Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Virginia Monologue

Some thoughts and questions inspired by the outcome of the VA and NJ gubernatorial elections:

Didn't the pre-election polling in both states make both elections look pretty close? And yet the reality ended up being pretty overwhelmingly Democrat. Is there any underlying message we can divine from this? When we had the exact opposite discrepancy in 2004, I assumed that it reflected voter turnout, which can't be adequately predicted by phone polling.

So does this mean that the Democrats won the turnout battle in VA & NJ? Does it mean that Democratic voters are becoming more energized and Republican ones more demoralized? Or is this just what elections look like without concerted tampering or voter suppression efforts?

1 comment:

zoe kentucky said...

Nice blog! Just wanted to say hi. I'm originally from Pittsburgh, have been away for 15 years, spent the past 7 years in DC and have been blogging for nearly 3 of those years. I'm planning on moving back to the 'burgh for grad school as well as settle there. I'm happy to see there is a nice blogging community there, as I plan to continue blogging after I move.