Eric Cantor’s hilariously wrong and bad pollster, which apparently told the campaign that Cantor was ahead by as much as 30 points and had no reason to worry, says ‘Democrats and the liberal media’ are responsible for Cantor’s loss.
The problem is there’s no evidence of that. There is, however, evidence to the contrary.
While Republican primary turnout spiked by 28 percent over 2012, according to the State Board of Elections, Cantor received nearly 8,500 fewer votes this year than he did in the 2012 Republican primary, a drop that was larger than Brat’s 7,200-vote margin of victory. Regardless of how many Democrats turned out to oppose Cantor, he still would have prevailed had he maintained the same level of support as in his 2012 landslide.
David Brat’s highest margins of victory were in hardcore conservative districts and conservative voter turnout was up in counties that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
And speaking of Mitt Romney, Cantor’s grotesquely bad pollster, McLaughlin and Associates, was also a pollster for the Mitt Romney campaign. The same pollster that apparently told the Romney campaign that they were headed for a landslide.
If I made a mistake as big as that I wouldn’t expect to work in the same business again, but some people are fortunate enough to fail upward.
McLaughlin and Associates is also an internal pollster for Mitch McConnell’s campaign.