One of the possible surprises of the 2010 campaign is the US Senate race in West Virginia.
When Robert Byrd died and the special election was set most expected Governor Manchin to win the race with ease over perennial candidate John Raese. But polls have shown the race quite close, with Manchin trailing in some polls.
Although there are obviously a lot of factors at play, I am wondering if Manchin is experiencing what I like to call the Weld Syndrome.
In 1996 Massachusetts Governor William Weld ran against Senator John Kerry. At the time most predicted a very close race and many thought Kerry to be the underdog. This may seem odd until you consider that in his two previous Senate races Kerry had never gone over 57% of the vote while Weld had received 71% in his 1994 rel-election race, even winning heavily Democratic Boston.
That meant that Weld only needed to swing 7% of the people who voted Kerry in 1990 while Kerry had to swing 21% of those who voted Weld in 1994.
But Kerry ended up winning by a fairly comfortable margin over Weld (about 6 points).
So what happened ?
Democratic guru Bob Shrum offered his view, which I think is pretty valid.
Assuming that the 43% who voted against Kerry in 1990 would vote Weld and the 29% who voted against Weld in 1994 would vote Kerry (perhaps in both cases a stretch but fair for analysis purposes) then you had 28% of the electorate who voted for, and presumably liked, both.
Shrum theorizes that many of those voters decided to support *both* candidates by voting Kerry for Senate, which was a de facto vote for Weld to continue as Governor. This was in part what allowed Kerry to win.
Of course the basically Democratic nature of the state and the Clinton coattails (he won with 61.5%) helped, but many may have been converted to Kerry with the idea of keeping both guys in office.
I think we may have a variation in West Virginia. Manchin is popular (he won 70% in 2008) and so many people want him in office. Raese does not have the same level of popularity (he’s never won statewide) but he seems to represent what is, for lack of a better term, the ‘Not Obama’ group.
Obama only won 43% in the state in 2008. So you have 30% who are pro Raese (those who opposed him in 2008) and 43% who are prop Manchin (those who voted for Obama in 2008). In between you have 27% who may have voted Machin and McCain.
It is these voters who hold the key and many of them may vote Raese to give themselves both an anti Obama vote and also to keep Manchin in office.
I’m not saying he’s going to lose, but this may be a major factor if he does.