A lot of people are wondering what it means that Republicans weren’t able to pick-up John Murtha’s old seat in last night’s special election. True, Dem registrations outnumber GOP two to one — but the district went for McCain and is trending conservative.
A lot of people have suggested that top of the ticket interest in the state’s Dem primary increased Democratic turnout and carried Mark Critz to victory over his Republican challenger. Jim Geraghty talked to some number crunchers at the National Republican Congressional Committee about the race. According to the NRCC, here’s what happened:
This NRCC number-cruncher notes that on paper, the Republicans did have high-intensity turnout; they outperformed the highest Republican level of turnout for a primary – although that’s not the highest bar to clear; since Murtha usually appeared untouchable, GOP primaries in this district weren’t usually big affairs, with 20,000 to 26,000 votes. The Republicans brought out 45,000 votes and expected the Democrats to bring out about 60,000 votes. (If Burns took 20 percent of that, and kept most of the Republican vote, he would win handily.)
Instead, 83,000 Democratic voters turned out.
The NRCC is wisely urging caution about the ability to flip coal-country Democrats to the GOP. However, if this race really is an outlier due to unusually high Democratic turnout then 1) Critz’s victory doesn’t necessarily undermine the case for a GOP blowout in the fall and 2) Burns has a decent shot at taking the seat when Critz is forced to defend it again in November.
