How did Ken Cuccinelli Lose by only 2.5 Points?

[rdubwiley]

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. They suppressed the vote.

[WinstonSmith4740]

2. My thoughts exactly.

I was getting REAL nervous watching the returns Tuesday evening. He had a pretty sizable lead with something like 70% of the votes counted, and the media was still saying "too close to call". I thought that was more than a little weird since we've all seen elections called with 5-10% of the votes in. Polls always reflect the electorate...lots of people may have said they were going to vote for McAuliffe, but never got to the polls. Others were probably completely unaware until they got there that Cuccinelli had them thrown off the voter rolls. Like I said, I was real concerned about his voter suppression tactics. It amazed me when I saw that women were voting for this looney tune. Married women voted for him in pretty big numbers...it was the single women that carried the day.

But I'll tell ya what...the Democrats better not sit on their hands until 2014/2016. These assholes are only going to ratchet up the voter suppression machinery because of the closeness of this vote. They'll just keep making it tougher and tougher for anyone besides old white men to vote. You can bet they're in their back rooms right now planning on who they have to target next.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. The polls had McAuliffe in a double digit lead

Could American democracy yet die boldly?

Until there's a better explanation, I smell a rat.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Democrats have a turnout problem

in local elections too

We should fine non-voters like they do in Australia

[Warpy]

5. It was close because McAuliffe was leading by double digits in the polls

and a lot of Democrats thought the other guy would do the voting and stayed home. Unfortunately, the right wing religious nuts always go out to vote, it's how they're going to get into heaven and meet Jebus, voting for hate filled right wing Republicans.

However, even they couldn't stomach EW Jackson, so crazy that Cooch backed away from him, and who did lose by double digits.

[november3rd]

6. Much coverage

Washington Post, October 17, 2013 Virginia Election Officials Purging Almost 40,000 Voters

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/10/17/virginia-election-officials-purging-almost-40000-voters/

[nyquil_man]

7. I'd suggest a few factors.

1. Off-year election. They did a better job getting their voters out than we did.
2. Voter purge. Some of our voters were knocked off the rolls.
3. Decline in support for the Libertarian candidate. Voters who had been leaning toward Sarvis ultimately held their noses for Cuccinelli.

[Proud Public Servant]

8. Can we take off the tinfoil a minute?

First, only one poll ever had McAuliffe up by double digits, so let's put that wholoe "double-digit lead" nonsense to rest.. But beyond that, has Nate Silver taught you nothing? You don't look at individual polls, people; you look at averages.

Okay, so what did the averages tell us? McAuliffe was up by 6.7 (per RCP). But also Sarvis was at 9.6 (he finished at 6.6) and about 6% of Va voters remained undecided throughout polling.

So what does that tell us? It looks like the undecideds broke slightly in favor of Cuccinelli (3.5-2.5), and about 1/3 of Sarvis' support ran back to the GOP at the last minute (a very common phenomenon with 3rd party candidates).

There is really nothing to see here, especially since McAuliffe is an opportunistic, 3rd-way weasel who generated absolutely no passion in our own party (except among Clintonistas). There was no reason to supress teh Dem vote; real Democrats, including those who came out for him, HATE this guy.

The scandal is not in the vote count. The scandal is that we ran a sleazebag like McAuliffe at all.

[rdubwiley]

9. I really like you

Didn't think about problems with polls. The final result was pretty scary, but I seriously doubt it was voter supression.

[Proud Public Servant]

12. Well, thanks! (nt)

[uponit7771]

14. The scandal is voter suppression even one vote... and it should be reported even if it's .1%...

...give or take.

What conservatives are doing is subversive to democracy

[blkmusclmachine]

10. .

.

[Stevepol]

11. Why does no one mention the voting machines?

Virginia's votes are counted for the most part on totally unverifiable touch screen voting machines (mostly ES&S I think) that are, according to Steven Freeman, "trivially easy" to hack or patch or otherwise fraudulently program. A good program shift on the central tabulators by ONE PERSON could easily throw the whole election.

Reports during the election indicate that there were a lot of cases of the voter pushing the button for McAuliffe and seeing the vote go down for Cuccinelli. That's a sign that something's probably fishy in the program.

There's no way to prove that a fix was in of course. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. If it's impossible to verify the vote or if there's no exit poll to give some kind of indication as to whether or not the vote was correctly tabulated, everything is just a guess and it's impossible to have a democracy. It's "faith-based" voting. Maybe Anonymous is helping out. Who knows?

[Arkana]

15. Well...

--Off-off-year election, polling models for these suck ass
--Terry McAuliffe's a shithead
--Libertarian candidate took more votes from both sides than anyone thought
--Did I mention what an unfeeling shithead Terry McAuliffe is?