Over at
Chris Cillizza's "The Fix" blog, they've been polling on the "best" and "worst" campaigns of 2009. Here are the results: Bob McDonnell by a landslide for "best campaign of 2009" and Creigh Deeds in a landslide for "worst campaign of 2009" (see graphs; click to "embiggen"). No argument here on either count, hence the 17-point annihilation of Deeds. My guess is that if Tim Kaine had been able to run for reelection, he might not have beaten Bob McDonnell (assuming McDonnell decided to run anyway, which I tend to doubt), but it would have been a close race (2-4 points?). If that had happened, it's highly likely that we'd still have Margi Vanderhye, Paul Nichols, Bobby Mathieson, Chuck Caputo, and Shannon Valentine in the House of Delegates. Argh.
