That assumes the candidate quality was about equal. If Sink were a superior candidate vis a vis Jolly, as I assumed, then one comes to a different conclusion. It is interesting Sink did so much better with the absentees than she did with the election day voters. That suggests the Dems were far superior on the ground than the Pubs were, which is another possible factor in the mix to consider. It is rather hard to believe that higher scale SES voters tend to vote on election day rather than before, when one's intuition is precisely the opposite, and I think in 2012 Obama did in fact do a bit better with the election day voters than the absentees. Another explanation is that Sink "sank" at the end of the race, and if that if most voters were election day voters, rather than absentees, than the election would have been more of a Jolly blow out.
Most of the red avatars on this site are blaming Sink for being a bad candidate. I don't understand why. She had the name ID, having run in a high-profile statewide race and the money to spend on the race. How could Democrats have done better running a relative nobody with less name recognition and little money to spend on his or her own race?
Jolly was a sub-par candidate. The Republican establishment was griping about his performance before the election. Yet he won.
Perhaps it is the Democrats' message that isn't resonating with voters, not candidate quality or supposed gerrymandering in a district that Obama won that has a practically even PVI of R+1. Obamacare is toxic right now and Obama's approvals are low. Nationalizing local races, tying the Democratic candidate to the unpopular president seems to work right now, and if things don't change before November, will work in November.
