What happened

by | Nov 5, 2014 | 2014 Elections, Editor's Blog, US Senate | 13 comments

Well, I missed in this election. I didn’t believe a Republican wave was coming but it did. Republicans won every contested US Senate race except New Hampshire and picked up a handful of Governors to boot.

In North Carolina, the race looks very similar to the 2012 election in terms of margins. Democrats went into Election Day with an electorate that looked very similar to the presidential year. Thom Tillis came out with a victory margin that mirrored Mitt Romney’s and, again, North Carolina was the second closest contest in the country.

However, turnout was nothing like 2012. That year, 69% of registered voters showed up. This year, less than 42% did, a lower percentage than voted in 2010. A ground game may be able to boost turnout by a few percentage points, but Democrats needed an electorate that was closer to 50% than 40% to have a chance.

Both campaigns were better than their candidates. The Hagan campaign kept the election focused on local issues while the national environment deteriorated. They held a slim lead up until the final week or so and it took a national wave to defeat her.

The Tillis campaign stayed focused and took advantage of every opportunity that opened up in October. With government incompetence around Ebola and ISIS as a backdrop, they hammered Hagan for the stimulus money her husband’s company took. They turned the Koch brothers narrative on its head. Democrats tried to argue that the system was rigged for people like the Koch brothers. The Tillis campaign showed that it was rigged for people like Kay Hagan.

The election also highlighted the growing rural-urban divide. While Hagan was losing, Democrats in Wake County went 4-for-4 in county commission races and picked up a state house seat. In Buncombe, Democrats knocked off two incumbent house members.

I hate losing but I’ve been watching races for almost 50 years. Getting past the ache of losing the top of the ticket exposes how tight North Carolina will be for the foreseeable future. For Democrats who thought taking it back from Republicans would be easy, they need to gird themselves for a long hard fight. For Republicans who believe this election validates all the excesses of the past two years, they will learn that 42% of the electorate looks a lot different than 70%. With the exception of 2010, every election in North Carolina since 2008 has been essentially a tie. Don’t expect that to change soon.

13 Comments

  1. Frank McGuirt

    Democrats must overcome all the myths of social programs. Too many voters think there are too many “freeloaders” out there and we Dems perpetuate that. While it’s not true perception becomes reality. While most “welfare” recipients are children, elderly and the disabled the real abuse occurs with the corporate “welfare” soaked up by Republicans.

  2. Vicki Boyer

    Turning NC blue will be a process, not an event. So put on your boots, and wade in.

  3. David Craft

    That’s not very polite to say about anyone including your wife or mother.

  4. Al Jordan

    The Hag is out, and I’m proud that I helped…

  5. Dave

    Two-party voters for Senate, compared to president 2012: 62.37% (based on Weds. AM numbers – presumably all percentages will go up slightly as final votes are added in.) Essentially three out of eight people who voted for president did not vote for Senate. This is net, obviously, and ignores the fact that the electorate has grown over two years, so that number understates the dropoff.
    If every county had a net margin in votes (not percentage) at 62.37% of 2012, Hagan would’ve lost by the exact same percentage as Obama. She made it slightly closer, but not much. Why?
    In the big vote margin counties for Dems, Hagan “improved” relative to the size of the statewide electorate in two places: the core Triangle counties (Wake – 76.8% of ’12 margin; Durham – 67.2%; Orange 79.6%) and Buncombe (98.9%). In all of those counties she improved on Obama’s percentage of the vote as well. The Triangle counties were closest to the scene of the crimes, and also have more liberal Dems than most places. I can’t explain the massive result in Buncombe, and I live in Asheville. I know a lot of people here are pissed, but I don’t know why everyone else in the state wouldn’t be just as pissed.
    In the other four counties where Obama won by at least 10,000 votes, Hagan’s vote margin declined by more than the total number of votes statewide, which represents losing ground to the already-losing Obama result: Mecklenburg (55.7%), Guilford (54.0%), Forsyth (47.8%), Cumberland (47.1%). In each of those counties, her percentage lead on Tillis was smaller than Obama’s against Romney. Had she pulled five-eighth’s of Obama’s margin out of those counties, it would’ve made up about 17,000 votes – maybe a third of what she needed.
    In the 18 counties where Romney won by at least 10,000 votes, there is not as much variance as you see in the top Dem counties. They all fell between 55.5% and 70.7% of their 2012 margins. Six were in the 61-62% range, six had Republican margins at 64%+ of 2012 totals, and six were under 60%.
    Maybe there is something buried in the numbers that will really tell a different story, but it looks to me like an almost across the board not-quite-good-enough. We were hearing over the last few weeks about a big change in mid-term turnout. It’s a story that has been told before. It has not yet ever turned out to be true (my Buncombe neighbors notwithstanding.)

    • Dave

      Should note – there are two ways that vote margin could be larger, relative to the statewide change in turnout, than in 2012. One is to win a higher percentage of the votes than two years ago, in a county that sees turnout change exactly in proportion with the rest of the state. The other is to maintain the same percentage of the vote, but see a smaller dropoff in turnout.
      Hagan did better on both metrics in the four “plus” counties, and worse on both metrics in the four counties where her margin came in lower than expected. I don’t see a real pattern to the numbers on the other side, but I confess I don’t have a lot of enthusiasm to dig deeper into what is basically a list of “18 places I don’t want to live.”

      • Doug Gibson

        Dave (or anyone else who cares to comment),

        Just to get clear on your percentages, that 98.9% figure in Buncombe is:

        – The number of Republican and Democratic voters in 2014
        – Divided by the number of R & D voters in 2012.

        Do I have that right? If not, please give whatever formula you used to get those percentages. “Two-party voters for Senate, compared to president” isn’t entirely clear to me.

        And thanks for doing all that math!

  6. Mick

    I take no pride or comfort in having predicted Tillis would eke out a win. But I don’t think it was just the national issues of late that did it for him. I think it also was the recent spate of state issues that got the GOP base in a snit and energized, from same sex marriage becoming available, to the no-concealed-guns-at-the-fair decision, to court decisions questioning the constitutionality of some of their favorite things like private school vouchers and restricting protesters at the legislative building. In my view, this was all interpreted by the GOP’ers and many unaffiliated in the center right as “too progressive, too fast.”

  7. David Craft

    Did the “pubs keep a super majority? It would be nice to see McCrory flex a little muscle.

  8. lily

    When folks see their air and water become more unhealthy, privatization of education ( which may deny their kid an education), their health insurance become, no insurance at all, then, maybe, they will change things. But I doubt it. The folks already receiving Social Security and or Medicare may not have to put up with Paul Ryan budget changes.

  9. Melissa

    People will get what they deserve and I think they deserve the radical agenda that will be put forward. Will be watching the Fracking issue with a great deal of interest as well as oil drilling along the coast.

  10. Troy

    Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” For better or worse, the electorate has had their wish fulfilled.

    Whatever the fallout might be, Republicans are going to own the next two years. I guess we’ll get to see what they really stand for.

    For the people, I really hope it’s not what I believe it to be.

  11. Randolph Voller

    The statewide judicial races went 5-1 for the Blue Team as well and there were some other pick ups for county commissioner races, etc, across the state.

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