Second, Cantor's own internal polling numbers showed him ahead by a large amount. Something happened that changed that. Was it strictly voter turnout, or was it more than that?

Romney thought he would win because of his internal polls.

Cantors were wrong too....so this tells us....

glad someone is collecting and correlating it.

Cantor has been out of touch with issues that concern his district, which seem to be both immigration and jobs.

his cavalier attitude toward his district's voters; he is unresponsive to just about everybody. He's spent too much time grooming himself for bigger things and not enough time on his actual job. That hurt him.

Also, there are lots of rabid teabaggers in VA, and Cantor's district was gerrymandered to contain lots of those people with the thought they would always vote R no matter what. I think Cantor took their votes for granted and was supercilious enough to let them know it. I don't think they liked that.

I looked at the precinct-by-precinct vote count, and it looks like the Dem-leaning precincts didn't turn out tons of Dems to vote against Cantor; the heavily redneck areas that always go heavily for every R actually voted against Cantor and for Brat. So, as much as I would like to think that Dems arranged this defeat, I don't see it in the precinct numbers. The really red areas went for Brat, in some cases 2 to 1. That's why I always laugh my ass off when some pundit (or DUer) writes about how 'purple' VA is. It ain't purple.

Cantor didn't think he needed to go out there and press the flesh and kiss babies, and throw bloody meat to his base. He was wrong about that. Teabaggers run on emotional energy and hate, and if you don't stoke that, you won't win. It's pretty simple but Cantor forgot that fact. I personally think he had quite a bit of disdain for the 'great unwashed' in his district and they, even in their delusions, saw that and decided they'd rather have a libertarian. That's pretty funny because a libertarian won't give a shit if the unwashed have jobs, healthcare, a hovel to live in, etc. If you can't afford it you won't get it. And I can hardly wait for the unwashed to get what they voted for. Yeah, that's mean, but so what. Maybe it's time to be mean.

incompetent. I believe they do know the relevant facts about each race in each state, but sometimes choose to do nothing to help the Dem candidate in those states for financial or tactical reasons. I think they have chosen incorrectly in many cases, and have actually helped nitwits like Cantor to stay in office.

Some have even suggested that they have a deal with Pubs to not challenge certain Pub incumbents, but I don't know if that's true. Others have suggested that they don't have enough money to help everybody, and this may be true, but the last time Cantor was challenged they gave NO help at all to Powell, a Dem candidate who polled 40% against Cantor. That was outrageous; someone polling that well should get a little bit of Dem national $$, but he didn't get a dime. I still wonder what that was all about.

And diminish any thing else that contributed to Cantors loss. They will not give credit to the possibilities that their polling was flawed and or voters decided to cross the lines and get rid of an ineffective leader.

believable to me. More from TPM:

John McLaughlin, Cantor's pollster and advisor, is out with an explanation of not only why his candidate lost but why his guy lost but why he told his guy at the end of May that he had a 34 point lead. His answer: Democratic (cross-over voting) sabotage!

Don't buy it. I know there are lots of Dems who'd like to imagine that their Virginia brethren pulled off the ultimate rat-f#$k on Eric Cantor last night. First, that sort of cross-over meddling almost never pans out. Second, and more importantly, as the tsunami was cresting last night, I was watching the folks on Twitter who really know how to analyze county by county numbers. And they weren't buying it. The spread looked consistent with Cantor simply getting crushed in the most conservative parts of the district.

As we were just discussing in an editorial conversation, you don't go from being an entrenched incumbent to losing a primary by a big margin because of tactical errors. That said, it's one thing to get taken down by a tsunami - quite another not even to see it coming.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/good-luck-with-that--8

Lee Fang of The Nation wrote that he listened to hours of Brat's stump speeches and town halls and the main topic was government corruption and cronyism. Brat is a strict free market Libertarian.That means no government bail-outs and subsidies.

http://www.republicreport.org/2014/dave-brat-cantor/

2012 was a Presidential election year.....

radio talk circuit and painted himself as a tea party candidate.This wasn't a general election,the voters who came out to vote were the people who identify Cantor as a left wing sellout.

Medicine......

It's this very polling company who are blaming dems for their horrible polling,they certainly aren't going to blame themselves.The fact is that only 12% of voters from this very red district came out to vote and they were most likely tea party voters.A more likely explanation is that republican voters who would have voted for Cantor stayed home thinking he would win anyway.

A sampling of Internet boards from liberal to conservative to batshit crazy indicate:

1. Cantor was despised equally by all.

2. Crossover voting.

Period.

With empirical data. It just wasn't enough to make up for the actual R votes Cantor lost. Your #1 is the (only) reason.

It was a contributing factor.

Do not wish to contend this further.

two more sources -- helpfully linked in this excerpt -- also disprove the premise that crossover voting was a factor.

But the broad consensus today, with people having had the time to look precinct-by-precinct at the results, is that, no, Democrats aren't to blame/thank. They may have added to Brat's margin, but it doesn't look like they were single-handedly responsible. Cantor got significantly fewer votes than he did in the 2012 primary, without even taking into consideration where Brat's votes came from.

It is an opinion piece. Shame that the standard for disproval of something is an op ed. The definition of disprove is pretty clear. I have no need to nit pick or whatever you want to call it. It flies in the face of common sense to claim this piece disproves anything. Kind of like saying a rwinger has disproved climate change because of an op ed with very limited facts. These types of articles do not disprove, they attempt to make a case. Two very different things. Not nit picking. Completely different.

Insuring you have plenty of Republican votes doesn't mean you have mainly establishment types. You may have a sizable fruit loop cross section as well. Long story short....he screwed himself.

As the Republican majority leader he has a lot of the national spotlight and knows that Republicans have to moderate or show tendencies of moderating if they ever plan to win the Presidency. Problem is, if too much of your district is rabid right wing extremist...you look like a sell out. Cantor can't have his cake and eat it too.

But this is the clearest example of what the Repub's face in 2016...the old system of running hard right during the primaries and then moving to the center in the national election doesn't work anymore. They were in disbelief when it happened to Romney and now they got further confirmation.

You can't win national elections on the old angry white guy constituency. But if your district is dominated by them, you can't be in the national spot light either....

Could that mean that Cantor's successor could be a more moderate guy from a more moderate district?

....get a moderate in, that way politicians on the right can openly voice their displeasure (insuring loyalty from the constituency) while not impacting the national stage. But here in lies a problem....

Everytime the GOP has attempted to moderate its message, the right wing media calls them out and avalanche's them with negative publicity. Its in the media's interests to do this as these are their biggest consumers of their product (i.e. Rush, Hannity, Coulter, etc. with their radio, TV, books, etc....in other words, a fool an his money are soon parted). The RW media isn't there to promote RW ideals, nope...they tell their audience what they want to hear in order to bring in the cash. Rush, Hannity, et. al. will all retire one day very wealthy in a socialist style Caribbean country.

So the question is....will someone have the balls to take the heat from the RW media? And will other Repub's in the House be willing to support knowing they will take some heat as well? And will big money pull back and allow for moderates to retake the reigns?

Repubs are a victim of their own success.

Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it. Rural voters in some of the recent gerrymandered districts are not establishment Republicans by and large. Which leaves these loose cannons with enough voting power to effect some pretty negative change to the Republicans in several states. The sad part is the rest of us are basically hostages to the internal fight taking place in the GOP.

The GOP is quite frankly caught in a net of their own making.

that saw the airwaves pounded relentlessly to motivate people to show up and vote for president, senator, and other races.

Non-presidential years are much more unpredictable. I'm sure some people stopped supporting Cantor for various reasons and others got complacent.

Right wing without being responsible for depriving all the government workers in Virginia of their jobs during the GOP government shutdown. My guess is that RW leaning government workers voted against Cantor.

ON EDIT: The guy who won also talks about how everyone needs to share in the benefits of increased productivy. Cantor, on the other hand, helped deny desperate people unemployment benefits.

Those who lean RW generally would vote for a RWer as long as he didn't cost them or threaten to cost them their jobs or their unemployment benefits. They don't realize that the RW politicians always end up hurting those who are not wealthy and powerful.

the people in his district grew to hate him for a variety of reasons, the signs the teabags in Henrico cty had against Cantor were not limited to immigration, they bashed him for being [get this] a socialist, a liar, a wall st guy, voting for obama care and the debt ceiling.

they have to look in the mirror to find the person to blame. They do not like that.

Tom Hartman is saying that Davis Brat won because he successfully wooed the likes of Laura Ingram and Mark Levine and in return the Koch Brothers funded the conservative radio host programs so that they would continue to trash Cantor. It is money that will not show up on a campaign ledger. Although this is a red district it does run through the Richmond area and if the Dems get out and vote in November we could make a difference. Cantor forget the main rule of politics and that is that all politics are local. he lost touch with his base and it cost him. This is a big blow to the republican leadership and there is no way to spin that. You just created a huge hole in the number 2 leadership position. As a life long Virginian I have never ever liked Cantor he came across as a swarmy frat boy. He attempted to stiff his own constituents for federal funds after the earthquake in 2011 damaged much of his district. Good Riddance.

There should have been higher turnout in 2012 compared to a primary in non-presidential/midterm year. I wonder what the turnout was in 2010. That is what is relevant in the comparison

Maybe if it was close, but it wasn't.

Only the most active and politically conscious Democrats are going to take time out of their day to vote in a Republican congressional primary.