Robert Sarvis — strongest third-party candidate performance in the South in 40 years.
Rick Sincere makes the case on Bearing Drift that Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate for Virginia governor, cost Democrat Terry McAuliffe more votes than he cost Republican Ken Cuccinelli — contrary to the conventional wisdom and, indeed, contrary to the expectation of the Cuccinelli campaign itself. CNN exit polls suggest that had there been a two-man race, Sarvis voters would have split 5 to 2 in McAuliffe’s favor.
Had Cuccinelli provided an opportunity for Sarvis to participate in the gubernatorial debates, Sincere argues, the Libertarian would have gotten more visibility for his liberal positions on gay marriage and marijuana legalization. More votes for Sarvis would have meant fewer for McAuliffe.
CNN exit polls are a gold mine for anyone wanting to plumb the economic, racial and cultural aspects of the race. I find it fascinating that Sarvis, though half Chinese in ethnicity and married to a black woman, drew an overwhelming majority of his votes from whites — 8% of whites voted for him but only 1% African-Americans did. (The sample size of Latinos and Asians was too negligible to be meaningful.) Sarvis, the most youthful of the candidates, won 15% of the 18- to 29-year-old vote, much more than his 7% average across all age groups.
Clearly, there is a strong libertarian streak among Virginia’s young white population. Priorities and voting patterns will change, no doubt, as Millennials age, get married and have children. Unmarried voters, women especially, favored McAuliffe by overwhelming margins, while married men and women broke for Cuccinelli over McAuliffe. Apparently, marriage and child-rearing have a way of changing peoples’ priorities, especially those of women, whose swing to the conservative candidate was even more pronounced than that of men.
But here’s a curiosity: The 18- to 24-year-old age cohort favored the conservative Cuccinelli over the liberal McAuliffe by a 45% to a 39% margin. McAuliffe’s performance improved dramatically among voters in their late 20s and peaked among voters in their 30s. What does this mean? Is it a statistical artifact of a small sample size, or does it suggest that the emerging cohort of young Millennial voters will be more conservative than their older siblings?
Update: Here is Dave Jacobs’ take on the exit polls in the Daily Beast. Sarvis’ performance, he writes, was the strongest for a third-party candidate in the South for 40 years.
— JAB
