A Sign of Popular Support? Sure, But For Who?

The election held to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's (D) vacant seat for the House in upstate NY appears to be over, with Democrat Scott Murphy the declared winner. For those unfamiliar with Gillibrand, she was NY Governor Patterson's selection to fill the vacant Senate seat left by Hillary Clinton when she became the Secretary of State (and yes you should note the irony that NY state law allows the Governor to select the replacement for a vacant Senate seat, but on the other hand requires a special election to fill a House seat). The final tally from the election will still take some time, but it appears that Murphy will win by a slim margin of about 400 votes.

What has made this special election interesting from a pundit's perspective is that, in many ways, both parties can use it as support that their message is resonating with the public. For the Democrats, the argument is fairly straightforward. They won the seat, which provides further evidence that the public, or at least the NY 20th district, supports the direction the Obama administration is taking the country. In addition, Murphy is relatively unknown. Thus the argument could be made that he won primarily on the Democratic brand name.

While not a bad story and quite plausible, the closeness of this election could be spun as somewhat worrisome for Democrats. The NY 20th is a demographically and historically democratic district. It had just voted by a large margin to send Gillibrand back to Washington and voted by a 8 to 1 margin as a district for Obama. Thus, any Democrat that could walk, talk and chew bubblegum should have been able to win the district easily. Therefore, the closeness of the election could be seen as a good sign for Republicans that the public is not certain of the direction the Obama administration is taking the country.

While there was exit polling done on this election, the results miss sampling requirements by quite a large margin to really offer any conclusive evidence as to which story is right. However, I think there are two additional factors that make the Republican story unlikely. First, Republicans deployed a lot more resources into this election than Democrats who viewed it as a cake walk. This, coupled with the fact that turnout rates were very low for the special election, could have resulted in a closer outcome than would have occurred during a normal election.

Second, the Republicans have still failed to find a message. If you followed the campaign rhetoric in this special election, you may have noticed that the Republican message in rallies, print, radio, and TV was over and over again was we are not Obama. But as history has shown, to win elections you not only have to separate yourself from your opponent, but have to give the voters a message of your own. For example, if you look at the 2004 versus the 2008 election, besides the economy (which was a big factor in 2008), a huge difference between Kerry and Obama's strategy in running against Bush/McCain was that Obama did not just attack the Republican Party/status quo, but offered an alternative message that was more than just I am not anti-[fill in the blank]. I am not suggesting that this alone is why Obama won the election, only that to be successful you have to have a message of your own.

In my view, what the special election for the NY 20th showed above all else is that the Republicans still lack a message or alternative view for how the nation should recover. Thus, while the Republicans can look at this special election with some hope for the next elections, this hope may be built on shaky ground. While there is still a year and a half until the next congressional elections, the special election in the NY 20th may indicate that one party is on the rise for successful elections in 2010. Which party, of course, depends on your point of view.