Even Cantor's own pollster blames Democratic crossover: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-mclaughlin-cantor-blames-democrats

There are about a zillion threads including several with actual data that show it was disillusioned RETHUGS that cost him--even in the very 'reddist' areas of his district and even including Richmond.

Do some reading, There is an extensive Washington Post article that has been linked here several times.

I have to run, but here's a few to start:

I saw a lot of conjecture but nowhere was it "disproven".

Oh, and "duh" right back at you.

Democrats did not even pay attention to that race until Tuesday night.

Little evidence for widespread Democratic cross over voting to oppose Cantor in GOP primary
Vote counts show turnout did not spike higher in more Democratic-voting counties, and Cantor lost most support in Republican strongholds.

Likewise, Cantor saw the biggest drop-off in support in Republican strongholds of Hanover (-44 percentage points) and New Kent (-44 points), counties where Obama drew just over 30 percent of the vote in 2012. In Henrico County where Obama won 55 percent support, Cantor's drop-off was a smaller 32 points. The overall correlation between Obama's county support and Cantor's drop-off was clearly negative at -.60, indicating that the higher Obama's 2012 support, the lower Republican primary turnout rose this year. This is consistent with the idea that Republicans largely drove the rise in turnout.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/11/did-democratic-votes-doom-eric-cantor/

That article is a prime example of having a theory and using statistical formulas to ram it though. You can play around with statistics enough and you can prove almost anything.

Then, it was Obama's fault. Then, it was anti-Semitism. Then, it was the liberal media. Now, it's the Democratic voters that crossed over? I don't think so.

Cantor took his own voters for granted. His own voters were so arrogant that they didn't come out to vote for him, assuming he would win.

Brat galvanized the Teabagging base; they showed up for him and voted for him. There may have been Democratic cross-overs, but not enough to sway an election in Brat's favor. I remained unconvinced.

And yes, I read both the Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos analyses of Democratic Voter impact, but even that analysis wasn't convincing--even the writer didn't make a compelling case for it.

n/t

will send someone to Congress who is worse than Cantor, believe it or not.

We focus a lot on the Rethugs who get the most news coverage, but there are a lot of not-ready-for-prime-time GOP backbenchers who make Boehner and Cantor look like statesmen in comparison.

have any power. He also seems to be very much a Bush type, a bumbler with no filters and few brains, who will put his foot in his mouth repeatedly and will be shunted aside by more powerful Pubs. If he wins, that is.

if he loses. That district went big for both McCain and Romney, when Obama took the state's electoral votes.

Yes, he won't have a lot of power, but Cantor's leaving creates a vacuum for the next hot blob to rise to the top of the lava lamp that is the Rethuglican delegation in the House.

habit of not funding or helping Dem challengers in this district. Of course, now that Cantor is out, maybe they'll give a damn and send Trammel some money. Who knows.

to the democratic candidate. I'm on a tight budget but even I'm going to send a few bucks!

Some states still have those? Wow!!! Yeah...easy to sabatoge a county wide election like that. Especially to such a pompous blowhard whose own constituents dont like his personality. Can a democrat win in these gerrymandered districts though ?

And Virginia's 7th congressional district race had NO Democrat on the ballot. It was really a no-brainer for the Democrats; better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

The district is 56% republican and this wacko right-wing loon may just be too out there, over the edge, for the fence sitting country club republicans. It's doable, but it's going to take a lot of work...and money.


DCCC, please pick up the nearest white courtesy telephone.

The a democrats don't have a candidate and the district is only 56% republican?

Running against the number two dude in the house is a pretty dauntless task. Heck, everyone assumed he was going to skate through his primary, and he might have, had there been a token candidate for Democrats to vote for. Contrary to what the spinmeisters are saying, I believe the Democrats torpedoed Cantor.

Sunday IIRC. It's not like they were expecting to actually have a chance against Cantor, who was the presumptive winner of Tuesday's race. Trammel's war chest, at last look, had about $2,000 -- so the Dems weren't even starting the poor guy out with any money at all.

In the past, they have not given one penny to the Dem who was running against Cantor, not even the last challenger, who polled 40% against Cantor before the race. If the Dem leadership had funded Wayne Powell back then, he would probably have won because there are a lot of ppl who did not like Cantor's personality. Now, the teabaggers have jumped in and gotten their guy as a candidate, and he, being new, may stir their gonads to the point that our Dem has LESS chance of winning against him than Powell had against Cantor. Powell was not a nut, and I felt that there would have been many more country club Republicans who would have voted for him if he had had enough money to get the word out.

Why not? The conventional wisdom was incorrect. Dems need to start growing a backbone and act like warriors...like every day is the playoffs. Pelosi should've impeached Bush.

has always been a mystery to me why the leadership didn't.

The DLC hijacked the party a while ago. It's all insider politics with them. They are allies with some who are allied with Cantor. It's the kind of corruption Obama said he wanted to tackle before they "dissuaded" him.

not buying this at all

Where is your evidence?

.... that people are unhappy that "crazy" is not working and want "crazier".

No matter. Cantor sucked and it couldn't have happened to a 'nicer' guy.

Cantor is gone and the Democrats are now in with a chance. GOTV.

Virginia's lack of party registration makes it difficult to pin down whether Democrats crossed over in large numbers, but local level turnout provides some indirect clues on whether this phenomenon was widespread. On two counts, the data cast doubt on whether Democratic cross-over voting caused Cantor's loss.

While Republican primary turnout spiked by 28 percent over 2012, according to the State Board of Elections, Cantor received nearly 8,500 fewer votes this year than he did in the 2012 Republican primary, a drop that was larger than Brat's 7,200-vote margin of victory. Regardless of how many Democrats turned out to oppose Cantor, he still would have prevailed had he maintained the same level of support as in his 2012 landslide.

If Democrats showed up in large numbers to vote against Cantor, turnout should have spiked highest from 2012 in Democratic-leaning areas, with Cantor seeing an especially large drop-off in support. In fact, turnout rose slightly more in counties that voted more heavily for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

Likewise, Cantor saw the biggest drop-off in support in Republican strongholds of Hanover (-44 percentage points) and New Kent (-44 points), counties where Obama drew just over 30 percent of the vote in 2012. In Henrico County where Obama won 55 percent support, Cantor's drop-off was a smaller 32 points. The overall correlation between Obama's county support and Cantor's drop-off was clearly negative at -.60, indicating that the higher Obama's 2012 support, the lower Republican primary turnout rose this year. This is consistent with the idea that Republicans largely drove the rise in turnout.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/11/did-democratic-votes-doom-eric-cantor/

and he stretches some assumptions pretty far to get there.

Either way... we should be able to find out fairly quickly in a week or two. Virginia tracks which ballots you use, so we'll be able to see how many people voted in the republican primary who previously voted in democratic primaries.

What NY Times and others fail to note is that Cantor still won several of the most conservative precincts in the state.

They also have no explanation for why not just Cantors internal polling, but other polling of Republicans likely to vote had Cantor ahead by a minimum of 12% prior to primary day.

For those who are saying this was debunked, it hasn't been. There is no proof either way. It depends on which stats are most compelling to you.