Posted on 05/20/2010 7:14:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Talking to an NRCC guy who’s looked at last night’s numbers extensively, he concludes that the polls and expectations in Pennsylvania’s special election were thrown off not merely by the competitive Democratic Senate primary, but particularly by Joe Sestak’s surge in the final two weeks.
Committee strategists worried about the effect of the Senate primary at first, but as they started getting polling numbers back, they suspected the special election would be the chief driver for turnout in this part of the state. Until the beginning of May or so, that seemed to be the case. But in the final weeks, Sestak’s surge — driven by massive amounts of television advertising, hitting Specter for his ties to George W. Bush — drove a sudden burst of interest in voting among the Democratic base. This analyst thinks these Sestak-driven voters amounted to about 8,000 to 10,000 voters, roughly the size of Critz’s margin of victory. The Sestak-surge-driven Democrats turned out because they were determined to toss out Specter; they were more liberal and more partisan than your average district Democrat. Thus, Tim Burns, who usually ran well among Democrats, in the neighborhood of 20 percent, probably only won about 15 percent of Democrats last night.
This NRCC number-cruncher notes that on paper, the Republicans did have high-intensity turnout; they outperformed the highest Republican level of turnout for a primary – although that’s not the highest bar to clear; since Murtha usually appeared untouchable, GOP primaries in this district weren’t usually big affairs, with 20,000 to 26,000 votes. The Republicans brought out 45,000 votes and expected the Democrats to bring out about 60,000 votes. (If Burns took 20 percent of that, and kept most of the Republican vote, he would win handily.)
Instead, 83,000 Democratic voters turned out.
This NRCC number-cruncher isn’t drawing a ton of conclusions from this race yet, but he wonders if there’s a need for Republicans to be wary of poll numbers indicating rural, red-state, or coal-country Democrats are turning against the party they traditionally support: “We can’t take that at face value. We’ve got to have a little cynicism about those numbers, because these are folks who have been voting for Democrats for decades, and their moms and dads were voting for Democrats for decades before that. They don’t just jump across that easily.”
This is not by any notion a “Swing District, this is a solidly D seat that they should of won 60-40. That they only got 53% should be ringing alarm bells in Democrat circles not producing this sort of arrogant smug complacency.
I think we can chalk PA-12 up to a failure of the GOP Establishment in PA. How do you let a career political operative from DC run to the right of your candidate in the current political environment?
Go take a look at Critz issue page. He ran as a Republican. He hypes how he is Pro Life, Pro 2nd Amendment, Pro Domestic Energy production and Pro Military. He also stressed his ties to the US Military and his getting some big award from the National Guard.
Burns on the other hand has no solid creditably with the military plus he is easy to caricature as an “Evil big businessman” in a solidly blue collar district. In addition to that the GOP Establishment threw over solidly conservative, ex military man Russel to run the light weight Country Clubber Burns.
On the surface PA-12 voted for the more Conservative candidate. We all know that is nonsense but most voters are not so involved in the process as Freepers
Once again it seems the GOP was more interested in a candidate that could self fund then one who actually had a serious shot at this seat.
The questions for Nov are:
Are there enough of these sorts of newbie Dems running as Republican Lite to hold these districts for the Dems?
Is the GOP Establishment so uniformly incompetent that they cannot find credible candidates who have a serious connection with the voters in these sorts of district?
How would these voters break if they are confronted with a serious Establishment Democrat vrs a serious challenger Conservative rather the being forced to choose between a faux “Republican lite” Democrat and a Establishment Country Club Republican?
PA 12 indicates nothing about Nov.
PA-12 was the Dems seat to lose and they didn’t. Big Whoopie! Kerry carried in in 2004 and McCain won it by like 1% of the vote. It is NOT a “Swing District” it is a solid “Safe D” district.
The take away from PA 12 should be that the Dems had to work this hard to win this safe seat. Those facts should be ringing warning bells in DNC circles not generating the sort of arrogantly smug complacency being expressed by Democrat Propaganda Press
Thoughts?
This is an economically distressed district that lives off of pork.
I wish we’d quit devoting time and money to it.
Geraghty ignores the facts Critz ran as a Conservative on several issues, the 12th district is 2:1 in favor of RATs, Burns loss was much closer than that margin and this is only for a five month term. Critz will have to star campaigning immediately for November. All this bodes well for Burns should he decide to run.
This makes sense to me.
If they have to spend money to win these safe seats, they have less money to spend in the swing seats.
I know of one Pennsylvania Democrat who decided to vote against Specter in this primary, but plans to vote against Sestack in the general election in November. Don’t know how representative her feelings are, though.
whoever the more conservative candidate is, I support that person. In the Repub primary, dem primary, and general election. I read that Mark Critz is a pro-lifer, anti capandtax, and pro-second amendment rights. That’s good,fora Democrat, but for the res tof the issues, I am not sure. We need conservatives in office, and if that means a Democrat over a Repub, so be it, but the Repub party is still the conservative party and conservatives must fight to return it to it’s conservative principles. That means truly invoking our platform and revoking the idea of a big-tent, clown party.
True. But if we are spedning money on this seat, it leaves us less money to pick up other seats too.
I can think of maybe 60 seats more attractive than this one, and at least 3 (maybe 4) of them are in PA.
The Democratic candidate won in the PA-12 election because the Democratic turnout was higher than usual due to the high-profile, hotly-contested statewide primary election between Sestak and Specter.
Pat Toomey is already the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate race, so there was no comparable high-profile statewide race to bring GOP voters out.
It's also worth noting that Pennsylvania has a "closed" primary system, so independents weren't involved in the primary election anyway and therefore had less incentive to show up for the PA-12 election.
Grassroots efforts may elect more candidates than money. I think that we can win a landslide without much money.
The problem is that the “conservative” Dim goes to DC and ends up part of Team Pelosi. They all toe the line. What good do these espoused values do then?
I see the lesson of 2006 and 2008 have STILL not sunk in with some people.Everyone of those Conservative Dems you elect is going to DC and voting for Nancy Reid to be Speaker and Harry Reid to be Senate Majority Leader
In 2006 and 2008 a whole lot of people ran around here arguing that same dogma "Pick the Conservative Dem over the RINO".
And in 2006 and 2008 we elected those "Conservative" Democrats. And they went right to DC and voted in lock step with the Nancy Pelosie far Left "Progressives".
For example, Obama Health Care passed because those "Conservative" Democrats voted in lock step with their party leadership while every single RINO voted to kill the monster.
It is utterly naive to think there are ANY "Conservative" Democrats.
They are none. Their actions in DC show it. All they are doing is LYING to you when they claim to be "Conservative".
Did you know this. I didn't. Sure puts a different light on Tuesdays results in PA-12
It does, but it's also a good thing. Open primaries gave us John McCain.
Unfortunately, Critz is now the "incumbent" in November.
You’re very welcome, but I can’t take all the credit for it. I didn’t know that point about the independents either, until a couple of Freepers from Pennsylvania pointed it out on a few threads yesterday.
Not really. He will be forced to choose between Pelosi and his "conservative" credentials. He can be easily exposed as a fraud this way.
Being an incumbent in November may not be a good thing, if recent high-profile elections in this country are any indication.
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