General

Morning After Analysis

Well that was exciting. Much closer than I or almost anyone expected.

A few days ago I posted a spreadsheet model based on a 25%-30% turnout model. It showed Hackett coming close but still failing to close the deal.

At the time I thought the model was wildly optimistic for Hackett, and it was, but only off by a little. My model showed both candidates with around 55,000 votes but Schmidt edging out a little. The real numbers were Hacket: 55k Schmidt: 59k. I wasn’t trying to be predictive, but that’s pretty close to the actual. The difference was in the new voters, while most of them did break for Hackett it was more like a 70/30 split, not the 80/20 split he needed. It was near impossible all along.

Warren County has a canvass report up, showing breakdown by precinct. Hackett showed suprising strength in Lebanon and the rural townships. Lebanon doesn’t suprise me, that’s a “crunchy” town, the rural does but I’m guessing increased Dem participation did the trick. Mason and Hamilton Twp went for Schmidt overwhelmingly and that’s where the numbers are in Warren.

Bizzyblog has a detailed analysis of what both campaigns did wrong and right.

The candidate’s conduct:
9. She mistakenly thought that she could apply the “lesson” from her primary victory over opponents from her own party (”don’t go negative”) to the special election when the opponent is from the other party (where stating the truth about your opponent, whether or not perceived as “negative,” is necessary).
10. Schmidt chose to spend too much time in Washington after her primary win, and began to look like she was taking victory for granted.
11. She got caught in a real dumb and sort-of ethical violation involving (of all things) Bengals tickets that were supposedly gifts from an ex-player, but really weren’t.
12. In one of the debates Jean Schmidt, the President of Right to Life Cincinnati, choked (no other way to describe it) and told the audience she isn’t 100% prolife.
13. She concentrated way too much “energy” and attention on a minor and mostly boring issue (ethanol) and nowhere near enough on the biggies (war on terror, the improving national econony, prolife issues).

The opposition:
14. Her opponent pulled a daring (but deceptive and breathtakingly dishonest) radio and TV advertising ploy that placed sole emphasis on his military resume, totally faked support for George Bush, and failed to mention his party affiliation. Despite the belated howls from the (mostly local) right-wing blogs and talk radio, it essentially worked. It didn’t offend Hackett’s base, and it clearly anesthetized and/or fooled a portion of the GOP base.
15. Hackett aroused his (still) victory-starved base, both locally in his personal appearances, and nationally in the left-wing blogosphere, with his “SOB,” “chicken hawk,” and “greatest threat” comments, and made it clear to them that they could ignore those Bush-supporting and patriotic TV ads. I believe the detailed results will show a much higher percentage turnout among registered Democrats than Republicans.
16. Her opposition brought in star power (Carville, Cleland, Glenn, and others) never before seen in this district.
17. Her opposition was successful in picking fights with people associated with her, or who they imagined were associated with her.
18. With no other race to cover, the national press, particularly the television networks, got to a lot of swing voters in the district by focusing entirely on Hackett’s “would be the first congressman who served in Iraq” angle and conveniently ignoring his stands on the issues.

What you have is a situation where Schmidt has a lot of things to fix, but almost all of them are extremely easy to fix (especially the part about firing the campaign manager). Hackett did everything well and many of the breaks he had are non-repeatable. So we saw Schmidt’s floor at 52% and Hackett’s ceiling at 48%.

And that’s why I called it crazy money. Swingstateproject is overjoyed.

Tonight’s results exceeded my wildest expectations. Don’t get me wrong - I would have been overjoyed had Hackett won. But I am still thrilled, and his tremendous showing in an incredibly red district should buoy the hopes of Democrats everywhere. Tomorrow, we can begin the important task of dissecting the Hackett campaign’s operations in fine detail, to figure out what contributed most to its success - to see what results this extraordinary lab experiment yielded.

What lessons can be learned? How about:
-It’s good to have a telegenic candidate.
-Pretend to be a Republican.
-Money helps. A lot of money helps a lot.
-Feet on the ground make a difference.
-It helps when your opponent is running a bad campaign.
-Blogs can have a huge influence.

Apart from the very last, we knew all this. If the Democrats didn’t know these things, well that would explain a lot of their losses in recent years.

The one thing the left has a right to crow about is the influence and power of the blogosphere. However, this was not a balanced playing field in that arena. The left was firing on all cylinders while the right barely lifted a finger. Hackett was coordinating with his blogs and the local right-wing blogosphere was basically dissed or ignored by the Schmidt campaign. I don’t think we’ll be underestimated again.

To the point that this campaign can be taken as an indication of anything, it indicates a lot of weakness in the Ohio establishment GOP. We are long overdue for an overhaul of the Taft/Householder wing. Blackwell is positioned perfectly with his run for the governorship. 2006 is going to be interesting.

More campaign analysis:
RAB sees a defeat for Republicans.
Bizzyblog tells other Ohio GOP candidates to stay away (especially McEwen!)
SwingstateProject Celebrates!
Michael Meckler says Hackett nearly pulled off the impossible.
Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) calls for Hackett to run for an Ohio statewide office.
Porkopolis says the Democrats helped by keeping Hillary far, far away.

The Ohio 2nd Blog still down. I’m guessing he’s passed out somewhere. He deserves about two weeks of sleep after this.

Also don’t miss Higher Being coverage by Powerline and Michelle Malkin, and CQ.

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