Thom Tillis (R-NC) won one of the closest U.S. Senate races in 2014. Where did it rank among the most discussed races here at Daily Kos?
Regular readers of Daily Kos and Daily Kos Elections know that, during the 2014 campaign cycle, we instituted a lot of new election-based features. One of them was the incorporation of monthly "power rankings" for the U.S. Senate and the gubernatorial battles.
These power rankings were not, as was often seen elsewhere, a rank-order list of races most likely to flip parties (those, quite frankly, seemed obvious from very early in the cycle). Nor were they a subjective list of favored races among our staff for this reason or another. Rather, it was an attempt to use one subjective measurement (our own Daily Kos Elections race ratings) and two objective criteria (number of times said race was polled, as well as the number of times it appeared in our Daily Digests), to create a top ten list of the races that dominated America's political conversation.
To close the year, we will look back at a "power ranking" of a different sort. We will look at the ten races that were most dominant in the conversation right here at Daily Kos. The metric here was very simple: a search of the tags employed on any piece, front-paged or otherwise, here at Daily Kos and Daily Kos Elections between January 1 and December 28 (hey—I had to pick a consistent time to close the books).
In a sign of how engaged this community was about the 2014 midterms, a race had to be mentioned in 171 separate diaries/essays to even crack the top ten. Which race was the most "talked about" U.S. Senate race on Daily Kos? Did your state's Senate race make the cut? Head past the jump to find out.
Before we actually get to the ten U.S. Senate races that were the most discussed on Daily Kos, let's look, from worst to first ... er ... eleventh, at where the balance of the slate wound up, in terms of tags:
36. Oklahoma "A" (Inhofe)—0++
35. South Carolina "B" (Scott)—1++
34. Alabama (Sessions)—1
t31. Idaho (Risch); Rhode Island (Reed); Wyoming (Enzi)—4
30. Delaware (Coons)—5
29. Massachusetts (Markey)—12
28. New Jersey (Booker)—16
27. Tennessee (Alexander)—19
t25. Illinois (Durbin); New Mexico (T. Udall)—23
24. South Carolina "A" (Graham)—24++
23. Texas (Cornyn)—32
22. Oklahoma "B" (OPEN—Coburn)—39++
21. Nebraska (OPEN—Johanns)—45
20. West Virginia (OPEN—Rockefeller)—59
19. Virginia (Warner)—73
18. Minnesota (Franken)—76
17. Oregon (Merkley)—91
16. Hawaii (Schatz)—100
15. South Dakota (OPEN—Johnson)—111
14. Mississippi (Cochran)—114
13. Montana (OPEN—Walsh)—116
12. Maine (Collins)—120
11. Kansas (Roberts)—125
(++)—Two races in each state. Some tagged diaries merely as "OK-Sen" (47 instances) or "SC-Sen" (34 instances), but in neither case did it impact a race's placement in the top ten.
If there is a genuine surprise here, it is that the closest U.S. Senate race in the nation—the showdown between incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and challenger Ed Gillespie in Virginia (final margin: less than
one percentage point)—finished in the bottom half of the Senate races. Close followers of the election cycle, however, understand why that is the case. Virginia, perhaps more than any other race besides Arkansas, saw polling that was off the fairway by quite a few points. Ergo, what everyone assumed was a race that Senator Warner would win by a solid, if not comfortable, margin in the high single digits wound up being a coin flip.
Those wondering how Mississippi wound up #14 clearly forgot how purely awesome that Republican primary was. In the final analysis, the enmity subsided, and longtime incumbent Republican Thad Cochran defeated Democrat Travis Childers easily (the final margin was 22 points—60 percent to 38 percent).
But, hell, it was fun while it lasted.
Now, with the also-rans dispatched, let's look at the top ten most covered U.S. Senate races on Daily Kos over the past 12 months.
10. LOUISIANA (incumbent: Mary Landrieu—D): 171 stories
The cycle's "longest" campaign was also one of the most frequently discussed campaigns of 2014. The only U.S. Senate campaign to continue onward into December, veteran Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's defeat at the hands of Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy was marginally closer than some predicted, but when polls show you trailing by upwards of 20 points, "closer" is a relative term (Landrieu lost 56-44). The state was plastered with ads (of dubious value, as Kos pointed out earlier this month), but the reddening terrain of the state coupled with the headwinds nationally made Landrieu a fairly dim prospect for re-election.
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9. MICHIGAN (Open Seat: Carl Levin—D): 195 stories
Ah, memories. There was a time when Republicans thought their path to 50 U.S. Senate seats ran through Michigan, where veteran Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land was being hyped as a legitimate challenger to Democratic Congressman Gary Peters. But Land's campaign failed to launch, and Peters went on to a decisive November victory, one of the relatively few bright spots for Senate Democrats in the cycle. As for Land ... well ... she always can hope for an endorsement deal with Starbucks or the Coffee Bean.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Land's end: National GOP pulls out of Michigan Senate race by Jed Lewison (10/7/14)
8. NEW HAMPSHIRE (Jeanne Shaheen—D): 223 stories
If nothing else, New Hampshire gave us, in my humble opinion, the single funniest tweet of 2014, courtesy of Princeton Election Consortium head honcho Sam Wang after a particularly pessimistic (for Democrats) poll by the University of New Hampshire. For those who don't remember, Wang was so confident that the poll did not spell doom for Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (or, conversely, spell victory for GOP challenger Scott Brown) that he made an...ahem...interesting vow:
People. Please. If Jeanne Shaheen (D) loses to Scott Brown (R) in NH-Sen, I promise to eat a bug.
— @SamWangPhD
An ever-tightening (and well-funded) contest definitely elevated the odds of insect consumption for Dr. Wang, but fortunately for him (and his gastrointestinal tract, presumably), the Democratic incumbent pulled it out in the end by around three points.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Scott Brown fumbles New Hampshire geography and economy in debate by Laura Clawson (10/31/14)
6 (tie). COLORADO (Mark Udall—D): 229 stories
For Democrats, there were probably few races more painful than the defeat of veteran U.S. Senator Mark Udall at the hands of conservative GOP Rep. Cory Gardner. Democrats hoped throughout that the state's introduction of 100 percent vote-by-mail balloting would soften the impact of a national "enthusiasm gap," and pull Udall across the line. In the final analysis, it nearly did: the final margin of 1.9 percentage points was a bit closer than most analysts predicted. Alas, it was not enough.
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6 (tie). ARKANSAS (Mark Pryor—D): 229 stories
Oof. There was some hope, even late, that Pryor might defy what seemed like an inexorable march to the right by Arkansas voters and pull off an improbable re-election upset. After all, this was a recurrent theme of 2014: Democrats having to defend Senate seats in states where they had, more often than not, tanked in presidential elections as of late. Pryor, from a storied in-state political family, seemed uniquely suited for survival. In the end, though, it was one of the most lopsided routs of an incumbent U.S. Senator in recent memory, an echo of a similar drubbing of an Arkansas Democrat just six years earlier. Republican Rep. Tom Cotton wound up with a 57-39 landslide win over Pryor.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Rep. Tom Cotton uses Hobby Lobby ruling to attack Mark Pryor's faith by Hunter (7/2/14)
5. ALASKA (Mark Begich—D): 237 stories
Like Pryor, there was a great deal of hope among Democrats that this race featuring a Democratic incumbent defending red-leaning turf could turn at the end. Unlike Pryor, Democratic first-term Sen. Mark Begich damned near pulled it out, falling to state attorney general Dan Sullivan by a 48-46 margin. A late-breaking scandal helped sink the state's Republican governor, but Sullivan managed to ride the tailwind nationally to a narrow win. Begich, for his part, emerged as a legitimate candidate for either the U.S. Senate or U.S. House in 2016, which speaks both to his unique strengths in the state and the fact the Democrats have, as a practical matter, zero bench in the state.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Mark Begich is not running like a 'scared' red state Democrat by Joan McCarter (4/28/14)
4. NORTH CAROLINA (Kay Hagan—D): 273 stories
If there was an "upset" defeat for the Democrats on election night, it was in the Tar Heel State, where Democratic first-term Sen. Kay Hagan had led state House Speaker Thom Tillis in the vast majority of pre-election polling. On election night, Tillis pulled ahead midway through the evening, and pulled away to a narrow win of just under two percentage points. In that sense, the U.S. Senate results somewhat mirrored the presidential election results in 2012, when Mitt Romney edged Barack Obama by a slightly wider (2.04 percent) margin.
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3. IOWA (Open Seat: Tom Harkin—D): 277 stories
If the defeat of Kay Hagan was an "upset" defeat on election night, the outcome in Iowa's open seat battle to replace Democratic Senate institution Tom Harkin was only an upset in the sense that it seemed unthinkable that the GOP would claim the seat so easily. But such was the 2014 cycle in Iowa, where Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley struggled for traction and Republican state legislator Joni Ernst had an ever-present "star" status bestowed upon her (propelled in part by ads like this one) from day one. In the end, no one was surprised by Ernst's win, even if some (myself included) were surprised by the outsized 52-44 margin.
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2. GEORGIA (Open Seat: Saxby Chambliss—R): 294 stories
Georgia wound up being a gentle taunt to the Democrats in 2014: an open seat that felt like it had a chance to be a surprise Democratic pickup opportunity, but never really materialized on election night. Republican businessman David Perdue scored a 53-45 win over Democrat Michelle Nunn, which is almost precisely where the 2012 presidential election landed. As Georgia shifts demographically, Democrats salivate at the chance of being competitive. However, even as the state's nonwhite population has grown, the state's white population has grown more Republican, meaning that the GOP stranglehold on the Peach State continued unabated for another cycle.
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1. KENTUCKY (Mitch McConnell—R): 334 stories
On first blush, it might seem surprising that this race, which wound up being a 56-41 victory for the incumbent, was the most tagged race in stories posted on Daily Kos this election year. However, on further review, it might seem more understandable. Consider two details—first of all, for most of the year, polling showed this to be a very winnable race in a red seat, and the seat of the leader of the Senate GOP, to boot. Second, as a more practical matter, McConnell made news both as a candidate and as majority leader, and the fact is that a search of articles by tags would not discriminate between the two. Therefore, Kentucky graces the top spot, even if only the most true-believing, blue-tinted Democratic supporter still thought McConnell was vulnerable by November.
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