2008.11.04
Coming tonight: Analysis of the Virginia returns as they come in
Good evening. I'm Dwayne, and I'll be your server this evening. Your server of election data and analysis, that is.
The polls in Virginia close at 7 p.m. I'm not sure how long after that we'll start getting returns, but once we do, I'll be posting my analysis of what they mean. (Actually, I've already started, with a mid-afternoon analysis of voter turn-out in Roanoke.)
Before we get started on the actual returns tonight, let me tell you a bit about me: I was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, and have lived in Roanoke (and worked for The Roanoke Times) since 1982. I'm now Senior Editor for New Channels, which is a fancy way of saying I work with new ventures. But I've been involved in either covering politics -- or supervising coverage of politics -- since I was in college back in the 1970s. I even wrote a book about Virginia politics, which might prove especially relevant in this election. "When Hell Froze Over" (Taylor Publishing, 1988) documented the rise of Doug Wilder, who went on to become the first African-American elected governor in the country.
What I'll be serving up tonight will be my analysis of the Virginia returns, based on my years of following politics in the state. I'm happy to take your questions as the night goes on -- you can post comments below or email me at dwayne.yancey@roanoke.com. If you're looking to debate whether those results are good or bad for the fate of the republic, I'll refer you to my editorial page colleagues over on the RoundTable blog.
I'll offer my opinions, for sure, but those will mostly be along the lines of: If Horace Hornblower IV of the Whig Party is carrying Bonsack, when no member of the Whig Party has carried that precinct since Millard Fillmore was president, well, that's probably a pretty good sign that the Whigs are going to sweep this election. And I might even surmise that maybe the reason Hornblower is doing so well is not because he promised to subsidize the domestic buggy whip industry, but because the Bonsack Bi-Weekly Bugle exposed his opponent as a thrice-convicted axe murderer.
I do have some biases and they go like this:
* Rural voters still matter in Virginia (maybe not as much as they did during the Whig days, of course)
* So do suburban moderates.
Democrats tend to lose when they ignore the former, and Republicans tend to lose when they can't win the latter.
In Sunday's paper, I listed five places around the state that I'll be watching tonight to get an early sense of how the state -- and perhaps the nation -- is swinging. Over the rest of the evening, we'll find out how accurate my bellwether localities turn out to be.
P.S.: If you're thinking "gee, that guy sure is shaggy, don't they have a dress code at that place?," well, there's a reason for that. I recently had a small part in the Mill Mountain Theatre production of "Spitfire Grill," playing a homeless man who lives in the woods. I was probably shaggy to begin with, but for that part, I needed to be really shaggy. Rest assured I'll be seeing a barber soon.
