海角大神

[Update: Republican candidate Ed Gillespie conceded the race to Sen. Mark Warner (D) on Friday.]

As I noted in a post in the early morning hours of Nov. 5,聽one of the biggest shocks of the 2014 midterms came in Virginia聽where Sen. Mark Warner (D), who had been leading in the polls with a very healthy margin all the way up until Election Day, found himself, at the end of the night, locked in a tougher than expected battle with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who was running his first actual campaign for office in a bid that nobody outside of his campaign seemed to believe had any real chance of succeeding or even coming close to making it a race against a man who was, by all measures, the most popular statewide political figure in the Commonwealth. All of that changed as the result rolled in on Tuesday night, though. While Gillespie did about as well as expected in the traditionally Republican parts of the state in the south, central, and southwest, the expectation was that the early lead he was showing wouldn鈥檛 last very long once results started pouring in from Northern Virginia and elsewhere, where Democrats have dominated these last several years. Warner did, indeed, eventually take the lead, but it was far narrower than anyone expected, and by the end of the night, the result was close enough that nobody was willing to declare a winner.

As things stand right now,聽the numbers from the Virginia State Board of Elections聽show Warner with 1,071,049 votes (49.12%) to Gillespie鈥檚 1,054,50 votes (48.36%) for a difference between the two of 16,540 votes. As occurred last year in the race for governor, Libertarian Party nominee Robert Sarvis garnered more votes (52,984 votes) than the gap between the two major parties although his percentage of the vote (2.43%) was below where he ended up last year when he received 146,084 votes, a 6.54% share of the total votes in聽the 2013 gubernatorial election.聽 As to the race itself, it鈥檚 unlikely that Gillepsie will concede the race until the official vote certification process is completed next week, but given how that process has typically gone, it is likely that the gap between him and Warner will grow slightly, rather than shrink to any large degree. This is significant because, while Virginia law does allow for a recount if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 1%, reality dictates that it is highly unlikely that any recount would find enough uncounted votes, miscounted votes, counting errors, reporting errors, or misreported votes to make up a difference as large as the one between Warner and Gillespie. If anything, a recount would likely end up finding more votes for Warner and thus end up increasing the gap. This is what happened last year when the race for attorney general between Republican Mark Obenshain and Democrat Mark Herring started out with聽a 165 vote lead for Herring, one of the closest elections in the modern history of the Commonwealth of Virginia. By the time the recount was over, that gap had grown to聽810 votes in Herring鈥檚 favor.聽This wasn鈥檛 unusual, since it has historically been the case in recounts that a re-canvas of the votes ends up following the trend that existed on Election Day in favoring the person who was in the lead at the end of the day. Most likely, that鈥檚 what would happen in the case of a Gillespie-Warner recount. This is likely the reason we are already seeing calls from many Virginia Republicans for Gillespie to let the certification go forward, but to decline to seek what would likely be a fruitless recount that is unlikely to change the actual outcome of the race. Instead, they are suggesting that he concede graciously, at that point and, if he wants to, move forward to 2017 when he would arguably be the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor.

Whatever Gillespie does, though, it鈥檚 clear that the results are something of a political shock. Most everyone, including me, saw Warner as among the safest Democratic senators running this year, and yet he has come withing a hairs breadth of losing his first race for reelection. The Virginia senator had been briefly courted to run for his old job as governor before the 2013 elections, and has been on the short list of potential vice-presidential running mates for the Democrats in 2016, the last item in no small part due to his popularity in a state that will be crucial to Electoral College victory for any candidate in 2016. Much of that veneer seems to be stripped off now, of course, and even if Warner wins, he will have done so in a chastening manner that will likely trim back much of the national enthusiasm for him going forward.

There are many theories about what happened in Virginia this year, but, at the very least, it鈥檚 clear that the polling was very, very wrong yet again, and the people who analyze these things for a living are starting to wonder why. Nate Silver聽offered some of his own theories yesterday, and pointed to turnout as part of the key:

Nate Cohn聽is even more adamant that turnout, specifically low turnout among Democrats, was the reason Warner nearly lost and, in any case, has ended up with a result that has significantly blunted his political career:

Cohn provides this chart showing just how far off Virginia turnout was compared to other states based on preliminary data:

So does this mean turnout explains it all?

Well, as Silver says you can鈥檛 pin the explanation solely on one factor, but we know for certain that the outcome of an election can turn significantly on who comes out to vote. If it really was the case that voters inclined to vote for Senator Warner stayed home because they figured he would win, then that would go a long way toward explaining how it came to be that a candidate who was leading by double digits has ended up within less than a percentage point of an opponent who was a virtual unknown when the campaign began. If that鈥檚 what happened, then the blame for what could have been an historic and embarrassing loss lies squarely at the feet of the Warner campaign and a Democratic Party that didn鈥檛 have a good enough Get Out The Vote effort to make sure that the people who supported them came out to vote. After all, half the job of a campaign is to make sure the people you know support you actually show up to vote, and if that doesn鈥檛 happen, then it isn鈥檛 going to matter how flawlessly the rest of your campaign may have been run.

It strikes me, though, that turnout may only be part of the explanation for what happened in Virginia. As I noted, this is the second election cycle in a row where a race that was supposed to have been in the bag for a Democratic candidate ended up being a nail biter. Like Governor McAuliffe, Senator Warner seems likely to win his race in the end, but it will be by a much closer margin than anticipated, and much closer than the polls predicted. That suggests to me that many of the assumptions that have been made about politics in Virginia in the wake of President Obama鈥檚 wins here in 2008 and 2012 may have been overstated. It鈥檚 true that the President did something in those two campaigns that no Democrat since John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964 had been able to do when he won the Commonwealth twice in a presidential election. However, that may mean less than some political observers have assumed. Virginia is still a purple state, of course, and the influence of voters in areas like Northern Virginia are likely to benefit Democrats well into the future. However, the assumption that Virginia is a purple state turning blue that many seem to have made appears to be incorrect. Instead, Virginia is likely to be much more competitive going forward than Obama鈥檚 two victories may have suggested. Bob McDonnell鈥檚 win in 2009 showed that Republicans could still win statewidec notwithstanding Obama鈥檚 historic win the year before. In 2010, Republican victories at the congressional level showed that to an even greater extent, and the GOP鈥檚 continued success at the state legislative level reinforces that idea. Now, we have two elections in a row where Republicans did far better than polling had said that they would and, indeed, there is plenty of reason to believe that Republicans would have had a much better 2013 if they鈥檇 chosen better candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. This tells me that the state will be more competitive in 2016 than some are assuming, and that those who may have declared the Republican Party of Virginia dead and buried will need to reassess their conclusions pretty quickly.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.