And the Virginia state Senate race that had the DLCC so worried is in and the results are … blowout. Democrat Boysko wins by nearly 40 points. As I noted before, this seat has a history of recent Democratic victories, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, except perhaps the magnitude. The total votes cast was just over 21,000, which appears to be a trifle on the low side insofar as turnout goes, but not terribly so.
So I think we can classify the DLCC as willing to harvest dollars through mild misrepresentations and emotional manipulation, although admittedly I couldn’t find any polls for this race, so a DLCC claim that they just didn’t know for sure is somewhat believable. Something to keep in mind, especially as their report of their victory also bridges on to the next special election, which they have left unspecified except that it’s located right here in Minnesota, and involves a Republican-held seat. A little research shows this will be for MN state Senate District 11, and has been held by the Republicans by comfortable margins over the last two elections; Ballotpedia has no data before then. The special election is Feb 5, 2019, and should be more interesting than the Virginia special election.
Perhaps most interesting is the magnitude of the victory of in Virginia, which is quite a bit larger than in previous elections for this seat. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the Democrats are still excited, especially with the government shutdown and resultant tug of war between Trump and the Democrats over the Trump Boondoggle. Will this continue? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
