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.
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