Racine Beats Douglas!

One of the interesting tidbits from Vermont's election results is this:

Popular Democratic Senator Doug Racine beat popular incumbent Republican Jim Douglas in Vermont's most populous county (Chittenden County, the only place the two of them were both on the ballot).

Racine received about 44,000 votes in unofficial results, whereas Douglas received about 42,000 votes.


It's telling because the Governor's race is always a high profile affair and most people will cast a ballot there... down-ticket races tend to suffer from voter drop-off.

Now clearly, people weren't making a judgment about Racine over Douglas directly because this was not a head-to-head match-up. And, theoretically many voters could have voted for BOTH Douglas (for Governor) and then pull the lever (or fill in the circle) for Racine down the ballot. Still, if you're just looking at raw voter preference, at least 2,000 more voters expressed a favorable opinion for Racine than for Douglas.


Democrats can only wonder what this race might have looked like if a stronger Democratic candidate like Racine had jumped into the race early without progressive opposition and hammered Douglas on the economy.