VA-GOV 2017: Utter Panic and Doom (General election: Nov 7th)

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For what it's worth, here's a map of what party got more votes in every county:

Thanks. This would be an excellent GE map, especially for Dem HoD candidates.

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Stewart acting like he won lol.

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Stewart acting like he won lol.

Is it just me or is he doing similar hand gestures as Trump too? I don't see the 'o' 👌 shape with his fingers but I do see lots of finger pointing up and other similar movements.

Yeah, he does a lot of ☝️. Trumpists probably find that endearing or something.

It probably means he will run for office in the future and keep being a thorn in the side of Virginia Republicans.

Sounds like it. I can't wait for the GOP clown car next year for the Senate primary.

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How about Fairfax vs Vogel? Predictions? Or will it simply go how the gubernatorial goes?

A bit early to tell, but I think Fairfax is in a slightly weaker position than Northam because while I can't imagine many Gillespie/Fairfax voters, I certainly could see the opposite. That being said, Fairfax is a pretty captivating speaker, and I think his campaign will follow Northam's coattails pretty well.

Also, don't assume Herring is completely safe. His opponent is a former U.S. attorney named John Adams, and I could imagine him winning if Herring takes his seat for granted.

Bill Bolling would've ripped Fast Terry to shreds like it's '09 and Creigh Deeds is back in place.

Classic.

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Also, don't assume Herring is completely safe. His opponent is a former U.S. attorney named John Adams, and I could imagine him winning if Herring takes his seat for granted.

Ugh, just another carpetbagging Massachusetts liberal.

Haha, yeah, that's honestly part of the reason I think he's a formidable candidate.

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LOL, NOVA is a different beast.  There's zero reason to believe the wealthy and affluent suburbs of Indianapolis will shift to the Democratic Party because Atlas gets them the realignment memo.

It just did...

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Great news! I was kinda worried he would only campaign for Perriello, and honestly, I'm not sure how well Obama even knows Northam, but I'm looking forward to this anyway. Hopefully Tommy P gets on the stump as well.

Also, I thought this was pretty amusing coming from Gillespie's camp:

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Love the line right after that:

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Sorry, I meant "shift" as in become reliable areas of support.  Trump was the worst fit imaginable, and he still won with 57% in Hamilton County (and more importantly, beat Hillary by 20 points ... Johnson got almost 6%).  Holcomb got 58% for governor, and Todd Young got 60% in Hamilton for the Senate race.  Susan Brooks got 61% for that House district.  Obviously, Trump provided a shift toward the Democrats, but it was from iron clad support to merely blowout support, and that is not reason to believe these voters are some new base for future Democrats.  And even if these areas DO eventually go Democratic, it will likely be because the areas changed significantly either demographically or culturally (i.e., become older suburbs with a more urban and less traditionally conservative character).

Alright, but Trump will be on the ballot once again in three years, and I don't have much reason to believe someone in a completely different mold will be the Republican nominee in 2024, 2028, and maybe beyond. That's why I, among many, think the trends of the 2016 election will continue even as exceptions to them arise.

Just face it, the Trump brand has encapsulated the GOP in a way that's inescapable -- just look at the ridiculous lengths the party will go to defend him on things they trashed him on as a primary candidate, and they do it because the party wants that:



Trump is unquestionably the face of the Republican Party.

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To beat a dead horse here, how well could Gillespie do in Northern Virginia?

He'll do significantly worse than his 2014 run since I don't think Northam comes off as a tax-and-spend liberal the way Perriello would have, and the political climate is much worse for Republicans in the state now than it was then. I'll be surprised if Gillespie breaks 40% in Fairfax and 45% in Loudoun and PW again.

Northam's been kinda dormant since his primary win though. I don't think he can singlehandedly rely on Trump being unpopular to drive turnout.

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Shameless politics 101:

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Virginia Republicans are so cute. That's actually a step down from the 15 debates Cooch proposed in 2013.

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Thing is, I doubt Gillespie will match Trump' showing in SW VA. Gillespie seems like a poor cultural fit for the area. I'm actually expecting Northam to overperform a bit in SW VA because of his rural background.

Northam is much more likely to overperform relative to the average Democrat in the rural Chesapeake Bay area rather than SW VA. There were some parts in the Southwest where E.W. Jackson actually did better than Eric Bolling, so it's safe to say that region is completely gone.

Will suburban white Virginia women vote for Gillespie or Northam?

Northam. Any more questions about random demographics?

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It is silly to say that it is "structurally impossible" for Gillespie to win. Was the same not said about Trump? It's better to be cautious during the campaign and happy on election night than to be cocky during the campaign and heartbroken on election night. Just saying.

But Virginia is not Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, and Gillespie is definitely not Trump. There is no obvious demographic group here that's set to shift away from Democrats to Republicans more than they already have. As you know the state is largely inelastic as a whole, and the region that continues to grow in terms of % of the state population is still trending Democratic.

I do partially agree that it's not 'structurally impossible' for a Republican to win statewide considering how close Gillespie was in 2014, and people really should be tempering their expectations on how strong NOVA will be for Northam (he will not get near matching Clinton's margins), but Gillespie isn't running in the same political climate as he was last time. Turnout will also be much better this time around.

Northam is much more likely to overperform relative to the average Democrat in the rural Chesapeake Bay area rather than SW VA. There were some parts in the Southwest where E.W. Jackson actually did better than Eric Bolling, so it's safe to say that region is completely gone.

*Bill Bolling

Sad to say that isn't the first time I've made that mistake.

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These are starting to pop up around Virginia:

~snip~

Don't they realize that tying Gillespie with Trump won't necessarily help him in a state like this?

Are you talking about Republicans? Because it's the VA Democrats who made a few of these signs.

I'm not a fan of this really. Trump is unpopular in Virginia, but Gillespie is bad in his own right. I'd prefer Northam not engage in this rather lazy form of campaigning.

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*facepalm*

Looks like Stewart didn't need to win after all in order to help derail Republican prospects in this race. I get Gillespie probably felt like he was in a bind, but this was a bad decision. I'd also venture a guess that in the end, even if Gillespie did manage to pull out a win, it will be in spite of, not because of it.

Well, since Stewart is such a sore loser that he still hasn't conceded, Gillespie probably thinks he has to make overtures to the far right to get Stewart's supporters back on board. I also saw this article last week, which included this tidbit about Gillespie's staff:

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Considering the way they're treating Guadagno, I guess the Romney McDaniel-led RNC would rather cut off their arm than extend it to people who were mean to Trump in last year's presidential primary.

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Okay I just watched the debate and I'll definitely say Gillespie did a good job. Let's not blow the importance of this out of proportion though; only 3% in that Monmouth poll said they watched it, which is not surprising considering it's July.

Northam is letting Gillespie outflank him on economics, which is very disappointing considering how well McAuliffe has done bringing jobs through trade missions and such. Northam needs to run on being a second-term of McAuliffe IMO.

I also laughed when Gillespie suggested a transportation lockbox, which is not necessarily a bad idea and I want to hear more about it. Northam needs to actually start putting up more concrete plans as well.

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I don't even know if it was on tv here.  If it was on the pbs station in primetime I would have noticed it.

It was on a Saturday morning on PBS. I don't know whose decision that was, but in the middle of July, it wasn't gonna get that many viewers.

Gillespie really impressed me in that debate and I'm pretty certain that I'll end up voting for him.

I guess Gillespie is on the mediocre-end of the GOP spectrum, but his tax plan is too regressive to swallow. The idea of financing his across the board tax reductions by leaving over 1,000 state jobs unfilled doesn't sound good to me either.

He's also untenable on most social issues as well, and if given a Republican controlled State Senate and HoD, I fear the bullsh**t they'll try to ram down our throats.

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And here we see the tradeoffs of Gillespie, we can get more centrist independents like Deblano here, but we lose people further to the right like Mr. Reactionary, question is how many of each group are there.  I tend to think there are more of the former, but i'm not a Virginian so i'd defer to the natives on this.

Mr. Reactionary-types are unlikely to actually vote for Northam. Most right-wing edgelords like him will vote Gillespie anyway or just stay home.

People with ideologies similar to Deblano exist in relatively large numbers but it remains to be seen whether they support him as strongly as they did in 2014.

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Gillespie could still win parts of NOVA. He could win some of the ancestral Republicans that are still there and could win some Independents as well.

Haha.

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Great ad from the RN campaign https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-sfBAJ09bU

This is a pretty solid ad, but he needs to cut this into a 30-second spot if he hasn't already. The main reason Gillespie is keeping it close is because he's dominated the airwaves recently and his ads are pretty good -- most people probably would forget he's a Republican after watching them.

Also, can we please get Obama to campaign in NOVA, preferably when I have time to go?

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Also, can we please get Obama to campaign in NOVA, preferably when I have time to go?

Maybe they are waiting for an October bum rush?

Is Northam actually planning on going on air en masse, and also going negative at all? It really does make sense if he's waiting, since the limited effects ads have on voter choice tend to be short-lived, but it's also getting kind of close to where he'd want to start bombarding the airwaves.

Well, I understand Northam was strapped for cash immediately after the expensive primary, so he had to spend the summer bringing in a big fundraising haul while Gillespie was able to put up numerous ads relatively uncontested. Now he needs to cut a bunch of ads, both positive and negative because there's a lot of material on both sides of that coin.

I certainly hope you're right that they'll go all-out in October, especially in NOVA. We need high turnout in marginal HoD districts, because I fear even some of the most vulnerable Republicans might survive purely on retail politics.

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Northam made some big ad buys last week:

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A lot of people are talking out of their ass about this race. I think I'll trust like 50 polls that just came out within the last week over some rando on Twitter who only has 55 tweets. I guess certain people wish this race produced more drama, but that's not what you're gonna get with these two candidates.

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Still don't like how close this has become. I preferred Perriello, as much as that may surprise some of you.

A Democrat, even in a particularly good year, was most likely never going to win by 10-12 points in Virginia like that one stretch of polls may have suggested. Republicans always come home -- the key questions are always when and how much of them.

I also continue to reject the assertion that Perriello would've been a stronger candidate. Northam, afforded by his culturally Southern personality, was afforded a little bit of leeway on the Confederate statues issue, and even then he took some heat for it. Perriello on the other hand has seemed to leave his conservative background in the dust and has gone full-throttle social progressive, especially after Charlottesville. This isn't even mentioning the upper hand Gillespie would probably have with six-figure indys who typically break Dem in statewide races. Perriello's regional advantage also would not have won him as many votes as Northam is likely to in Eastern VA, as seen in numerous polls.

Chances are, if the election was held during the AH tape controversy, she would have won by close to 10 points (or more) in Virginia.

Also should be mentioned the Clinton campaign mostly abandoned Virginia (and Colorado) in August only to return in the last week before the election, which was a smart decision in retrospect.

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United Mine Workers of America has endorsed... Ralph Northam.

They withheld an endorsement in the 2012 and 2016 presidential races.

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Just voted like an hour ago:



I voted for Northam, Fairfax, and Herring for all roughly the same reasons. I strongly approve of how Governor McAuliffe is handling his job, and I would like to see 4 more years of his policies. Seeing how democracy has been deteriorated in a similar state, NC, under a unified GOP government also makes it very hard for me to support any statewide Republicans.

I have to give credit to Jim LeMunyon for making me actually consider my HD-67 vote. He's decent for a Republican, and I'd even say he's excellent on transportation issues, which are of utmost importance for me. Too bad for him that he's a vote to enable the garbage VA GOP HoD, which is totally unacceptable. I also trust that Delaney will be solid on transportation as well. Plus she advocates for the proliferation of 3D-printers, so I had no qualms voting for her.