Which is another way of saying that Republican party did not unite behind the Republican nominee.
Conservatives are always expected to support the party nominee if it is a moderate. Moderates always betray the party if they don’t get their way. This has been going on for 40 years, since when Christine was 1 years old.
Republican moderates ran moderate GOP Congressman John Anderson as a third-party candidate against Ronald Reagan in 1980 to try to sabotage and defeat Ronald Reagan’s campaign for President.
Republican moderates ran moderate Republican MARSHALL COLEMAN in the 1994 US Senate race to destroy Oliver North’s campaign for US Senate. Coleman pulled away enough Republican votes to help elect CHUCK ROBB to the US Senate.
This states the problem: Conservatives have for years been hood-winked into supporting moderate Republican nominees, while moderates sabotage and destroy any conservative who wins the nomination.
If the moderates had not run a third-party candidate, Oliver North would have been elected:
Virginia United States Senate election, 1994
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Democratic Chuck Robb 938,376 45.6 %
Republican Oliver North 882,213 42.9 %
Independent Marshall Coleman 235,324 11.4 %
The problem with the analysis is that it doesn’t take into account that the Republican turnout was suppressed.
You are correct in that this doesn’t take into account what the voter turnout would have looked like had Castle been in the mix. A 1% negative number is basically a statistical tie. The one thing I think this really shows is that the voters have told COD for the 3rd time in five years they aren’t interested in her as a state wide elected politician. She may well have a future in some position in DE but it doesn’t appear to be an elected one.