ANALYSIS: In the end it wasn’t that close
by Susan Bigelow | Aug 10, 2010 10:58pm
(13) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Election 2010, Opinion
In the end, it wasn’t close after all. Dan Malloy won a resounding victory over Ned Lamont, and is well-placed to run against Tom Foley in November.
A lot of ink is going to be wasted trying to figure out just what went wrong for Lamont. After all, he had a huge lead, high name recognition, the backing of many of the same activists that had so strongly supported him in 2006, and plenty of money. What could possibly derail him?
There are a lot of reasons, some more important than others. A blizzard of negative mailers at the last minute, for instance, and the surging campaign, experience and smart voter outreach of Dan Malloy, are among them.
But the size of Malloy’s win, combined with low turnout, suggests that the late summer date of the primary may have had more to do with this result than anything. Lamont’s better name recognition didn’t help when so many voters didn’t show up, and Malloy did a better job of reaching those voters who did. As town-by-town results become available (and why weren’t they on election night?), we should get a clearer picture of how this victory was won, and where.
Most Democrats should easily unite behind their nominee, despite some bad blood that developed over the past month or so. Malloy enters the general election as the Democrat with the best chance of actually winning the governorship since Bill Curry in 1994. He also enters the main event with something he’s never had before in a gubernatorial race: a lead in the polls.
McMahon defeats Simmons and Schiff
All night, Linda McMahon struggled to break 50%, even though her victory over her two rivals seemed assured. Her win suggests several things: first, that Republican voters are still not all that hot on Rob Simmons, who was far closer to Peter Schiff than to McMahon in votes; second, that a candidate like Schiff can do better than expected here in Connecticut; and third, that Republicans still have reservations about McMahon.
She’s going to have to get her base more enthusiastically behind her and put some of those nagging doubts to rest if she hopes to get close to Blumenthal and. She has plenty of money and a strong organization to help her as she readies for November, however. It’s very easy to underestimate her but, as Simmons found out, perilous. McMahon vs. Blumenthal is going to be closer and more exciting than we think, especially if Blumenthal isn’t soon roused from his current slumber.
Foley defeats Fedele and Griebel
Republican voters here shrugged and chose the guy on the top of the line. None of the candidates seemed to inspire particularly strong support, and the close results showed that.
Fedele came close, but could never quite break through against Foley’s momentum. Griebel won a respectable amount of votes, but it’s hard not to wonder what the race would have been like if he hadn’t been in it. Probably a lot less interesting.
Now Foley is the nominee, and the contrasts between him and Malloy are sharp. Foley bring his business experience and his personal fortune to bear against Malloy, although as Malloy demonstrated against Lamont, those things can easily be turned against him.
Malloy is a different opponent than either Fedele or Griebel. Malloy has been preparing for this race for years, really he’s been running for governor since the Rowland administration, and he’s finally gotten good at it. Foley happened into the governor’s race once Chris Dodd retired, and the prospects of a Republican victory in the U.S. Senate race seemed less certain. Foley will have to work very hard, and wage a much more focused, specific and enthusiastic campaign than he did in the primary if he wants to have a chance of beating Malloy.
Other races:
The size of Kevin Lembo’s win was pretty staggering, and it’s hard not to think Democrats were sending a message here. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura pushed the tolerance of Democrats by speaking at a Tea Party rally, launching ridiculous negative ads against Lembo, trying to use the court system to deny Lembo financing, and winning the endorsement of the ultraconservative Family Institute of Connecticut. Democrats overwhelmingly rejected him.
Nancy Wyman’s margin over Mary Glassman was far larger than the margin her running mate had over Ned Lamont, suggesting that adding her to the ticket was a good idea.
Martha Dean’s defeat of Ross Garber was interesting only because the race had been so dirty. Apparently the sign-stealing antics of her husband didn’t hurt her.
Janet Peckinpaugh won the right to run against Rep. Joe Courtney in the 2nd district, which is the first and possibly last time we’ll hear anything from Republicans there this year. The only other notable congressional result was Dan Debicella’s win in the 4th district. He’ll run against Jim Himes, the most vulnerable of Connecticut’s House delegation.
Overall, it was a great night for endorsed candidates, which suggests that in low-turnout, low-interest elections, the party convention’s blessing is still a useful thing. Who knew?
Chris Bigelow is the former owner/author of Connecticut Local Politics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and cats.
Tags: Malloy, Lamont, Fedele, Foley, DeStefano, Jarjura, Lembo, Garber, Merrill, Garcia, Dean
(13) Comments
posted by: wtfdnucsailor | August 11, 2010 10:45am
Just a guess but the Q poll tries to get the appropriate cross section of DEMS during their polling process. Unfortunately for Lamont and fortunately for Malloy, the appropriate cross section didn’t turn out to vote. Malloy has been working since 2006 to get the core DEM leaders and the unions on his side. That effort paid off yesterday when those core leaders and the unions got their supporters to the polls and everyone else stayed home, even if encouraged to vote by all sides. I am not an insider or a member of a union, but I suspect that the state employee unions supported Malloy because he said that he would listen to them and give their proposals a fair shake during the necessary restructuring of the state government that will, by necessity, occur in the next administration. Malloy did not get the union support in 2006 because some of the unions were still resentful of his negotiations with the city unions in Stamford while he was Mayor. That resentment has died away with time and Malloy has been able to show he will listen, implement, or tell why implementation is not a good idea, to any state worker proposals for efficiencies. Somewhat like Nixon going to China, Malloy may be the only candidate that will be able to get the unions to give the consessions necessary to reform state government.
Back to the question on the Q poll - IT was who turned out, and Malloy’s GOTV game was obviously better than Lamont’s.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | August 11, 2010 11:09am
A good question on the ‘Q’ poll but I’m pretty sure the answer will be that electiosn with high or low turnout skew the ‘likely voter’ model.
2006/08 were unusually high turnouts in CT. Unusually high favors Progressive Democrats in CT. Unusually low favors the imcumbents, the party cadre, and the GOP.
The next era of polling won’t be so much about the polls themselves. It will be predicting the demographics of voter turnout so that the correct polling models are used.
posted by: Dave from SundayMorningCoffee.webs.com | August 11, 2010 11:45am
Tessa:
No one was asking, when taking the polls, the question - Are you being turned off by the negative ads? It appears from both the results and some of the comments of voters that the negative campaigning caused folks to run away from the authors of the negativity (Shades of “Kelley’s Hero’s” “Too many negative thoughts,” a la Donald Sutherland) in droves. The fact that Glassman did not go anywhere near as negative as Lamont did, yet still lost handily I think relfects the fact that she was associated with Lamont’s negative ads. The polls taken by Quinnipiac were in the midst of the last wave of negative campaigning, and folks hadn’t fully digested their disgust when answering the pollsters.
posted by: Doug Hardy | August 11, 2010 12:22pm
Hi Tessa ... I am not a statistician by any stretch, but polling is a pretty limited way to predict outcomes. We see so much polling that we forget that limitation. In this case it appears the Qpoll was a snapshot taken during a wider period of change in support for Malloy - the last poll essentially indicated a rapid upward trend was taking place. But I’m fairly sure they also were surprised by the size of the margin.
posted by: Todd Peterson | August 11, 2010 12:38pm
I’ve made it known in my posts that I don’t like Lamont. Malloy, in my opinion, is someone I can take seriously regardless of whether I agree with him on an issue. Having said that I’ll say that my low opinion of Lamont cratered after the last wave of ads. He made Malloy out as someone worthy of a significant stretch in prison, far worse than Eddie Perez and John Rowland. I think that killed his campaign. Malloy’s momentum became a tidal wave. Negative ads work but defamatory ads can backfire.
posted by: Tessa Marquis | August 11, 2010 1:25pm
Frankly, when going door-to-door and calling registered Democrats through July and during the week before the Primary, I got 2-to-1 for Malloy. This was for several towns. On some days we got 3-to-1.
My understanding was that my lists were also for “Likely Voters”, those Dems who had voted in 2008, and possibly during the Presidential Primary as well. I assumed that most would not come out to vote for this election, since many people only vote in Presidential years, and none of the candidates this week were Barack Obama.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | August 11, 2010 1:47pm
There’s a lot written about negative campaigns, much of it contradictory. Too little context to be meaningful.
What is obvious is the lack of litmus test issues this year. Gay Marriage and Abortion were off the table. So was the war. Both parties now support the war.
What was left? A huge budget deficit and job creation. No one came close to hitting a home run with anything concrete about either subject.
The lack of involvement from the legislature also hurt. Does anyone really believe Dan Malloy has the support of the Chris Donovans and the Democrats and there’s a real meaningful party agenda?
Or that Foley will get any kind of support in the GA?
The elephant in the room are the State Unions. No one said a meaningful word for obvious reasons. As the Register-Citizen put it “The largest area of potential for spending cuts — state union employee payroll and benefits — will be untouchable under a Gov. Malloy and House Speaker Chris Donovan.”
No one believes either McMahon or Blumenthal as a Junior Senator will have any real influence in Washington.
Lieberman, OTOH, and Dodd moved themsleves into the types of Senior positions to have major influence.
To paraphrase the bible the lukewarm we spit out of our mouth.
Yes there’s was negative campaigning. What was really absent was meaningful campaign issues.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | August 11, 2010 1:54pm
Yes Tessa, the ‘likely voter’ models currently in vogue suk.
They don’t get substantiated the way they need to. Any stock trader can tell you the pitfalls of using back tested trading systems in the present. It’s better than guessing but too coarse a model to bank on. The model needs constant refinement which possibly creates new errors through bad assumptions.
posted by: mpalmer | August 11, 2010 3:46pm
With a decent 30% turnout in town (for both D’s and R’s), the margin was still 2 to 1.
I think this line from the Paul Bass article (Lamont even lost new Haven) proves that this wasn’t simply a low turnout primary -
Quote:
Goldson noted that while Malloy won only six of 13 wards (not counting Yale) with African-American aldermen and significant African-American population, he won the overall vote in those combined wards. “He lost all those wards four years ago,’”
End quote.
I would say voters heard Dan Malloy’s message.
Even with DeStepfano’s help Lamont lost New Haven. I don’t think that happened because of low turnout.
posted by: realprogress10 | August 11, 2010 8:06pm
It’s really simple. Lamont lost because he is a loser. People - voters - sense that, and won’t vote for him, even after they tell pollsters that they will. No matter how much of his own money he spends, whether he runs as an insider or outsider, he will never be elected to any significant office. Progressives should forget him (maybe he can be persuaded to contribute to other candidates!) and find candidates who have competence, ideas, and a backbone.
posted by: mpalmer | August 11, 2010 10:32pm
Low turnout?
According to the results on the SOTS site today, Ned won these three towns (by my count): Andover, Suffield and Warren.
That’s it.
This had nothing to do with low turnout.
posted by: Tim White | August 12, 2010 11:56am
First things, first.
Christine, I respectfully request that you prohibit GC from commenting until he makes us maps. We need maps!!! haha…
Seriously though… always interesting Chris… with Schiff already supporting Linda… don’t be surprised to see him announce a run against Joe by mid-November. I still have my sign…
Also, with regard to turnout on the R side… if anyone bothers doing an analysis of previous primary voters (say Feb 2008) vs. the voters who turned out this week, I’d love to see the results… wondering if Linda turned out anyone new (in large numbers). It could be indicative of things to come in November.
posted by: Tessa Marquis | August 11, 2010 9:24am
Serious Question:
Why was the Quinnipiac Poll so very wrong on the Democratic Party’s Gubernatorial Primary?