The race is done by a with a roughly 57-43 margin. After going over the paid media messaging by the two candidates, I have a few thoughts on what happened here. The first question Democrats should be asking themselves is why Robin Weirauch didn't mention Iraq in her ads, and the second question is whether not mentioning the issue that ranks number one on the list of voter concerns had anything to do with Weirauch's unremarkable loss in OH-05 tonight. It might also be worth noting that Weirauch didn't mention she was a Democrat in her ads. This is early 2006 all over again (and 2002, and 2004, etc). If you don't mention you are a Democrat, and you don't mention Iraq, you are giving up huge points of distinction. Being a Democrat running for Congress is an advantage these days, and Iraq is tied into everything. So on the messaging front, Weirauch gave up her two biggest tools to distinguish herself in this race, right off the bat.
Ok, now to the analysis. Weirauch lost her third race in this district, after losing in 2004 by a massive blowout and in 2006 by roughly the same margin she lost tonight (though she spent only $115k in 2006, a small sum suggesting very little media penetration in the district). I went through a bunch of the messaging, from Latta's awful commercial with Fred Thompson and the West Wing theme song to Robin Weirauch's series of antipartisan ads, and my conclusion is that this was very similar to Francine Busby's loss in CA-50. Two generic candidates went after each other with unmemorable messaging, one about immigration and one about ethics, and the district's inertia carried the Republican to victory. The Democrat didn't mention Iraq, and the Republican fear-mongered on immigration, and voters basically didn't care about either.
While this race was going on, I didn't have any great insights into OH-05, so I made a very safe prediction.
If this district goes even remotely close to our way, Democrats should expect another wave in 2008. If Weirauch gets blown out by a larger than 61-39 margin, we'll know we're in trouble. Anything in between keeps us in our current muddle.
I think that's still basically right. This district didn't matter, except that it got the DCCC and RNCC to waste a bunch of money. We had more money than they did, so that's good. Here are a few observations.
One, not putting Iraq front and center in your campaign is really weird. Weirauch mentioned it once, in brief in her opening announcement, without taking a position on it. And then at the very end she called for a responsible end to the war. It was not included in any paid media on TV to the district.
Two, not mentioning that you are a Democrat is weird. If you are running on change in a Republican district, that means being a Democrat. If you don't tell voters that, it's not like they aren't going to find out. It just means you don't represent anything at all.
Three, a nasty primary on the Republican side had no downside Latta's primary opponent was obviously bitter, and his campaign manager even claimed a negative' effect from a primary that's been carried over' in the Politico. And yet, Republicans voted for Latta. I'm a big fan of primaries, and this provides yet another data point that primaries don't actually hurt the general election nominee, even when they are nasty and engender bitter feelings. Also, the Club for Growth went after Latta, and it didn't matter. Score another one for the antitax losers. And actually, as you'll see below, the antitax message was used against Latta by Democrats, and it didn't work in the general either. Maybe voters just don't care that much about taxes.
Four, Robin Weirauch ran on an antipartisan theme that 'Washington is broken,' and this didn't work. 'Washington is broken' showed up in this ad, where she said that she doesn't like that people are just taking shots at each other. It showed up in this one, where the problem was said to be politics as usual. It showed up in this attack ad against Bob Latta where Latta was attacked for raising taxes, and this one, an attack on partisanship in Washington from popular Governor Strickland.
Five, both sides were snookered by this one. The DCCC and RNCC dumped a lot of money into the race, so I have to assume both of them thought it would be closer than it was. Who did the polling here? Why was the polling so wrong? And if the internal polling wasn't wrong, and it predicted a 12 point loss, who was leaking to the Politico and Roll Call falsified polling data?
Frankly, I don't know if this district was ever winnable, but it's pretty clear that the antipartisan Weirauch messaging didn't work. It may be that the ads were bad, though they were not appreciably worse than most of the ads I watched last cycle. My guess is that the ads were fine, but the message was simply not memorable at all. My evidence, to be honest, is slim. Blogpac was buying in the district, so we got to see what people were Googling, which can be seen as a proxy for what some people are talking about. Here's what I wrote before the voting results came out.
Over the last four days, people in the district have used Google to do 310 searches for 'Bob Latta' or 'Latta', 343 for 'Robin Weirauch' or 'Weirauch'. For some contrast, there have been 161 searches for 'Bush', 289 for 'Clinton', '116' for Iraq, and 9529 for 'jobs'.
While there was heavy clickthrough on our ads for those Googling the two candidates, there were just not a lot of searches around terms relating to this election. In fact, the term 'jobs' was searched 30 times as much as either candidate, which suggests that even among internet-penetrated audiences there was a very small segment of people who were interested in this race.
It does not even appear that the politically engaged internet-savvy voters in the district cared about this race. Clinton was searched nearly as much as either candidate, even with hundreds of thousands of dollars of ads up on TV. So Latta and Weirauch were generating as much chatter in the district as one Democratic candidate in the Presidential election... eleven months out.
How does this compare to previous cycles or special elections? I have no idea. Search engine measurements for politics don't exist yet, and even if they did, broadband penetration in rural areas is skyrocketing, so previous cycles don't necessarily apply. Still, for aspiring political scientists, this is a useful field for further study. And hopefully the Google elections team will release numbers about search terms for candidates within districts.
I think it is fair to observe that most voters were just not looking for information about this race. Neither Latta nor Weirauch provided any reason for voters to care or even notice there was an election going on. And with Iraq off the table, and Weirauch discussing jobs, health care, and fixing a broken Washington while Latta fear-mongered on immigration, voters made a reasonable choice to turn off.
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