Posted on 12/27/2010 2:57:58 PM PST by Moseley
Mike Castle would have lost the US Senate race in Delaware to Democrat Chris Coons, according to surprising exit polls by CNN in Delaware on election day, November 2, 2010. Contradicting theories advanced by Delaware Republican insiders, voters in Delaware on November 2 would have elected Democrat Chris Coons regardless of whether the Republican nominee were Mike Castle or Christine O’Donnell. The analysis places the focus on calls for systemic reforms of the Republican Party of Delaware.
According to CNN: “despite pre-election polls that showed longtime Republican Rep. Mike Castle handily beating Coons in a hypothetical match-up, the voters who turned out today said they would still probably have sent Coons to Washington over Castle, backing him 44-43 percent.”
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/02/exit-polls-the-surprise-in-delaware/#more-132853 “Exit Polls: the surprise in Delaware,” by CNN’s Rebecca Sinderbrand, Novmeber 2, 2010.
Exit polls for Fox News also found that Christine O’Donnell won the votes of Independents by 49% to 46%. (The graphic shows these percentages reversed 46% to 49% compared to the anchor's report.)
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/11/outrage-odonnell-wins-independents-but-not-enough-republicans-to-win-delaware/
Meanwhile, only 82% of Republicans voted for Christine O’Donnell.
It is undeniable that Republicans failing to unify behind the Republican nominee O’Donnell cost the Republican Party the US Senate seat. An amazing 18% of Republicans rejected their party’s nominee and voted for the Democrat Chris Coons. Republicans voting against their party’s nominee cost the US Senate seat from Delaware for the GOP.
CNN’s analysis further explained: “the exit polls lay out the political and demographic roadblocks facing any Tea Party favorite here. Nearly half the state's voters describe themselves as moderate. Nearly another 1 in 4 call themselves liberal. This is Biden country: 58 percent of Delaware voters say they approve of President Obama's job performance. And 36 percent say they strongly oppose the Tea Party.”
UCFRoadWarrior:
Sadly, the moderate Republicans in Delaware are desperately spinning to avoid making the strucutral changes and reforms and improvements necessary to win elections in Delaware.
They are desperately trying to use Christine O’Donnell as an excuse to defectl blame from themselves.
Democrat voter registration leaped 17.6% in Delaware from 2007 to 2010. The GOP is not doing its job at party building.
Yet they are trying to avoid confronting the situation by trying to make excuses and blame one individual.
But it was easier to blame O’Donnell.
I always believed that the idiot Lib majority in Delaware would prefer a true unrepentant Lib like Coons, than a Lib wannabe GOPer like Castle. So, I never believed that Castle or O’Donnell had a real chance. Their primary contest and O’Donnells run was a made-for-the-media diversion, while the majority in Delaware were already behind Coons.
Rove blaming O’Donnell and O’Donnell supporters blaming people like Rove was also just an entertaining diversion - a diversion from the fact of how extremely Left-Lib the state of Delaware is.
At any gathering of Republicans if Karl Rove or Charles Krauthammer, or any of these pundits appear or speak, I hope they get booed off the stage.
Likewise, if Rove appears on, say Fox, I hope the show gets flooded with negative e-Mails.
Rove is a detriment to true conservatives. The left will use his negativity against us.
I disagree - it is not evidence at all. Both sides are merely speculating about the outcome of an event that never occurred to be observed - the exit poll ads no weight as it was a poll on something that they never actually had to make a decision on. We know that O’Donnell ran an embarrassingly poor campaign, which given the enormous amount of resources she had, cannot be blamed on anyone but her own campaign. The ‘GOP moderates’ are assuming Castle would have run a more effective campaign...but there is no way of knowing that as it didn’t happen. The fact he just sat back and thought he would coast to victory in the primary and did not tap his vast resources until very late in the game indicates he may have taken the same approach to the general election with his wide lead in the polls he was starting out with and then end up losing. We just don’t know, and there is nothing observable to analyze since the event never happened.
Well, we thank you for that. We already have enough losers in this state to overcome including the Democrat stronghold of Wilmington and the northern New Castle RINOs who made Coons election a certainty. Those of us who didn’t particularly enthuse over O’Donnell and voted for her anyway at least felt we took a spear for the team by getting Castle out in the primary. He would have voted along straight party lines in the lame duck session -the Democrat party line.
If the 18% of "republicans" that voted for Coons had instead ALL voted for O'Donnell, she still would have lost.
Here is the actual table from the CNN exit polls (sometimes people talk about a different exit poll when they suggest O'Donnell won the independent vote): CNN Exit Poll Delaware:
Total Coons O'Donnell Other/No Answer
Democrat (44%) 89% 9% 2%
Republican (30%) 16% 81% 3%
Independent(27%) 48% 45% 7%
Republican vote 30%*296924=89,077.2; 16% of that vote=14,252.
So if we added the 14252 to O'Donnell's total and took them from Coons, the final would be Coons: 159,624, O'Donnell 137,277. So she would still lose by a considerable amount (54% to 46%, an 8-point loss).
So you can't blame the republicans who showed up and voted for Coons instead of O'Donnell.
Further, it is silly to look at the actual voters on election night, and assert that the same voters would have shown up had Castle been the nominee. Especially when another argument made is that Castle voters stayed home, hurting O'Donnell. If the voters who showed up for a coons/O'Donnell race would have only barely chosen Coons over Castle, it is clear that in a real Coons/Castle race Castle would have trounced Coons.
Of course, that argument was clearly made when this exit poll was actually NEWS 2 months ago, and the poster of THAT thread ignored it.
Why this same exit poll is considered news by ANYBODY at this point is the more interesting question. Some people like to keep talking about the past hoping they can change it by spinning it.
It could be they are not, or it could be that people in delaware are democrats.
It would be nice to live in the world where if the GOP just did it’s job, every voter would register republican and we would win all the elections.
BTW, did you ever figure out who the campaign chair was for O’Donnell in the 2008 general election? I didn’t see you answer that question in the last thread.
You guys still believeing that Christine—broomstick—O’ Donnell had a chance?
they just freaking handed the country a communist and an elite ruling class communist at that....
they have to live with their stupidity and arrogance....too bad the rest of us do too...
dougy hoffman comes to mind....
Is your argument now that Castle would only draw votes from registered republicans, and that independents and democrats weren’t among his supporters who would have stayed home?
Remember, Castle was about the most liberal “republican” in the country. That was the reason he had to be defeated. It seems odd now to try to argue that his support was only among registered republicans, especially given that when the registered republicans voted in the primary, he LOST.
I know you were involved in running political campaigns, so I have to assume you are intelligent enough to not really believe that a 44-43 exit poll against a candidate who wasn’t ON the ballot means that candidate couldn’t win.
And we haven’t even mentioned that a sizable part of O’Donnell’s voter base would never have said in an exit poll that they would vote for Castle. IN fact, I could see a lot of them saying they would have voted for Coons, precisely so they could make this stupid argument now.
Just be happy that O’Donnell, for all her flaws, managed with Palin’s help to keep Castle from winning the republican nomination. You should be PROUD that Castle was stopped, not trying to argue that he wouldn’t have won anyway.
You know that, by arguing that “he wouldn’t have won”, you are actually giving credence to those who say that if he could have won, he should have been the nominee, regardless of his views. Otherwise, there would be no reason to make the argument.
I never thought she could win. Didn’t stop me from sending her money, and HOPING she would win.
Anyway, there was always the hope that, having endorsed her, Palin and the tea party would step in and take over for the missing-in-action Delaware Republican establishment. Or at least Palin would have had some contacts to send O’Donnell a decent campaign staff who would be strong enough to stop her from making a commercial where she insists she is not a crook. Wait, I mean “not a witch”.
Which is my way of pointing out the obvious flaw in that commercial — given the rumors about her previous campaign money (makes no difference if they were true or not, people knew about them), the last thing she wanted to do was remind people of Richard Nixon. “I am not a witch”?
That I agree with. That’s way too late to end a primary. You would have to have confidence that you were going to win, and essentially build a good campaign staff FOR the primary that could follow you into the general election.
On the other hand, if they had their primary back in the spring, Castle would have won easily, as we were still in the “we need to win elections” (see Scott Brown), and not into the “we are going to win big, so we should try to get real conservatives” mode.
A September primary also doesn’t give the candidates enough time to heal the wounds of the primary campaign, or for the losers to get over it and back the winners.
Why are you talking about “broomstick” about a woman who gave her heart to Jesus Christ 19 years ago and has been a passionate, outspoken, and dedicated Christian — in the public eye — for 19 years?
What kind of person are you?
I’m just trying to understand the argument. You claim that since republicans showed up at a higher rate than their registration, there couldn’t have been Castle supporters staying home who would have shown up and voted for him, and therefore the “44-43” exit poll results is an accurate reflection of the electorate you would expect had Castle been the nominee.
I believe you are wrong on multiple counts, because first the increase in Republican turnout was likely solid conservatives supporting O’Donnell who would probably have told exit pollsters that they would NOT have voted for Castle, and second because it is almost certain that had Castle been the nominee, more people who supported him would have shown up on election day than showed up for an election where he wasn’t running.
And in fact, it may even be true that Castle would have pulled the house seat to the republican side. That was another race where the establishment candidate lost the primary to an outsider, and having Castle to pull the establishment voters to the polls MAY possibly have helped — although it is just as likely that the kind of voters Castle brought would be the kind who would vote for a democrat for the house seat.
And of course, with polls showing Castle beating Coons easily, Coons wouldn’t have gotten all the support he got once the democrats realised they had the seat back in play.
And lastly, and this you should know because you were involved in delaware politics, in these “highly lopsided” states, registration is not indicative of where voters really are in the political spectrum. People who would register republican in a competitive state register democrat because often that is where the winning candidates are chosen, in the primary of the democratic party. It was the same in Maryland; you’d have a large democrat advantage, but when a sufficiently moderate republican ran, they would get a large part of the democrat vote.
IN this election, with a candidate who by every measure was to the far right of the political spectrum, and even with all the baggage real or percieved heaped upon her, and her lack of experience, and the jokes made on her behalf, she STILL managed to take 9% of the DEMOCRAT vote. Which, in terms of raw numbers, was almost as many democrat voters as she lost republican voters.
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