Election Day 2013

Political elections play out like any popular sport in the United States. There are winners and there are losers. There are favorites and there are upsets. And almost everybody has a team. The United States has two major “teams” in its world of politics: the democratic and the republican parties. Our nation’s annual election day was last week where three major political battles occurred. In this blog, I look to dissect the elections and explain how the victor secured his/her electoral victory.

I.                   New York Mayoral Election

Bill de Blasio (D) vs. Joe Lhota (R)

For the most part, this election had already been decided before Election Day even began. New York City has a largely liberal voting demographic (as most urban cities do) and so the Democratic candidate was expected to grab an easy victory. The real election took place in the Democratic Party primary where Bill de Blasio, New York City Public Advocate, secured the nomination with about 40.81% of the vote. After de Blasio secured his nomination, the battle was pretty much over; de Blasio beat Republican nominee Joe Lhota with 73.7% of the popular vote. This election had little surprises and just about everything went as expected.

 Fun fact: this year marks the first year since 1989, 24 years ago, that New York City has elected a Democratic candidate for mayor. This is very surprising for a state that is widely regarded as a Democratic stronghold.

II.                New Jersey Gubernatorial Election

Barbara Buono (D) vs. Chris Christie (R)

Like the New York City mayoral election, this election had also been decided before a single ballot was cast. Chris Christie, the incumbent governor of New Jersey, was challenged by Barbara Buono, a member of the New Jersey State Senate. Buono was doomed from the very beginning. Incumbent governors have won about 80% of their elections since 1980. Furthermore, Chris Christie is an extremely popular governor within his own state and also nationwide. Christie is respected for his straight talk; he often doesn’t dabble in political correctness. He is also widely regarded as a moderate candidate, a necessary quality for a Republican in a liberal leaning state such as New Jersey. Barbara Buono had such low odds of victory that the Democratic Party gave her little funding to use for the election; her own party saw her loss as inevitable and did not want to waste money on it. Christie easily took his reelection with 60.4% of the votes. I’m sure Christie had very little concern for this election; he’s too busy looking forward to his run for president in 2016!

III.             Virginia Gubernatorial Election

Ken Cuccinelli (R) vs. Terry McAuliffe (D)

This election was unique in that there was no clear cut victor; this election was any man’s game. The incumbent governor, Bob McDonnell, was not able to run for reelection because Virginia’s state constitution bans one governor from serving successive terms. The race was wide open in this swing state between Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe and Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli. The race was very tight; it was the last of the three elections to be decided this year’s election night. Terry McAuliffe emerged as the victor with 47.7% of the vote to Ken Cuccinelli’s 45.2%. The race was decided by a 2.5% difference in the popular vote. So how did Terry McAuliffe win?

His first advantage was fundraising. McAuliffe raised $26,345,763 throughout the election while Cuccinelli raised just $16,807,323. McAuliffe therefore had more resources and could spend more advertising himself for the election. McAuliffe’s second advantage is an emerging trend in politics; minority voters. McAuliffe was able to attract much more minority voter (particularly minority women) votes. Minorities were turned away by conservative policies that they generally saw as unfavorable to minorities within the state and by and large voted for McAuliffe instead. This trend is occurring nationwide; one of the main reasons Barack Obama sped by Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential Election was his appeal to minority voters. If the Republican Party wants to find success in future elections, it must find a way to appeal to this minority voter group.

Fun fact: This election year marks the first year since 1977 that Virginia has elected a governor that shares his/her party with the sitting president. Virginia’s reputation as a swing state is well deserved.

Odd numbered years are relatively slow and unexciting as far as political elections go, and for the most part this year was no exception. The elections in New York City and New Jersey went exactly as expected. While McAuliffe was never expected to win the election, he had been favored by polls throughout much of the campaign season. 2014, however, will surely be a more exciting and meaningful election day. Every seat in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs as well as 1/3 of the seats in the Senate. We will surely be hearing much more political rhetoric, debate, and advertisement next year. For now, however, we can only sit still and enjoy the calm before the storm.