The big story of the night wasn't Northam winning, as the polls had him as a 3-4 point favorite heading in. It was taking 15-19 seats in the House where the Pubs have had control by a 2-1 majority for a while. That is unbelievable and unprecedented. The energy and GOTV was clearly on the Dem side here in VA, like it was for Trump in the midwest and PA last year. (Also kinda says just how bad a candidate Hillary was.) Pubs were losing in places like Loudoun, Prince William, Chesterfield, VA Beach & Chesapeake. What these jurisdictions have in common is they are somewhat conservative, very white and usually Pub leaning suburbs, but they're not crazy right wing like the Shenandoah Valley and most of the rural counties are. (Corey Stewart is from Prince William, fwiw.) These are mostly well educated folks who are mostly doing fine economically (VA is 1 of the richer states in the country). I went into last night believing like 538 did that VA wasn't necessarily a referendum on Trump or an omen for next year's midterms. I'm rethinking that this a.m. and believe it was both.
As for Northam, I was a bit worried that left wing Dems weren't going to show up en masse for Northam after he was disavowed and called a racist by Howard Dean's organization (that Howard denounced), and he wasn't endorsed by Bernie (Perriello did endorse him). Didn't happen, and in fact Northam outperformed both Fairfax and Herring by 3-4 points. Also probably means there was a bit of Pub crossover for him that wasn't there for Fairfax and Herring, which makes sense given that he is viewed as a bit more conservative than them.
The other big takeaway from the evening is that the most important issue to voters is health insurance. I thought last years large increases in premiums were 1 of the under reported reasons why Hillary didn't perform well in states like AZ where she allegedly had a shot. Pubs have been selling that the ACA is awful for the last 7 years (and I do recognize that the ACA is way far from perfect), and that they had the solution. This year made it quite evident that they had no solution, and voters in a state, er commonwealth, like VA are angry about it. And we've just been finding out how yuge our premium increases are. Might not make as big a difference in AL or MS, but it does here. I see this as the biggest issue heading into the midterms. And if Pubs are going to read this takeaway correctly, they need to get on board with Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander and try to do a comprehensive fix of the ACA. That would be something they could tout and save themselves next year, but I don't think that's the takeaway they'll have.
