A Tale of Two Election Cycles

Election Day 2017 has officially come and gone.  Let’s take a look at the results.  Not surprisingly, Republican John Curtis won the special election in Utah’s 3^rd Congressional district, the seat formerly held by Jason Chaffetz.  The results of the New Jersey gubernatorial race didn’t come as that much of a surprise either.  Democrat Phil Murphy won the open seat by a double digit margin. In New York City, Bill De Blasio won a second term as Mayor of New York City.  Although he received a slightly lower share vote than he did in 2013, he still won by a landslide; carrying every borough except Staten Island.    

 

All political junkies paid close attention to the Virginia gubernatorial race.  Virginia used to vote reliably Republican but “Virginia has been turned deep blue thanks to the locusts from DC and Maryland that invaded it”, as one person commenting on a Real Clear Politics article put it.  Virginia’s trend to the left continued last night as Democrat Ralph Northam won the race by a margin of more than 8 points; a far bigger margin than many expected.  2017 also marked the first time since 2012 that a Democratic candidate running for a major statewide office won more than 50 percent of the vote.  In 2013 and 2014, the Libertarian Candidate prevented Democratic Candidates from reaching an outright majority.  This year, the Libertarian candidate for Governor barely captured 1 percent of the vote.  In a highly controversial move, outgoing Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe decided to restore the voting rights of 206,000 convicted felons by executive order ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election.  Last year, President Trump lost the state by a margin of about 212,000 votes while Gillespie lost the Governor’s race by a margin of about 233,000 votes.  Only a fool would think McAuliffe made that decision out of the goodness of his heart without taking politics into consideration

 

The results for the other races in Virginia last night proved equally disastrous for Republicans.  The Democrats won the contests for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General and picked up 13 seats in the House of Delegates, with recounts pending in five districts.  As demonstrated in the table below, nearly all of the Democrats’ pickups came in the northern part of the state.  Hillary Clinton carried nearly all of these districts in last year’s Presidential Election.  Only one of the Democrats’ pickups came in Trump country.  Pending the results of the recounts, the Democrats could actually take control of the House of Delegates; as they only need to win two of the districts to take control.  In a state becoming increasingly populated by an ever-growing number of government workers, it should come as no surprise that the Republicans, the party of smaller government, have lost their grip on Virginia.  The table below lists the districts Democrats picked up last night, the counties included in the district, and the region of the state these counties are located.  Clinton carried the counties, districts, and regions highlighted in blue while President Trump carried the counties, districts, and regions highlighted in red.  

 

Seat	Counties	Region
2	Prince William, Stafford	N. Virginia
10	Clarke, Frederick, Loudoun	N. Virginia
12	Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski, Radford	SW Virginia
13	Prince William, Manassas Park	N. Virginia
21	Virginia Beach, Chesapeake	Hampton Roads
31	Fauquier, Prince William	N. Virginia
32	Loudoun	N. Virginia
42	Fairfax	N. Virginia
50	Prince William, Manassas	N. Virginia
51	Prince William	N. Virginia
67	Fairfax, Loudoun	N. Virginia
73	Henrico	Greater Richmond
85	Virginia Beach	Hampton Roads

Source: The New York Times and Author’s Calculations

 

After last night’s election results, it should have become painfully clear that the Republicans’ decades-long electoral love affair with Virginia has officially come to a close.  Demographic changes have made Virginia, historically considered a Southern state, more like a northeastern state.  As Ann Coulter pointed out, “Ed Gillespie got the Trump voters (white non-college grads).  But thanks to immigration, there aren’t enough of them in VA for GOPs to win anymore.”  The Republicans have not won a Senate race there since 2002 and have not captured the state’s electoral votes in a Presidential race since George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.  In the wake of last night’s disaster in the Old Dominion, I would like to give the Republicans some advice.  Don’t waste your time on Virginia in next year’s midterms.  President Trump won 10 states with Democratic Senators up for re-election next year; focus on winning as many of those seats as possible.    

 

Thanks to their wins in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats have achieved a net gain of one governorship; bringing their total up to 16.  Their number of governorships reached a low of 15 earlier this year when West Virginia Governor Jim Justice switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.  After last night’s election, Democrats now have complete control of the state government in New Jersey for the first time in eight years.  Well done, Democrats.  You now have complete control over six state governments.          

 

Those who see the pendulum swing from 2008 to 2009 as comparable to the pendulum swing from 2016 to 2017 clearly need a little refresher.  While President Trump did manage to win the Electoral College and the night turned out better than many Republicans thought it would; Republicans still lost two seats in the Senate and suffered a net loss of six seats in the House.  Last year, President Trump lost Virginia by about 5 percentage points. This year, Republican gubernatorial Candidate Ed Gillespie lost the race by about 9 percentage points.  Last year, President Trump lost New Jersey to Crooked Hillary by about 14 percentage points.  Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Kim Guadagno only lost by around 13 percentage points.  She actually did better than President Trump.   

 

Let’s compare that to what happened eight years earlier.  In the 2008 election, the Democrats picked up seven Senate seats and more than a dozen House seats. The Democrats could not have asked for a better election night.  The political landscape changed dramatically in 2009.  In 2008, President Obama won Virginia by about 6 percentage points.  In 2009, the pendulum swung sharply to the right as Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Bob McDonnell won by a landslide of more than 17 percentage points.  In 2008, President Obama won New Jersey by about 15 percentage points.  The following year, Republican Chris Christie defeated Incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine by a margin of about 4 percentage points.  Because of their impressive victories, both McDonnell and Christie had once been considered possible Presidential Candidates.  Both of their Presidential dreams faded away as McDonnell faced a corruption trial and Christie had to deal with the infamous “Bridgegate” scandal.  Hopefully, this table I have created will put the numbers into perspective:                          

 

State	2008 Pres.	2009 Gov.	2008-2009 Swing	2016 Pres.	2017 Gov.	2016-2017 Swing
NJ	Obama +15.53	Christie +3.57	R+19.1	Clinton +13.99	Murphy +13.08	R+0.91
VA	Obama +6.3	McDonnell +17.36	R+23.66	Clinton +5.32	Northam +8.92	D+3.6
Average			R+21.38			D+2.79

Source: Dave Leip’s Presidential Atlas   

 

In conclusion, Republicans did not have a very good election night. But Election Day 2017 went far better for the Republicans than Election Day 2009 did for the Democrats.  As for Election Day 2018, now less than a year away, House Republicans representing districts that Hillary Clinton carried should probably start worrying.  Republicans should do their best to defend those states while planting their flags in as many of the 12 Democratic-held congressional districts won by President Trump as possible.  The 2016 election proved that the Republicans can compete in the rust belt states.  Maintaining their majorities in Congress will require them to pick up more seats there.  363 days to go.