This week’s election results sent some distinct signals to voting guru Michael Barone. He lists them in a Washington Examiner column.
1. The Obamacare rollout fiasco and Obama’s lies hurt Democrats.
You only have to look at Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s narrow 48 percent to 46 percent margin in Virginia to see that. McAuliffe outspent Republican Ken Cuccinelli by a wide margin (as much as 10-to-1, some bloggers suggested) and was leading 46 percent to 37 percent in the last days of October in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls on Oct. 31. In Virginia, the state that voted closest to the national average in the last two presidential elections, McAuliffe ended up with 48 percent, 3 percentage points behind Barack Obama’s 2012 percentage of the state, while Cuccinelli’s 46 percent was just 1 percentage point behind Mitt Romney’s showing.
Did Obamacare hurt? Well, the exit poll showed Virginia voters opposed rather than favored it by a 53 percent to 45 percent margin.
In contrast:
2. The government shutdown didn’t much hurt Republicans.
Northern Virginia was perhaps more impacted by the shutdown than any other part of the country. Yet when the exit poll asked who was more to blame, 47 percent of voters said Republicans in Congress and 46 percent said Obama. Considering that individuals almost always poll better than groups of people—particularly Republicans (or, for that matter, Democrats) in Congress, this is a devastating result for Obama.
It reminds me of the story of the Teamsters Union business agent who was in the hospital and received a bouquet of flowers. The card read, “The executive board wishes you a speedy recovery by a vote of 9 to 6.” However, in this case, the margin was narrower.
3. Millennials are souring on Democrats.
The Virginia exit poll showed voters ages 18 to 29 favoring McAuliffe over Cuccinelli by a 45 percent to 40 percent margin. The Rock the Vote folks sent out an email crowing about this, but put in context, it’s a dismal result.
Barone gleans two other lessons from the election numbers. Observation No. 4: Hispanics and Asians “didn’t rush out for Democrats.” No. 5: A Republican can win support from members of private-sector unions with concerns about “outsized benefits and privileges of greedy and self-righteous public-sector unions.”