9 Key Takeaways From Last Night’s GOP Triumph

1. “War on Women” is now a loser

With a lot of help from the media, in 2012 Democrats managed to hang Todd Akin, along with Rush Limbaugh’s comments about birth control activist Sandra Fluke, around the neck of every Republican in the country. In 2013, Democrats managed to get a party hack narrowly over the finish line in the Virginia governor’s race by hammering his socially conservative opponent with war on women messaging. The race turned out to be very close, and Terry McAuliffe’s huge margin with single women was credited with the victory.

Flash forward to last night. Democratic Senator Mark Udall lost to Republican Cory Gardner in Colorado, even though Gardner was pilloried over birth control and abortion. Gardner smartly negated the attacks by taking Louisana Governor Bobby Jindal’s suggestion that the GOP come out in favor of over-the-counter birth control. As a result, Planned Parenthood actually came out against over-the-counter birth control because expanding access to birth control would make it harder to subsidize or something. (More likely it’s because Planned Parenthood would lose money if birth control was easier to get.)

By the end of the campaign, Udall was a national joke. He was being openly derided as “Mark Uterus,” and the Denver Post shocked everyone by endorsing Gardner and calling Udall’s “obnoxious one-issue campaign … an insult to those he seeks to convince.” Udall still didn’t back down, however. One liberal group started running unintentionally comical ads in Colorado claiming Cory Gardner was going to ban condoms. Could this get worse? Yes. The day before the election, Udall was heckled in the middle of a speech by one of Colorado’s biggest Democratic donors, who later told a Guardian reporter “f–king abortion is all he talks about. He should not talk about it any more whatsoever. There are so many other issues.”

It was less remarked on than Gardner’s message, but North Carolina’s Thom Tillis also came out in favor of OTC birth control. This no doubt helped him pull off his stunning upset over incumbent Senator Kay Hagan.

Meanwhile in Texas, Wendy Davis, who was championed by the media and rose to national prominence for unsuccessfully opposing the state’s ban on late-term abortions with a dramatic statehouse filibuster, lost badly. How’s this for a shellacking? As of last night, the supposed women’s issue candidate was losing women voters by 9 points, and losing white women by 35 percent.

Oh, and Sandra Fluke just happened to be running for the California legislature last night. She lost by a a nearly two to one margin. She lost to a fellow Democrat, but her national profile as the face of birth control didn’t appear to do her any favors.

2. From minority party toward party of minorities

There will be a lot of talk about the number of high profile female GOP women entering Congress, and rightly so. However, the GOP moved in a positive direction with minority candidates as well. The race wasn’t close, so no one much cared, but Tim Scott became the first African-American elected to the Senate from the south since the Reconstruction. Mia Love was elected in Utah – she’s the first black female Republican in Congress.

The GOP also made big inroads in a key voting block. In 2012, Obama won 73 percent of the Asian vote. Last night, the GOP managed to narrowly win Asian voters 50-49.

And even the stuffy white male candidates showed that they could do minority outreach well. If you want to know how the GOP’s Larry Hogan won a stunning 9 point upset in the Maryland governor’s race, start with this great ad:

3. Chris Christie and Scott Walker are winners

Chris Christie is currently head of the Republican Governors Association, and no one really expected it to be a good night for Republican governors. After last night, Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts all have Republican governors. Embattled GOP governors in Kansas, Florida, and Wisconsin all survived, much to the shock of observers. Donors like winners, and the RGA’s success is already reigniting talk of Christie as a presidential candidate 2016:

However, it’s also worth noting that Scott Walker won more comfortably last night than many expected. Counting his recall, he’s now been elected in three bitterly fought contests in the purplest of states, which also positions him very well to run in 2016. In politics, frequently the biggest guarantor of future success is past success at winning actual elections. (For a good example of why this might be worth weighting over national polls and intangible measures of electability, look up Romney, Mitt.)

Interestingly, there was a bit of tension between Walker and Christie in recent weeks. There were questions about whether or not the RGA, under Christie’s direction, was sufficiently supportive of Walker. (See THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John McCormack and Stephen Hayes for more on this.) Given that the Christie and Walker are both frontrunners for 2016, a Walker loss would have redounded to Christie’s benefit.

However, Walker won by a more comfortable margin than most of the polls suggested, so maybe the RGA had good reason to know that Walker didn’t need more help. Still, keep an eye on any tensions between Christie and Walker as the presidential race shapes up.

4. The Clintons are losers

Bill Clinton campaigned heavily back in his home state of Arkansas for Senator Mark Pryor. Congressman Tom Cotton, who trailed in the polls for much of the race, won easily. As for Hillary, well this pretty much says it all:

The Hillary-is-inevitable meme took a big hit last night.

5. Obamacare is a loser

At the Washington Examiner, Phil Klein points out that of the 60 Senators who passed Obamacare in December of 2009, 28 of them will no longer be in the Senate after last night’s results. Not all of that turnover is due to electoral losses, but… yowza. That is one heck of an albatross. Democrats keep cherry picking polling data arguing that Americans are growing to like the law and don’t want it repealed. But Republicans just keep promising to repeal Obamacare, and with the  exception of Obama’s reelection, it’s got a terrific track record as a winning issue. In 2016, Republicans should nominate someone who, unlike Romney, can run hard against the law.

6. Global warming is a loser

Mitch McConnell exceeded expectations last night, in large part because the Kentucky’s coal country came out much stronger for him than they did in 2008. Coal country voters almost certainly played a role in the shockingly close Senate election in Virginia, which may be headed for a recount, and West Virginia where Republicans captured a Senate seat and defeated Rep. Nick Rahall, first elected in 1976. It’s pretty hard to argue that Obama administration’s global warming agenda and open admission that they’re fighting a “war on coal” isn’t hurting them at the ballot box.

Democrats decided this cycle they would allow themselves to be beholden to billionaire campaign funder Tom Steyer, who has made climate issues his number one priority. As a recent article in Slate noted, “Tom Steyer spent $57 million to get voters to care about climate change. It didn’t work.”

7. Obama’s winning coalition is not a winning Democratic coalition

In the Washington Post morning, White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer framed the central challenge of the mid-terms this way: “There’s basically two Americas — there’s midterm America and there’s presidential-year America,” he said. “They’re almost apples and oranges. The question was, could Obama voters become Democratic voters?” The answer to that question appears to be a resounding “no.”

Just a few years ago, Democrats were embracing a lot of specious “demography is destiny” arguments and predicting they would rule for decades. But Democratic pollsters are blaming last night’s debacle on the party’s failure to craft persuasive messages while being overreliant on get out the vote efforts among the most loyal constituencies. While Obama was able to get elected twice by pulling together a coalition of urbanites, wealthy liberals, and minorities, it’s clear that the abandonment of issues that appeal to the white working class and historic Democratic constituencies in middle America is hurting Democrats. (The aforementioned overemphasis on global warming being a prime example.) He took office with Democrats comfortably in control of both chambers, and in short order, 2010 became the worst loss of House seats for either party since the end of World War II. And after last night, you have to go back a decade* to find a time when the GOP controlled this many Senate seats. At the state level, the GOP is dominating as well. As of last night, Democrats haven’t been as poorly represented in state legislatures since the 1920s.

The GOP should not get cocky and presume their down ticket success in the Obama era portends a lasting realignment. However, this certainly does benefit the GOP in the long-term. The candidate bench is deep, compared to Democrats. And lots of local GOP officials mean there’s a real chance to persuade more voters to join Republican party with grassroots contact. That is, provided the GOP doesn’t blow their opportunity here. They’ve been known to do that.

8. The GOP needs to learn to tell blue from purple

Say it with me: Oregon is not going elect a Republican statewide. It just won’t. Oregon did have a Republican Senator 10 years ago, but the rapid population influxes, particularly in Portland, really have changed things. Over half the state’s population is in the Portland metro area, which is politically to the left of Pol Pot. The city’s last mayor survived multiple recall attempts after it came out he was likely having a sexual relationship with a underage teenager. The state’s governor, John Kitzhaber, just cakewalked to a fourth term, despite the fact that his signature achievement, the Oregon Health Plan, has been arguably the most spectacular state-level public policy trainwreck in the country, one that’s been ongoing for decades. Did I mention that right before the election, it came out that Kitzhaber’s girlfriend/first lady/what have you married an illegal immigrant to give him citizenship in exchange for $5,000? What were Oregon voters going to do? Vote for a Republican?

And yet, the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent a lot of money on Monica Webhy’s campaign. Webhy turned out to be a bad candidate who wasn’t vetted well, but honestly even good GOP candidates don’t stand a chance in the state. Yale grad and former Trailblazer Chris Dudley’s lost the governor’s race in 2010.

Meanwhile, the GOP is on the cusp of losing two very close races in Virginia in two years. In last year’s governor’s race, there was a lot of grumbling about more resources and more effort could have won the election for Cuccinelli. They’re still counting votes in Virginia and if Gillespie loses by a razor thin margin, hoo boy. Hindsight may be 20/20, but the NRSC was genuinely and wrongly enthusiastic about Webhy. Saying the NRSC should have spent less on the senate race in Oregon and more in Virginia seems pretty obvious.

9. The polls were, in fact, skewed

Don’t take my word for it:

Let’s note a few examples, shall we? Mitch McConnell was up 7 in the Real Clear Polling average. He won by 15. Tom Cotton was up 7 in the Real Clear Polling average. He won by 17. Mark Warner was up almost 10 points in the Real Clear Polling average. He’s now clinging to a lead of less than a percentage point. In Georgia, David Perdue was 3 up in the Real Clear Polling average. He won by 8.

The governor’s races were also a big polling failure. Scott Walker was up two in the Real Clear Polling average, he won by about six. In Illinois, Pat Quinn was up by a little less than a percentage point in the Real Clear Polling average. He lost by nearly five. In Kansas, Sam Brownback was losing by 2. He won by just under 4 points.

For a long time now, I’ve heard Republican operatives grumble about some partisan pollsters were putting their thumb on the scale by churning out polls that show good news for Democrats. Over time, the perception a candidate is winning can bleed over into reality, or at the very least, discourage supporters of their opponent. Then to salvage their reputation, pollsters they tighten up the polls the in the final week or two to something resembling a more accurate picture of the race.

I don’t know how much stock to put into this, as we saw in 2012, partisans who claimed the polls are skewed ended up with egg on their faces. This time around, however, clearly the GOP vote was massively and systematically underestimated.

*Corrected time frame from earlier version