Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Seven Key Takeaways From Eric Cantor’s Shocking Defeat

by Joshua Holland June 11, 2014 .. bits of ..

1. Cantor Stuck His Thumb In GOP Activists’ Eyes
2. Was it Immigration?
3. Cantor’s Ambition Alienated Constituents
4. Brat Ran Against Corruption

5. Little Evidence for Democratic Crossover Voting

There has been some speculation that Democrats “crossed over” to swing the vote against Cantor in Virginia’s open primary. But Scott Clement throws cold water on the theory .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/11/did-democratic-votes-doom-eric-cantor/ .. in The Washington Post.

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Virginia’s lack of party registration makes it difficult to pin down whether Democrats crossed over in large numbers, but local level turnout provides some indirect clues on whether this phenomenon was widespread. On two counts, the data cast doubt on whether Democratic cross-over voting caused Cantor’s loss.

While Republican primary turnout spiked by 28 percent over 2012, according to the State Board of Elections .. http://sbe.virginia.gov/index.php/resultsreports/election-results/2014-election-results/ , Cantor received nearly 8,500 fewer votes this year than he did in the 2012 Republican primary, a drop that was larger than Brat’s 7,200-vote margin of victory. Regardless of how many Democrats turned out to oppose Cantor, he still would have prevailed had he maintained the same level of support as in his 2012 landslide.

If Democrats showed up in large numbers to vote against Cantor, turnout should have spiked highest from 2012 in Democratic-leaning areas, with Cantor seeing an especially large drop-off in support. In fact, turnout rose slightly more in counties that voted more heavily for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
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6. Did Cantor Hurt Himself With a Vote on Obamacare?
7. Who Is Dave Brat?

Odds and Ends

Here’s some additional reporting that may be of interest. Mike DeBonis profiles Brat’s longshot Democratic opponent, Jack Trammell, for The Washington Post. National Journal’s Shane Goldmacher looks at how Cantor’s internal pollster “whiffed” in projecting a 34-point win for Cantor. Robert Costa reports .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-update-the-cantor-upset/?id=5898d1d8-a4aa-47d9-9d30-2c693f98a815 .. for The Washington Post that Cantor won’t run as a write-in candidate. His colleagues Rosalind Helderman and Laura Vozzella consider whether anti-Semitism played a role in the outcome. And Charles Pierce’s take at Esquire is always worth reading.

Joshua Holland is a senior digital producer for BillMoyers.com. He’s the author of The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America) (Wiley: 2010), and host of Politics and Reality Radio. Follow him on Twitter or drop him an email at hollandj [at] moyersmedia [dot] com.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/11/seven-key-takeaways-from-eric-cantors-shocking-defeat/

.. heaps under each heading, with many more links .. :) .. the voting figures there seem to be a pretty good discount of the victory by crossover vote theory ..