What does it mean that both Abrams and Gillum are likely to lose?

It is unclear what role the negative feelings towards black politicians played in the likely losses to the government of Democrats Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida. Neither race has been officially designated, but Democrats are lagging behind in both races, which were among the handful of races nationwide that seemed to be of most interest to Democratic activists. It is also unclear to what extent the race in Georgia was affected by the controversial electoral practices of Republican Brian Kemp, who served as Secretary of State when he introduced himself as governor. the election official in Georgia.

Here is what we can say, however: First, Abrams, given Georgia's conservative tendency, had one of the best results among the 36 Democratic candidates for governorship, many of whom are white, male or female. two. Secondly, Gillum's performance was fundamentally average, compared to other Democratic nominees. Finally, neither Abrams nor Gillum could really change the partisan dynamics by default in their states, unlike Democrat Laura Kelly in Kansas or Republican Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, who both won in states where only labels of their party could have really hurt. their.

To take a closer look at the fate of these two candidates, we compared the results in the 36 states that had governorate elections in the governorate last week with the partisan tendencies of those states (essentially a measure of how liberal states and conservatives are,). This method is useful because it creates a kind of apple-to-apple measure: how did Abrams and Gillum compare their competitors to the other Democratic candidates for 2018, given the differences in the policies of different states and governments? the broader pro-democracy dynamics of 2018? global election.

Overall, in 25 out of 36 races, the Democrats did better than the party's position of belonging to a partisan faction in those states. This is further proof that 2018 has been a good year for all Democrats.

The strongest outperformances in governor races, however, were recorded by moderate Republican politicians in the highly favored blue states: Charlie Baker (Massachusetts), Larry Hogan (Maryland) and Phil Scott (Vermont). The best democratic performance was Laura Kelly, who beat Kris Kobach in Kansas. It outperformed the meager supporter of its state by almost 28 percentage points. (Kansas gives about 23 percentage points to the GOP and Kelly earns about 5 percentage points.) This is not particularly surprising: pre-election polls had shown that Kelly could win, many Republicans renowned in the state. had approved of Kobach, Kobach has a controversial reputation, and some Republican voters of the state have turned against the outgoing GOP administration.

Abrams is ranked sixth among Democratic candidates in terms of outperformance, with around 10 percentage points. (Georgia is about 12 points lower than the country as a whole, while Abrams lost less than 2 percentage points in its race against Kemp.) Gillum was, therefore, the 18th best of 36 Democratic candidates, just in the middle. . He was about 5 points ahead of Florida's lean 5-point Republican. He is ahead of Republican Ron DeSantis by less than one point.

Thus, this data (and the comparison between Abrams and Gillum and the other 34 Democratic nominees) reveal a rather positive story about them. But here's another way to look at the data: how did Abrams and Gillum behave in relation to the general situation of Democrats on polling day? Democrats are currently leading the popular vote of the National House by about 7 percentage points. If one translated this into Florida and Georgia, it would suggest that the national environment in Florida on polling day 2018 would probably have favored the Democrats a little (about 2 percentage points), while that would not be the case. in Georgia, it would favor the GOP (about 5 percentage points). measure (which you can also see in the last column of the table above), Abrams is still outperformed, but the gap is about 3 percentage points, not the suggested 10 points by comparing only his margin to lean supporter . Gillum, by this measure, has probably made 2 to 3 points less than expected, since he is barely at the back of the pack.

Abrams behaved well and Gillum, okay, but did not experience the big outperformance of Kelly, Kansas either. And it is worth thinking about why. Abrams, Gillum and Kelly are particularly worth comparing, as they all opposed Republican candidates who went into Trump's mold.

Kelly could simply be a top candidate, even if she is not the compelling speaker Abrams and Gillum. The outgoing GOP governors Nathan Deal in Georgia and Rick Scott in Florida are more popular than Sam Brownback, the Republican who has led Kansas for the past eight years, before leaving his post earlier this year for a position in the United States. Trump administration. So, Kobach probably had the biggest problem of his party. We think that it is a very important factor.

Kelly's victory, like that of the moderate Republicans of the Northeast, was not irrelevant, due to what previous election cycles showed: the party is important in the races as governor, but voters are generally much more likely to support an opposing party candidate for governor as opposed to Congress or the presidency.

But Gillum and Abrams in particular were testing something that complicates the potential of the inter-party vote in the running race of a governor: is it harder to get a cross vote, even in the race for the leadership of a governor, if you are a Democratic black state candidate with a large minority population where politics is divided along racial and partisan lines?

There is no doubt that some whites in southern states, in particular, have a negative attitude towards blacks. But a more subtle factor to consider in the southern states is that when politics and race are closely aligned, it may be more difficult to move beyond party boundaries. Abrams and Kelly were not so ideologically different, but few elites with a Republican bias supported Abrams. Again, it may be because Kobach is particularly controversial. But the suspicious Georgian Republicans of Kemp should have made a bigger leap – cultural, political and racial – to line up on Abrams, compared to Kelly's support in Kansas. This largely explains the fact that many southern states, including Georgia, are among the least elastic in the country (they have very few rotating voters).

All this does not mean that Stacey Evans, the white Democrat who ran against Abrams in the Democratic Primary of Georgia as governor, won the general election. Evans might also have lost, but differently – a poorer performance around Atlanta and among minority voters, where Abrams was strong, but perhaps better in whiter and more rural areas.

This is good news for Abrams, Gillum and Democrats who hope the party will raise more black candidates in the future: Abrams, in particular, fared much better than many other White Democratic candidates. Fred Ebell of Iowa, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, defeated Fred, but both outshot the Democrats in those states by far.

In other words, we do not want to reject the Liberal claims of electoral repression in Georgia or the historical obstacles blacks faced when they were elected to a government position in the United States. That said, there is one obvious factor that has limited Beto O'Rourke in Texas, Abrams and Gillum, three candidates for which Liberal activists were very enthusiastic but did not win. Their states are generally Republican in tendency – and have chosen not to follow the path of Kansas and break this historical pattern for them.