Waaaay back in February of 2009, I wrote about how winning the Governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey provided the opportunity to kickoff a tidal wave that would make the GOP difficult to stop in 2010.
Well, we all know what happened with that. And now look where we are.
Sean Trende over at Real Clear Politics has taken it a step further.
In November of 2009, a strange pattern emerged in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. The states are quite different, politically speaking: New Jersey is blue, Virginia is reddish-purple; Virginia was a battleground state in ’08, New Jersey was not. Despite these differences, if you compare the 2008 Presidential exit polls with the 2009 gubernatorial exit polls, you will find that the electorates of both states became increasingly composed of Republicans and Independents in 2009, and that they became so at similar rates. Additionally, the Democratic candidates in both states lost the support of Independents and Republicans, compared to President Obama’s 2008 showing, and did so at nearly identical rates.
After New Jersey and Virginia, he then noticed that Massachusetts electorate shifted in much the same way. Once again, we know what happened there.
Now it’s safe to say the political environment hasn’t gotten any better since these races wrapped up. The generic congressional ballot has trended more towards the GOP and Obama’s approval ratings have continued to drop.
So Trende looked at what would happen to the Senate races in Ohio and other states if we once again see the same shifts in the electorate that we saw in three other diverse states.
What did he find?
Ohio’s electorate would become 43.6% Democratic versus 56.4% Republican.
That’s not good news for Fisher, Strickland, or a lot of other Democrats trying to win in November.
Does this mean the shift will definitely happen? Of course not, but we do have a precedent as well as no reason to see an improvement upon that trend benefiting Democrats.
Should be fun to watch.
