Which Congressional Candidates Got Their Votes Out Yesterday?

An imperfect measurement of GOTV (0.00 / 0)

Undoubtedly many Boucher voters voted for McCain in 2008; Boucher's number is so low because he outperformed Obama.

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by: VA Blogger @ Wed Nov 03, 2010 at 19:55:13 PM UTC

Agreed, it's imperfect. (0.00 / 0)

I never claimed it was perfect.  Still, I think it's interesting.  What about you?

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by: lowkell @ Wed Nov 03, 2010 at 20:25:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think its *very* interesting. (0.00 / 0)

I think it shows a lot how effective Obama was getting infrequent voters to the polls. If you adjust Boucher (and even Perriello) for how many McCain voters supported them, then the top half is all red, the bottom half all blue. That explains Virginia, and the rest of the country, pretty succinctly.

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by: VA Blogger @ Wed Nov 03, 2010 at 20:36:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Exactly. (0.00 / 0)

I thought crunching these #s might show something interesting, and I wasn't disappointed.

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by: lowkell @ Wed Nov 03, 2010 at 20:46:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thank you... (0.00 / 0)

...for presenting this.  This election cycle is going to have a lot of opinions offered for why things did/did not happen, but as in most years little concrete data.  This graph gets all sides a step closer to seeing not just what happened, but perhaps why it happened.

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by: Bwana @ Fri Nov 05, 2010 at 16:29:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Whoa! (0.00 / 0)

If this is true, how in the world did Boucher lose in the 9th?

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by: The Donkey @ Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 00:10:52 AM UTC

Because Barack Obama got creamed there (0.00 / 0)

in 2008.  

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by: lowkell @ Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 00:14:29 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why did Boucher lose? (0.00 / 0)

Because the Republican Party successfully played the race card to convince people who had voted for Rick for 28 years to vote against him to "Stop Obama". True, Obama got creamed here in the Ninth in 2008, but once he got elected, he then became a scary black man set out to change America!

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by: blue moco @ Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 15:36:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Similar exercise (0.00 / 0)

I completed a similar examination of voter turnout in the 5th district by locality.  I based my comparison on Perriello 2008 v. Perriello 2010 because Tom outperformed Pres. Obama in the 5th district in 2008. Overall turnout dropoff was 31%. It seems Tom fared very well in turnout dropoff in the cities of Danville and Charlottesville.  The counties of Albermarle, Appomattox, Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Halifax, Nelson and Pittsylvania also did very well getting their vote out with turnout drop off of 29% or less.  However, turnout dropoff was 33% to 49% in 8 localities. For Tom to have won the election, turnout dropoff would have had to been 25% or less across the board, which no locality achieved. I don't believe that we did a good job  making the connection that the US Chamber of Commerce had lobbied congress and gotten tax breaks for the companies who shipped our jobs overseas.  We couldn't get folks to understand the connection that trade agreements like NAFTA, which the Chamber have supported, are the reason the economic backbone of the 5th has disappeared.  Perhaps if we could have, we could have gotten to that 25% dropoff and won.

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by: pontoon @ Sat Nov 06, 2010 at 16:07:17 PM UTC