As if we need any more evidence that Creigh Deeds lost on Tuesday largely because he failed to appeal to "base" voters, a new poll provides it. Keep in mind that Creigh Deeds received 1.2 million fewer votes than Barack Obama did last year, while Bob McDonnell received just 0.5 million fewer votes than John McCain. That's a gap of 700,000 voters, more than twice Bob McDonnell's margin of victory. Why did all these people stay home? Aside from the Deeds campaign being a bunch of utterly incompetent morons (see Petts, David), it's very simple.*"64% of Democratic Obama voters and 58% of Independent Obama voters said Deeds was 'not progressive enough' compared to only 8% of Democrats and 16% of Independent Obama voters who said he was 'too far to the left.'" But, but, but...Deeds' pollster David Petts said it was all about running away from Obama and national Democratic policies. Duhhhhhhhhh.
*"88% of Democratic Obama voters and 80% of Independent Obama voters favor a public health insurance option to compete with private insurance plans. 93% of those polled said health care is 'very' or 'somewhat' important when they vote." So what did Deeds do? That's right, he said he'd strongly consider "opting out" of the public health insurance option, supported by 80% of Obama voters. Brilliant!
*Oh yeah, and the poll also showed that Deeds' comments on the public option made 41% of Obama voters "less excited" to vote for him, with only 6% (bizarrely) becoming "more excited."
Any further questions on why we got our butts kicked in this election?
