Ok, folks...I really hate to rain on our one small spot of joy last night, but...until 45 days ago, I was a resident of Pennsylvania. I now live in North Carolina, so Kay Hagan's defeat is particularly heartbreaking for me.
BUT, I am here to tell you, as a sixteen year resident of Pennsylvania:
THERE WAS NOTHING POLITICAL ABOUT THE DEFEAT OF TOM CORBETT
Read below the orange squiggle for why...
Two words laid Tom Corbett low: Penn State. Nothing else.
I hope, and I believe Tom Wolf will be a good Governor for you, all my friends back in PA. I even voted for Wolf in the Primary. So I am gratified he won.
But it has nothing to do with how good a guy Wolf was that he won...and nothing to do with political policies that Corbett lost. ANYBODY running against Corbett last night would have won....and I DO mean anyone. We all knew Corbett's goose was as cooked as any politician's has ever been....and last night proved this out.
BUT THERE WAS NOTHING POLITICAL ABOUT CORBETT'S DEFEAT
Let us examine some vote counts from last night in Pennsylvania, bearing in mind that this was a Republican tsunami last night....one which Corbett did not survive.
First, it is helpful to understand that PA is very badly gerrymandered. My fellow Pennsylvanians know this, but the rest of the reading audience may not.
In 2012, 52% of the voting public in Pennsylvania voted for a D in their House race, yet Pennsylvania sent 13 R and only 5 D to the 113th Congress. An absolutely disgustingly obvious gerrymander of gargantuan proportions!
In 2014...the Republican tsunami year, as it were...Pennsylvania STILL sent 13 R and 5 D to the 114th Congress. Not surprisingly, not a single seat changed hands in PA. The R Districts stayed R...and the D districts stayed D.
Last night, there were 15 contested House Districts in PA...so these are the only Districts for which I have numbers. Three Districts were uncontested...two of them were R Districts, and one, the 14th, was a D district.
So the numbers I am about to break down for you...are across 15 Districts. They do not include voters from two R Districts....and one D District. (It is important to note, too, that there are TWO R Districts and only ONE D District not in these numbers.)
In House races, Pennsylvania voted as follows:
D - 1.25 million votes
R - 1.5 million votes
Now, because the Governor race was statewide, I have numbers for that statewide, so these numbers include the three uncontested House Districts.
Corbett got 1.55 million votes - slightly more votes than he got from 15 Districts for which I have numbers.
Wolf got 1.9 million votes...FULLY 700,000 MORE VOTES THAN HE GOT FROM D VOTES IN HOUSE DISTRICT RACES.
That is one hell of a lot of ticket-splitting. Even if you consider the three districts for which I don't have numbers....that is at least half a million R's who voted for Wolf...or more accurately, voted against Corbett! That is nearly one third of the entire R electorate! I fully well accept that 200,000 of those Wolf votes could have come from D's in the three uncontested Districts.
Even if you stretch that to 300,000 coming from uncounted D's in the three uncontested Districts, that is still 400,000 R votes for Wolf. And that is still fully one quarter of the R electorate!
So, why is Corbett so unpopular...even in his own Party...even in a Republican tsunami year?
Two words: Penn State.
Those in Pennsylvania are more familiar, but I believe everyone reading here has at least HEARD about the scandal that laid JoePa low. Jerry Sandusky is deservedly in jail now for what happened, but Penn State got massive sanctions placed against them by the NCAA. And Penn State fans are not happy about it.
So what does this have to do with Corbett, you may ask...if you aren't from Pennsylvania.
When it became known what was going on at Penn State, with Jerry Sandusky...Corbett was Pennsylvania's Attorney General.
Penn State fans had a question for Corbett, which he was not able to satisfactorily answer....and when you see how that question was framed, you will see why Corbett had no good answer...there simply WASN'T one!
The question posed to Corbett was this:
How much did you know, and when did you know it?
This became a two-pronged question:
A - If you knew, why did you not act sooner....the damage could have been contained.
B - If you did not know...WHY did you not know?
And this explains half a million R House voters also voting for Tom Wolf.
I would go to the betting window with every last dollar I have, and bet it on the notion that those half-million R votes that Wolf got....were almost entirely (more than 95%) from pissed off Penn State fans, who blame Corbett for the fact that their beloved Nittany Lions got sanctioned....and that their beloved JoePa was laid low.
This is something even the pundits from CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News did not pick up on.
What knocks me out is that you see such an obvious example of major ticket-splitting....nearly a third - and at LEAST one quarter of the R electorate....and nobody at any of the major networks picked up on it, or even began to examine why it had happened!
Especially given that this ticket-splitting worked against a Republican....in a Republican tsunami year. I am gobsmacked that none of the major political pundits spared even two seconds to analyze such an extreme example of ticket-splitting!