RICHMOND--Virginia's support of President Bush in Tuesday's election surprised no one.
What was surprising was the margin by which Bush won Virginia, and the lower-than-expected voter turnout.
Democrats and pollsters had predicted Bush's margin in Virginia would be close, but it turned out to be 9 percentage points.
"Governor Warner boasted that it would be closer than anyone expected. Welcome to the world of misprognostication, Governor," said University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato. "It was a very impressive Bush victory in Virginia. Without Ralph Nader on the ballot to drain votes from Kerry, [Bush] won by 10 to 11 points instead of the 8 points of 2000.
"So all of that organization by Democrats in Virginia proved to be mainly talk. And they were very good at talking. I salute them for their spin. But as it turned out, nothing much has changed from 2000."
Laura Bland, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, said she really couldn't explain why Kerry did worse than expected in the state.
"Do I understand why John Kerry didn't do better in Virginia? Not really. That's a question that's probably better left for analysts and people who prognosticate," Bland said. "Ultimately, our job here at the Democratic Party of Virginia was to support John Kerry and to make sure that we identified as many likely Kerry voters as we could here in Virginia, and we got them out on Election Day.
"And we worked really hard at that process, at that effort, and we still today feel very good about the effort that we made here in Virginia for John Kerry. We didn't roll over, we didn't give up, in the face of so many people who said why bother."
However, despite the efforts of both parties, a huge surge in voter registration immediately before the deadline in October, and long lines in some polling places Tuesday, voter turnout was 68.5 percent--the same as in 2000.
State elections secretary Jean Jenson is at a loss to explain that, especially given anecdotal evidence of the floods of voters at polling places.
Those lines have to be "a reflection of theextra voters" registered since 2000, she said. "I don't know how else to explain it. I was bravely forecasting that I thought we would surpass the 68.5" percent turnout of 2000.
Bland suggested that pundits, analysts, party workers and the media were all telling each other there'd be a huge upswing in turnout, without really having any way of knowing what would happen.
The large number of new registered voters might have also caused too much optimism about turnout, Bland said.
"Certainly it's always disappointing when we don't have improved turnout over the past presidential election year. We did everything we knew how to do, including registering new voters," she said. "It's hard to say what the reason was but certainly everyone worked hard to make sure they got their identifiable voters to the polls. Maybe what this says is people didn't do a very good job of getting new people to the polls."
Still, 3.1 million Virginians voted, out of 4.5 million registered. That's more than the 2.7 million who voted in the 2000 election.
That's the number Republicans are looking at, not the percentage, said Republican Party of Virginia spokesman Shawn Smith.
"We had a very aggressive organization and strategy to register voters, identify voters and turn out voters on Election Day," Smith added. "We were very successful in our voter registration efforts, and a number of the new voters went to the polls and voted for President Bush."
Naturally, with one election over, political junkies' thoughts now turn to the next.
In Virginia, that's the 2005 governor's race, expected to be a match-up between Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine and Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.
Kaine will have to campaign differently from Kerry to win Virginia next year.
"I think the key to doing well in Virginia, probably as a Democrat or just doing well generally, is to have a pro-business message and clearly to be comfortable with people of faith," Kaine said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I think those are two very key things that a successful candidate for statewide office has to do. The ticket did not have a pro-business orientation of the kind that Mark [Warner] and I have tried to do."
Kaine added that while Kerry and his running mate John Edwards had their own religious faiths, Bush did a better job of reaching out to and winning the faith community.
"I think that's something that is worthy of a lot of consideration," Kaine said. "We Democrats have to do a better job of connecting with the faith community."
Other than those lessons, Kaine said he doesn't think Kerry's loss holds any portents for his own race.
While Virginia hasn't supported a Democrat for president since 1964, it has elected several Democratic governors in that time span.
"That tells me Virginia voters are equally willing to choose a Democratic statewide official, but the national party is problematic," Kaine said. "The lesson is kind of a simple one, which is Mark and I both ran our campaigns a particular way in 2001, really focusing on the bread and butter issues of economic opportunity and educational excellence and we were successful. This result just kind of puts an exclamation point on the fact that that's the right way to run a campaign as a Democrat in Virginia."
Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, said Tuesday's election results apply to all Democrats running in the South.
"The lesson for any Democrat running for statewide office is pretty clear--you have to run as a centrist Democrat," Farnsworth said. "If Mark Warner's victory wasn't enough to demonstrate that the Democratic Party has to change to be competitive in the South, Tuesday's results are further proof of the wisdom of the Mark Warner argument."
To reach CHELYEN DAVIS: 804/782-9362 cdavis@freelancestar.com