TRENDING FOR OFF-OFF YEAR?
The Shad Plank is back, and this week, Dave Ress takes a look at whether Tuesday’s election results could portend a shift in 2019, when state Senate and House of Delegates are up for grabs.
You’ve got to be careful not to read too much from a federal election, like Tuesday’s midterm, into forecasts for state legislative results. The difference in turnout between a federal off-year election and a state off-off-year (like in 2019, when only the state Senate and House of Delegates are up for election, but with no statewide races) can be huge: On Tuesday, 59 percent of voters cast ballots. In the last off-offyear legislative elections, turnout was 29 percent. Traditionally, lower turnout elections trend Republican.
But it’s a good bet plenty of Virginia Democrats are thinking Sen. Tim Kaine’s 15.9 percentage point stomping of GOP candidate Corey Stewart, and a flip of three House of Representatives districts from R to D, could be a foreshadowing of big changes in our General Assembly after the 2019 election.
Thanks to the number-crunchers at the Virginia Public Access Project, who have sliced and diced Tuesday’s election results by state Senate and House of Delegates district, we can know that Republican Senate stalwarts Frank Wagner and Bill DeSteph, both from Virginia Beach, represent districts that went 55.6 percent and 51.3 percent, respectively, for Kaine.
In the Richmond suburbs, voters in the districts represented by GOP first term Sens. Glenn Sturtevant and Siobhan Dunnavant went for Kaine by 60.4 percent and 56.5 percent, respectively.
Up in Northern Virginia, some 58.5 percent of voters in Sen.
Dick Black’s district voted for Kaine; in Sen Bryce Reeves’ district, 52.2 percent did.
It’d only take one of these districts to flip to give Democrats (thanks to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s tie-breaking vote) control of the state Senate.
And in the House, currently split 51-49 between Rs and Ds?
Here’s Kaine’s vote share in districts represented by:
Del. David Yancey, R-Newport News, 58.5 percent
Del Tim Hugo, R-Fairfax, 58.1 percent
Del. Bob Thomas, R-Fredericksburg, 54.9 percent
Del. Robert Bloxom, R-Accomac, 54.4 percent
Del. Roxanne Robinson, RChesterfield, 54.1 percent
Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, 52.9 percent
Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell, 52.6 percent (he’s chair of the Counties, Cities and Towns Committee, and a heavy hitter on the Appropriations, Rules and Privileges and Elections committees
Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, 52.1 percent
Del Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, 51.1 percent (as chair of the Appropriations Committee, he is one of the most important leaders in the House)
Kaine won Del. Gordon Helsel’s Poquoson and Hampton district by 49.7 percent to 48 percent for Stewart and had a 49.7 percent to 48.4 percent win in Del. Bobby Orrock’s Spotsylvania and Caroline counties district.
No Democratic state senator or delegate represents a district that voted for Stewart.
You can see the VPAP data here:
vpap.org/visuals/visual/2018us-senate-results-state-senatedistrict/
2nd district turnout
Did it seem as if the big story, both before and after Tuesday, was turnout — as in, how big it was?
But there might well be a Hampton Roads twist on this nationwide story.
Statewide, turnout soared to 59 percent (up from 42 percent in the last midterm federal election). But in the hard-fought 2nd Congressional district race, turnout was a bit below this, at 56 percent.
That translated to a roughly 57,000-vote drop in Rep. Scott Taylor’s total vote from what he won in 2016 — yes, that was a presidential year, when we see the biggest turnout.
But the point is that the drop in Taylor’s vote was far steeper than the slide of roughly 37,000 in total votes cast in the 2nd district in 2018 compared to 2016.
The difference? Elaine Luria, who was elected as the district’s next member of Congress, received 20,000 more votes than did the 2016 Democratic candidate, Shaun Brown.
That sharp dip in Taylor’s vote total, steeper than the decline in the total votes cast in the district, is what tells the tale, says Quentin Kidd, director of Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy.
In other words, plenty of GOPinclined voters stayed home while Democrats flocked to the polls.
“I think it was the signature scandal, it was Republican voters who decided they couldn’t support him because of the signature scandal and had no other reason to go and vote ... if you didn’t want to come out because of the signatures and they didn’t want to come out because of Corey Stewart, you’d just stay home.”
Kidd thinks those factors, maybe more than voters’ feelings about President Donald Trump, swung the district.
An aggressive ad campaign in the final two weeks of the campaign refocused attention on the Taylor staff who are under investigation for alleged election fraud with their efforts to get Brown on the ballot as an independent, he said. The aim of such an odd effort by one campaign to get another candidate on the ballot, at a guess looked to be an effort to split the Democratic vote.
“Luria ran a disciplined campaign ... she only mentioned Donald Trump once, and she did it in response to a question from Joel Rubin moderating a debate when he asked her why she wasn’t talking about Trump,” Kidd said. “She wanted the race to be about her, and about health care and not about Trump.”
The race in the 2nd, argues Stephen Farnsworth, political scientist at the University of
Mary Washington, suggests Republican activists still haven’t realized how much Virginia has changed in the past two decades — specifically, how important suburban voters are now.
Corey Stewart’s aggressive nativist campaign turned suburban voters off — and wasn’t aimed at them, he said.
“A strategy based on older voters, a strategy based on white voters and a strategy based on rural voters is strike 1, 2 and 3 when you think about the Virginia of the future,” Farnsworth said.
“The party is really in trouble with suburban voters,” Farnsworth said. “The bottom line is the Republican Party really has to retool itself.”
Shad’s running!
Well, the shad (or at least the Shad Planks) are running again. The blog and this column took an unplanned-for and very much unwanted break beginning in August when I had a heart attack on my way to cover a story. Luckily, an incredible team of Middlesex County EMTs got to me faster than any reasonable person could expect. Luckily, too, the good Virginians I’ve come to know in a quarter century of delighting in the Old Dominion’s political foibles took time to offer their support as I’ve recovered. Their words, their thoughts, their prayers got me back on my feet. And I’ve learned I live in a place with a big heart.