As always, crossposted at BlueNC and DailyKos.
One of the most commonly asked questions about Brad Miller running for Senate against Elizabeth Dole is from people who dont think Brad Miller can win statewide.
How can I answer this question?
I could wax poetic about Brad’s abilities to appeal to voters statewide. Or I could tell you things about him that make me think that he can talk to rural voters and voters in a big city.
And then you could give me all the reasons you disagree. But where would that leave us?
The only way I can think of objectively answering this is to offer an analysis of Brad’s past election results. For reference I have included a map of Brad’s district. This district was drawn for a Democrat to win, but it is only slightly Democratic. Cook has its PVI as D+2.
As you can see, NC-13 contains all of Caswell and Person counties. It also encompasses large portions of Granville and Rockingham counties. All 4 of these counties are rather rural, and Republican. Although the most Republican areas of the county are excluded from NC-13, they do not add up to many people. These 4 counties are especially important because their rural nature means they are very similar to other areas throughout the state that Brad must be competitive in to beat Dole.
To the numbers.
For this analysis, I looked at Brad’s results in these 4 counties in 2002 compared to the numbers from the Bowles v Dole race in 2002, and Brad’s results in 2004 compared to both Bowles and Kerry/Edwards.
2002
Granville County
Brad Miller 4,236
Carolyn Grant 3,759
Erskine Bowles 6,146
Elizabeth Dole 5,511
Person County
Brad Miller 5,054
Carolyn Grant 4,589
Erskine Bowles 4,444
Elizabeth Dole 5,873
Caswell County
Brad Miller 4,113
Carolyn Grant 2,320
Erskine Bowles 3,615
Elizabeth Dole 3,049
Rockingham County
Brad Miller 12,005
Carolyn Grant 9,965
Erskine Bowles 12,062
Elizabeth Dole 13,899
2004
Granville County
Brad Miller 7,184
Virginia Johnson 5,955
Erskine Bowles 9,806
Richard Burr 8,447
George Bush 9,491
John Kerry 9,057
Person County
Brad Miller 8,399
Virginia Johnson 6,291
Erskine Bowles 6,701
Richard Burr 8,212
George Bush 8,973
John Kerry 6,198
Caswell County
Brad Miller 5,737
Virginia Johnson 3,374
Erskine Bowles 4,737
Richard Burr 4,559
George Bush 4,868
John Kerry 4,539
Rockingham County
Brad Miller 16,580
Virginia Johnson 15,525
Erskine Bowles 15,435
Richard Burr 21,224
George Bush 22,840
John Kerry 14,430
So, what does that all mean?
Personally, I think the numbers speak for themselves. In these 4 counties, the combined vote totals for 2002 show Brad winning by about 4800 votes. Dole won those same counties by a little over 2000 votes. In 2004, Brad won these 4 counties by 6800 votes. Bowles lost them by 5800 and Kerry lost by almost 12,000 votes.
These are not tiny little swings. Brad won his race by about the same percentage as Dole beat Bowles. Yet, in these specific rural areas, he did even better Dole did. Obviously the differences between all of these races is rather large. Bowles v Dole garnered national attention, and was incredibly expensive. By comparison, Brad spent under a million dollars in 2002 with his opponent spending about 400,000 dollars.
These details about the nature of these races can explain a lot of this. However, to me these results show that Brad can win over rural voters. In fact, I wont just say that Sherrod Brown proved you can win a swing state while being proud about your progressive values. I will say that Brad himself has already proved that a progressive who doesnt hide from his record can win in rural North Carolina.
Now, I understand that many will not be convinced by these results. Some will say that Brad cant win votes in rural areas until November 4th. However, I hope that those that are unsure will find my collection of data convincing. If you do, please think about sending 5 dollars to the draft page on ActBlue.
What do we specifically know about the candidates he ran against in 2002 and 2004, I’m having some trouble finding the information.
I agree the numbers you gave me are compelling, but the agrument for Brad Miller doesn’t work if his opponents were relatively weak (my understanding of North Carolina politics is that it, much like a lot of southern states, has a wide and deep field of local and state level Democrats, while the Republicans tend to win national elections, while not having a particularly strong local base).
I’m from New Mexico’s 1st district, and, as most of you are aware, our representative is Heather “the Feather” Wilson (R).
Now, the first district has a PVI of D+2, yet here are the results from 2002 by county: (by the way, Bernalillo County includes Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, I can’t speak for Rio Rancho, but Albuquerque tends to swing to the Democrats, not by a huge number, mind you, but Nob Hill and the University of New Mexico campuses are the Democrats stronghold in the city).
Bernalillo
Wilson Romero
79,050 55% 65,887 45%
Sandoval
Romero Wilson
1,903 54% 1,635 46%
Santa Fe
Wilson Romero
1,056 75% 351 25%
Torrance
Wilson Romero
2,686 64% 1,505 36%
Valencia
Wilson Romero
2,902 58% 2,063 42%
Here’s 2004:
Bernalillo County
Wilson
131,835 54%
Romero
113,383 46%
Sandoval County
Wilson
4,513 53%
Romero
4,018 47%
Santa Fe County
Wilson
1,720 74%
Romero
620 26%
Torrance County
Wilson
4,267 66%
Romero
2,152 34%
Valencia County
Wilson
5,037 61%
Romero
3,166 39%
Wilson won even the Democratic districts, now let’s assume the scandal which is affecting Domenici is having absolutely no impact on Wilson (I know that’s not really the case, but please bear with me). The case could be made that she could easily win Domenici’s senate seat even running against Tom Udall, who represents a VERY Democratic district, so let’s compare their house elections (for the sake of giving a conservative estimate, let’s use the 2004 numbers).
Udall 69% (175,269)
Tucker 31% (79,935)
Wilson 54% (147,372)
Romero 46% (123,339)
And, because this is a statewide election, we’ll include the results from the 2nd District (represented by Pearce (R))
Pearce 60%(130,498)
King 40% (86,292)
We’ll just assume that Udall and Wilson would both keep approximately their same level of support (considering they both ran against token opposition in this race, we can assume they’ll both vote the same way in a senate race between the two). Just matching up only their districts, Udall not only beats out Wilson, he decimates her:
Udall (adding all the Democratic voters) 298,608 (57%)
Wilson (adding all the Republican voters) 227,307 (43%)
Now, add in all the numbers from Pearce’s district:
Udall (with votes from 2nd District) 384,900 (52%)
Wilson (with votes from 2nd District) 357,805 (48%)
Even based on 2004 numbers, Udall still beats out Wilson by a 4% margin (these numbers would be skewed even more to Udall’s favor if you considered the 2006 numbers).
My point is, Brad Miller is the same type of candidate as Heather Wilson, one who, despite being in a swing district, receiving only token opposition (I’m not including 2006 in that estimation, by the way). The big problem I’m having with buying into Brad Miller’s electability is, I don’t know how well he’ll handle a genuinely competitive race, or if he’ll make any stumbles along the lines of Patricia Madrid against Heather Wilson (I’m of the opinion that if Madrid hadn’t screwed up the way she did with that debate, she would have beaten Wilson). I’m not questioning his ability to beat Elizabeth Dole, who is an inept campaigner, I’d just rather have someone who starts off in a stronger position, someone who starts off with the capability to beat Dole by a 54-46 margin, not a 51-49 one.