecideds did not break for Glenn Davis as some had expected.
With those results in mind, let’s look at what our writers predicted.
Brian Schoeneman: 100%. Without giving exact percentages, he nailed it.
Jim Hoeft: 25%. His one correct prediction was Fairfax but he missed with Wagner, Perriello, and Davis, thinking outside the box with a couple of those.
Matt Hall: 100%. Matt’s percentages were off but his choices were on the money.
Rick Sincere: 75%. His prediction that Stewart would get less than 10 percent, we now know, was a miscalculation.
Shaun Kenney: 100%. His percentages were way off for Gillespie and Vogel but he chose the correct winners for each office.
Lynn Mitchell: 50% for the statewide races. Of the three local races, I had two correct (Emily Brewer and Bethany Harrison). Ben Dessart’s loss was a surprise since it seemed his chances were higher than Emily’s, mainly because she was going up against a local supervisor.
All in all, not bad for the Bearing Drift crew.
