Poor turnout by Democratic base voters ensured McAuliffe defeat in Virginia

[bullwinkle428]

Last edited Wed Dec 8, 2021, 10:06 AM - Edit history (1)

It’s safe to say the quickly congealing conventional wisdom about Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial contest in November was that the moderate-seeming (albeit Trump-endorsed) Republican won by flipping suburban voters who forsook the Democratic Party out of concerns over public-school closures and “woke” curricula and also Joe Biden’s economic policies.

Back on November 5, I dissented from this judgment, suggesting that disparate turnout patterns, long the curse of Democrats when they control the White House, may have been the real story. But my evidence for this proposition came from exit polls, and some political analysts refuse to put much stock in those.

Now comes some more granular data from political scientists Seth Hill and Dan Hopkins via FiveThirtyEight, and it seems to confirm that poor turnout by Democratic base voters defeated Terry McAuliffe more than ambivalent swing voters. “It was heavily pro-Biden precincts that delivered the governor’s seat to the GOP,” they write. More specifically, analysis of every Virginia precinct shows that McAuliffe underperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 margins by 592,000 in precincts Biden carried with at least 70 percent of the vote, while in those same precincts Youngkin fell short of Trump’s vote by only 124,000 votes. Both candidates had significantly slighter (and more equal) falloff from their presidential-candidate predecessors in more competitive and Trump-dominated precincts; indeed, Youngkin actually got slightly more votes than Trump in precincts the former president carried with at least 70 percent of the vote. This latter data point, however, confirms the general impression that the election was a battle of the bases that Youngkin handily won. And that’s exactly what the exit polls showed.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/swing-voters-dont-explain-why-youngkin-won.html

ETA: The fact that only 35% of Democratic voters believe that democracy in America is under threat should be all the proof one needs that we have to sounding the alarm much louder and more frequently. In the corporate world, this is typically defined as an "area of opportunity"!

https://www.grinnell.edu/news/52-americans-believe-democracy-facing-major-threat

[gab13by13]

1. Occam's Razor, IMO,

McAuliffe wasn't a great candidate.

[Demsrule86]

4. It doesn't matter what sort of candidate McAuliffe was...vote blue. Any GOP is a million times

worse than any Democratic candidate....and they handed the GOP the Virginia State House as well. Who is the base? The thing is we are going to have to enlarge our 'base' and go after more moderates. We must win elections. I would have thought the base would have learned an important lesson after 2000, 2004 2010, and 2016

[PTWB]

18. It matters to the voters.

[Act_of_Reparation]

53. It doesn't matter to *YOU*

You are not the norm. I am not the norm. Virtually no one here is the norm. Your average requires much more motivation getting to the polls than we do.

[bullwinkle428]

6. True, but still very much a cautionary tale for the 2022 Midterms. Proves how

absolutely essential it will be to shape the narrative that allows us to maximize turnout.

On the other hand, this more or less disproves the hair-on-fire rants from the Bill Mahers and James Carvilles of the world, saying that the nice white ladies in the suburbs came out in droves to vote against "CRT", "woke-ism", and schools being forced to close over COVID.

[AZProgressive]

7. I notice people tend to project their own issues

When coming up with narratives for election results.

[Celerity]

11. Carville is a washed-up, RW talking point-spewing has-been, living off swamp gas fumes from the 90's

Hard to think of a less relevant or worse Democratic talking head nowadays, other than the almost always disastrously wrong, old 3rd Way/neolib, bank/Wall Street de-reg über alles plough horse Larry 'there are not many great women scientists because they lack aptitude and don't want to work hard' Summers.

[bullwinkle428]

13. Ahhh..Larry Summers! BTW, how is that new "anti-woke" university that he's

a part of, coming along?

In the interest of truth, here are a few hard ones: the founders of the University of Austin have launched a website, not a university. They have no campus, no student body, no degree programs, no accreditation, no faculty and no army of graduate students and adjunct professors to do all the dirty work of actually, you know, teaching classes.

When I read the roster of academics attached to the University of Austin (or UATX as they apparently hope to be called) last week, I wondered whether any of those exalted figures would actually be resigning from their sinecures at such truth-abandoning institutions as Harvard, Brown, New York University (OP sidebar - my Dad's alma mater) and the University of Chicago. Over the past eight days – a lifetime, really, if you’re an eight-day-old baby – the “dedicated crew” has shrunk to a smattering.

If any of these free speech warriors wanted to actually take a stand for their stated beliefs, they would move to Texas, not to teach at a fake university, but to get a job at a public high school. They could then set about assigning their students to read one or more of the 850 “discomfort”-causing books that a state lawmaker, apparently invigorated by the anti–critical race theory movement promoted by Boghossian and Weiss, has placed on a list for investigation by the Texas Education Agency.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/17/university-austin-anti-woke-college

[Celerity]

16. Wow, I had forgotten that Summers was involved with that RW project. What a POS.

What a brutally great article BTW!

Made my day so far.

[W_HAMILTON]

17. Oh bullshit.

This is a familiar refrain, often from the exact type of people that don't turn out in these elections that cost us these elections, just so they can deflect blame from their own (in)action.

McAuliffe won his Democratic primary by more than 40%. If there some better mythical candidate out there, Democrats sure didn't want him/her. They wanted McAuliffe.

Contrast that with Youngkin, who was installed in the position by Republican elites rather than going through the typical primary process.

If McAuliffe were such a bad candidate, he wouldn't have been overwhelmingly selected by Virginia primary voters in an OPEN primary and if Youngkin were such a great candidate, he wouldn't have needed to be selected by the Republican Party political elite to be gifted the nomination because he couldn't win the nomination if left up to the voters.

And yet Youngkin won and McAuliffe did not.

Why? Because Republicans voted for their candidate regardless and -- as often is the case in these sorts of closely contested elections that Republicans almost always seem to eke out -- just enough Democrats failed to turn out and vote for the Democrat, as this article posits.

[Doremus]

24. Just curious. What was the turnout percentage in the Dem primary? (If you know).

Winning by 40% isn't that impressive if only 20% of Dems came out for the primary, imo.

[W_HAMILTON]

59. No, I don't right offhand, but...

...you don't get to bitch about the candidate if you don't even bother to vote in the primary process. If someone cares that much about who the nominee is, then VOTE.

[Tommymac]

25. McAuliffe WAS a BAD candidate.

Primary voters get it wrong sometimes.

McAuliffe had a HORRIBLE Grass roots game. Absolutely awful.

He took it for granted that he was going to win because Trump.

He didn't get off his ass until August and tried to substitute a LATE money dump and a few yard signs for a ground game.

He was a former Governor so had a LOT of baggage. Winning a split term is NEVER easy.

THAT is the lesson WE need to relearn every single cycle, it seems.

We can survive the M$M. We can survive rich white men as candidates. We CANNOT win unless we have a strong ground game that insures a good turnout and it has to start at least a year prior to election day...not months before.

VA was not about the Right so much as it was about a bad choice for the Democratic candidate. And the data seems to be proving that out.

[Progressive Jones]

45. Thank You. nt

[Deminpenn]

28. JMHO, but second acts generally don't

pan out.

[marble falls]

2. We almost always do it to ourselves. We need to clog the polls every election.

[nitpicker]

14. +1

In non-presidential years, if the polls show e.g. a 45/42 lead, I add 5 percent to the Repug results to estimate that it will be 45/47.

[AZProgressive]

3. This does make more sense than the conventional wisdom

Some here were also bashing CRT afraid it would cost them elections.

[Caliman73]

34. Some still are.

Some say CRT will lose the midterms but don't really spell out why.

[Calista241]

5. Not sure I'm 100% with this analysis,

McAuliffe got 200k more votes than Northam did in 2018. Both were off cycle elections, and turnout for a gubernatorial election in 2021 was out of control.

The problem was Youngkin got 500k more votes than Gillespie did in 2018. 3.3m voters turned out in 2021, versus 2.65m voters in 2018.

Turnout has been the bane of Republicans historically, but if they can win despite a 30% increase in turnout, we could be in deep trouble.

[Best_man23]

12. Trumpkin also overperformed in tRump leaning counties south of Route 17

Meaning he got a higher percentage of the vote in many counties that tRump won in 2020. The underperformance by McAuliffe in NoVA made the difference, now we Democrats in Virginia are going to have to push back hard against what will surely come (attempts to gerrymander, election fraudits, pushbacks on progressive legislation passed since 2013).

[Lovie777]

8. Democrats need to combat all the lies and fearmongering that the GQP have . ...

enshrined in their fucked up party. Youngkin a "Christian" and he lied and told non-turths and relayed tons of "fear" to the people of Virginia. Viriginia is still Blue but alas in red states they have coupled the lies and fearmongering with "gerrymandering and voter suppression", which they consider as a template for total and complete power for decades.

Can this be overturned and can it backfire on the GQP, why of course.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. Absolutely.

Democracy is under threat. Our candidates — and our Party’s leadership — need to make that clear to voters.

[JI7]

10. People wanted schools open so they don't have to watch their kids

[jimfields33]

20. He also told parents to stay out of education

[Kingofalldems]

26. Got a link on that?

[jimfields33]

29. Lol. You seriously haven't heard this after being one of the most active

Member on DU?

[Kingofalldems]

31. He didn't tell parents to stay out of education.

Again please link where he made that statement.

[Kingofalldems]

36. I just found out from the Moonie Times.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/3/mcauliffe-wants-parents-stay-out-public-education/

[jimfields33]

30. See 21 on this very thread.

[Kingofalldems]

35. See 33 on this very thread.

[Kingofalldems]

33. Ahh-here it is from the Moonie Times:

It's what the Moonie MAGAts posted--not what he actually said. Looks like you posted a right wing talking point.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/3/mcauliffe-wants-parents-stay-out-public-education/

[Caliman73]

37. Here it is from the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/05/mcauliffes-quote-schools-was-clunker-polls-suggest-parental-backlash-didnt-swing-election/

Obviously more reasoned analysis but still. He could have answered that question WAY better.

[Mysterian]

15. McAuliffe fell over himself when governor to please Dominion Energy

while landowners (many Democratic voters) had their land taken by Dominion for the doomed Atlantic Coast pipeline. Maybe the Democratic voters who support environmental protection and oppose eminent domain for corporate profits stayed home.

[bigtree]

19. anti votes carry the day in the majority of off-season elections

...any demagogue can carve out an explanation for why folks might not have voted.

The fact remains that the energy in most of these contests goes to pent-up resentment of the party in power. It's not rocket science, and certainly not some malaise. It's just hard to get folks satisfied with their pols to carve out time to vote, much less recognize there's an election they need to participate in.

We need automatic registration and election day holidays.

[Mysterian]

23. Got a link to that statistical info on off-season elections?

Thanks.

[bigtree]

27. .

https://www.thoughtco.com/historical-midterm-election-results-4087704

Horses in midstream : U.S. midterm elections and their consequences, 1894-1998
https://archive.org/details/horsesinmidstrea0000busc

Voter turnout regularly drops in midterm elections, and has done so since the 1840s.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections-but-why/

[Grins]

21. Maybe. But I'm blaming messaging.

It constantly infuriates me that Democrats’ messaging is a COMPLETE AND TOTAL failure. Youngkin made racist claims, flogged the CRT lie, and more and….nothing.

Youngkin POUNDED McAuliffe saying parents should NOT have a say in school curriculums in ads I saw multiple times an hour on multiple media. McAuliffe should have slammed back in hours. Instead? Nothing! There was ZERO response to that! For weeks! For two weeks before the election I saw that hit piece and - nothing in response.

[iemanja]

32. Virginians voted Republican

because they couldn't have a progressive? SMH.

[betsuni]

40. The myth that the Democratic base AND Republican voters are secretly democratic socialists

just waiting for a True Progressive candidate to vote for. Republican voters will join the Democratic base in class solidarity to fight the 1%. Purity test: slogans like Medicare for All and Green New Deal. Fail the test and it is forbidden to describe yourself as "progressive" -- you're a "centrist" "corporate Dem" beholden to wealthy donors/corporations, same economic policies as Republicans. The True Progressive runs against both party establishments.

They think that because Trump was anti-establishment, both left and right anti-establishment populism is the same and Trump voters will vote for a left populist candidate.

The Democratic Party must be punished for establishment/status quo/centrist/corporatist/wealthy elite candidates they rig primaries for (stopping at nothing to defeat True Progressives from helping the working class) and this is why the imaginary base stays home and Republican voters vote Republican.

It's nutty!

[NurseJackie]

38. Wrong!! That's not what "base" means. The Democratic BASE are the LOYAL voters who ALWAYS turn out...

Wrong!! That's not what "base" means. The Democratic BASE are the LOYAL voters who ALWAYS turn out and vote. The Democratic BASE are the individuals who donate to Democratic candidates and other fundraisers. The Democratic BASE are the ones who volunteer their time. The Democratic BASE will be the ones answering phones, making calls, stuffing envelopes, pounding the pavement, handing out flyers, going door to door!!

Let me tell you who are NOT the "base". The "base" is not the correct word to apply to fair-weather voters. The "base" is not the word to use when describing liberal voters who "need to be convinced" to vote, or who "need to be motivated" to vote. The "base" is not synonymous with "furthest left". The "base" are not the ones who need to be coddled. The "base" are not the type to put their own ego above everything else. The "base" are not going to withhold their vote in protest. The "base" are not going to vote third party in order to punish Democrats.

It's very simple: any liberal-minded or "progressive" individuals who couldn't be bothered to turn out and show up are NOT "the base" of the Democratic party.

[sheshe2]

39. +1000

On point.

[lapucelle]

41. The base doesn't have to be "inspired" to turn out to vote.

They understand that it is a fundamental civic duty that they owe.

[bullwinkle428]

44. Just as a personal note, I was in high school when Ronald Reagan came to power,

and that was all the inspiration I need to get out and vote for Democratic candidates exclusively for nearly 40 years now. Even when there have been races when I was not totally thrilled with the candidate on the ballot, the idea of not allowing the Republican to take that race was more than enough motivation for me.

I made the effort to post this particular piece as a way of kicking some lazy voters in the ass for failing to recognize the greater-than-ever threat to our democracy. I'm trying to understand why dedicated voters would take offense to this article.

[RobinA]

51. Yup.

I graduated from college in 1980. It was clear Reagan was going to win and it changed the trajectory of my life with the economic devastation. The very words "air traffic controller" send me running to my polling place looking for a voting machine. Since Bush/Gore I vote in every single tiny election every year. I don't vote for candidates running in both parties unless I know for a fact they are died-in-the-wool Democrats. And I don't vote for ANYBODY whom I don't know for a fact is prochoice. That includes school boards and dog catchers. I AM the base thanks to Reagan.

[leftstreet]

46. So is the base shrinking?

It sounds like the base as you define it wasn't large enough to get McAuliffe over the line

Maybe that's the bigger problem here?

[NurseJackie]

47. We win elections by appealing to the center, not the extremes.

So is the base shrinking?

Oh brother.

It sounds like the base as you define it wasn't large enough to get McAuliffe over the line

We win elections by appealing to the center, not the extremes.

Maybe that's the bigger problem here?

No, people need to take a look at the ineffectiveness of the "Nina Turner" philosophies and other extreme positions. Things like that may "excite" the far left activists, but fail to capture the middle votes and which dissuade other swing voters who aren't loyal to any particular party. Even messaging that's NOT part of a candidate's position and platform can hurt Democrats simply because it's associated with Democrats. "Defund the police" anyone? And now I'm hearing about a BS movement to allow non-citizens to vote. Ridiculous.

[George II]

50. Exactly, the "base" is anywhere from 60-80% of Democrats, depending upon who is defining them....

It starts dead center and extends to the left and right as far as the pundit chooses to go. It could be 30% either way, 35% either way, or 40% either way.

The fact is, the "left" is smaller than many would like us to believe, and the "right" is also.

For decades defining a true Democrat has been a difficult if not impossible thing to do. As we like to say the Democratic Party is a "big tent" party. Some have very narrow interests and priorities and some have very broad interests and priorities.

Unfortunately some at one end of the spectrum feel that anyone other than themselves aren't pure enough. It's that philosophy that erodes at their perception of our "base".

Remember, some feel that our tent is too big that some of our "base" should be in a different party other than the Democratic Party.

[leftstreet]

54. Is it "center" to tell parents to stay out of school decisions?

Is that what McAuliffe was going for? I'm thinking that didn't work

I don't know if he campaigned on DeFunD teH pOlicE - I don't think any politician has

[NurseJackie]

55. He already covered this. But I'm sure you knew that too.

I don't think any politician has

Well... think again. And it really doesn't matter if a candidate doesn't "campaign on" or advocate that position. What matters is that when one or two high-profile Democrats or other "Democratic" activists do promote and advocate it, then it gets wrongly associated with every Democrat (and/or it provides an ideal opportunity for the GOP to exploit it) but I'm sure you knew that already.

Is that what McAuliffe was going for?

He already covered this. But I'm sure you knew that too.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

48. I agree with your analysis

U strongly disagree with the comments and analysis in the OP

[NurseJackie]

49. Selfish people who don't vote do not get the privilege of calling themselves the "base"...

Selfish people who don't vote (or the treacherous ones who vote third-party) do not get the privilege of calling themselves the "base" of the Democratic party. It's an insult to the loyal and dedicated and hard-working voters, volunteers, leaders, candidates and elected officials who are truly the base of our great party.

[JustAnotherGen]

56. Brava!

[treestar]

57. Well said!

[George II]

42. Who wrote this article? It's behind a pay wall so can't read the byline.

[bullwinkle428]

43. Ed Kilgore is the author. It looks like there is a limited number of free articles

offered at nymag.com. I think I saw a link to this piece this morning, when I was reading something at The Guardian.

[Hortensis]

52. No. "The base" votes dependably. That's why they're called the base.

Those who turn out or vote undependably, as in this election, are valued of course but not among the party base.

Misuse of words like this is a huge clue to look for further incompetence in analysis and/or deliberate deceit.

[NurseJackie]

58. The last sentence. Yes. That. Indeed.