Well, that was a mostly depressing evening. I guess I can't say it was unexpected as I went 4/4 in my predictions. Let's go through the races:
- VA-Gov: No shocker here. In fact, I nailed the election results dead on. I will add two nuggets of opinion on some CW: (1) T-Mac would have done just as poorly (I mean, he got crushed by Deeds in the primary, after leading for months), and (2) I do think Deeds campaigned hard, it's just that his campaign didn't resonate with voters so it seemed as if he wasn't trying.
- NJ-Gov: The biggest shock here (and maybe of the evening) was how poorly Dagget ran. 5.7%?!! He was in the high teens just three weeks ago! Tip of the hat to voters for acting strategically and not wasting their votes. But, Dagget: you garnered the same percentage of votes as Scozzafava and she dropped out and endorsed another candidate! Pathetic. (Maybe you can blame the ballot?) For the record, I had predicted Dagget at 9, and underestimated Christie's win by a bit.
- ME-Prop 1: The biggest disappointment of the night by far. Polls continue to underestimate support against gay marriage. One reason I thought we were going to lose was that the robo-survey PPP had Yes winning by four points (which might be the final margin after some big cities come in). In the privacy of the voting booth, voters just say "Ick" (as Bill in Portland puts it). I also think they have a hard time redefining an institution that has been so ingrained in their psyches since childhood.
Also, clearly people can't kick around the No on 8 campaign anymore. According to Nate's regression analysis, Maine/2009 was in a much better position than California/2008 to uphold gay marriage, and it'll lose by about the same margin. - NY-23: Yay, the Dems finally won! I love this picture. Maybe Coburn should have actually read those political science books and articles he was lambasting, because he would have found many discussions about the Median Voter Theorem. I rarely go against polling, but with only two candidates left in the NY-23 race, I was more confident in my prediction: despite his momentum, Hoffman was just too conservative for the district. Full stop.
- NYC-Mayor: A word on this race: people should not have been so surprised by the closeness of the result. When elections include an incumbent, one-sided spending, and one-sided earned media (all at play here), the undecideds will break heavily toward the challenger. (As those elements become less one-sided, the undecided start evening out as well. So don't count on an undecided effect in most presidential races, for instance.) Bloomberg never left the low 50s and that's where he ended up. Though I would have probably expected him to garner 53 percent of the vote rather than the 51 percent he actually received.
Scott Brown ran a tremendous drive. He got out there and did what anybody running for political office should do - he talked to individuals, but more importantly, he listened to them. He ran to the cities, the suburban areas and the towns, all through the land. He run a clean campaign. He talked to the issues that interested the people of Massachussetts. Never mind that the people already have healthcare...that worked in his favor for certain, but it wasn't the only thing on peoples' minds.