Undoubtedly, the GOP spinmeisters will try to paint yesterday's 57%-43% victory by Saxby Chambliss over Jim Martin in Georgia as some kind of positive harbinger for national Republicans. As usual, they're wrong. A few points:
1. This was a special election with very low turnout. Even on November 4, with turnout through the roof, Barack Obama lost to John McCain in Georgia and Jim Martin trailed Saxby Chambliss 49.8%-46.8%.
2. Georgia is a solidly "red" state, one of the Republican Party's last solid redoubts (basically, the GOP has been reduced to a party of the "Deep South," the Great Plains, and parts of the Rocky Mountains). If triple-amputee war hero Max Cleland couldn't defeat Saxby Chambliss in a general election, why on earth would Jim Martin have been able to do so, in a low-turnout special election no less?
3. If Chambliss had squeaked past 50% on election day, which he didn't manage to do in large part because of the 3.4% siphoned off by Libertarian Allen Buckley, there would have been no runoff and this would have been no "news" at all. The fact is, Chambliss should have won on November 4; he didn't because of Buckley and also because of huge turnout for Barack Obama.
4. Finally, Public Policy Polling has an excellent analysis as usual. Essentially, young people and African Americans didn't turn out yesterday, which was a death blow given that "[t]he Georgia electorate is easily the most racially polarized of any state we polled regularly during the 2008 election cycle." PPP concludes:
...what were the implications of yesterday's results? I think the only implication is that you can't expect to get a failed Lieutenant Governor candidate elected to the US Senate in a conservative state, and certainly not without a drawing card at the top of the ballot to ensure high turnout from strong Democratic demographic groups. Beyond that I don't think it means much of anything.
Exactly.
Nothing is set in stone, and certainly Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio will continue to be swing states, but Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia are trending HEAVILY against the Republicans, and until they can figure out how to appeal to folks in these states, they are electorally a minority party.
It really is too bad about Jim Martin, as he appears to be a great guy and candidate. The lesson is, again, you can't just appear out of the blue and ask for votes without doing the hard work in the off years of organizing and challenging your neighbors and communities to be engaged. GA Dems are fighting the good fight, and God bless 'em for doing so, but rural southern whites are still a tough nut for us to crack.
For example: I would have thought that increasing urbanization and an influx of well-educated professionals would have swung Cobb County into Democratic hands by now--like Loudoun, like Henrico, like countless other suburban-exurban jurisdictions across the country. I've spent a lot of time in Marietta, and it's doesn't strike me as an entrenched conservative stronghold. Not in the same sense that Greenville-Spartanburg, just on the road, is a conservative stronghold. This is an ethnically diverse, urban-suburban, well-educated and sophisticated place. Am I missing something fundamental here?
e.g. NoVA contains about 25% of the state vote; Research triangle is about 20% of the Carolina vote. If we're only looking at a 15% share of the electorate, that wouldn't be enough to tilt the state.
In terms of the statewide numbers, it looks like 1.2 million fewer people voted in this go around, with Martin's overall margin of loss increasing by 200,000 votes.
It may be that the timing of the run-off the week after Thanksgiving hurt Martin's numbers a bit (e.g. students went home for Thanksgiving and weren't near polling locations -- might be true even for in-state students).
Although during the General election, McCain actually won the 18-29 cohort by a few points in Georgia.
Proportionally, the 18-29 group also represented a much smaller share of the electorate (e.g. 14 percent in Georgia compared to 18 percent in N.C. and 21 percent in VA -- Obama also won the 18-29 groups in Virginia and N.C. by huge margins).
In Georgia in Nov. Obama only won one age group -- 30-44 -- he won by a nice double-digits margin, but it's kind of strange that he wasn't able to replicate his success with the 18-29 group as he did around the country.
Bush's base turned out for Chambliss -- that was likely the decisive factor. In a run-off like the Dec. 2nd vote it's a battle of base support, since lukewarm supporters are unlikely to commit time and energy to getting to the polls. Chambliss also had a huge cash advantage.
Now the GOP is licking their chops for seats that may be vacated by appointees from the Senate and gearing up for a takedown in 2010. Beware the GOP on the ropes -- they are very good at playing the opposition role -- as terrible as they are at governing.