Reflections and Takeaways from Sri Kulkarni
It has been almost a week since the election and I want to say thank you one more time to all the supporters, the staff, and especially the volunteers who worked their heart out over the last three years. Some of you have asked for my reflections on the campaign and Tuesday’s result, so I offer them here. (I will give my thoughts on the legacy of the Trump era later.)
The most common question is, “What happened?” I honestly can’t say I know the answer yet. All the data (polling, modeling of voters, turnout numbers for youth and first-time voters, conversations with independent and former-Republican voters who had swung our direction, feedback from polling locations etc.) did not match the results on Tuesday night. Our final poll showed us up by five points. (According to the results on Tuesday, we lost by more than seven points. That was at least four points worse than our worst poll of the campaign, and our final poll was off by more than 12 points.)
On top of that, our opponent didn’t appear to be running a serious campaign. For most of the campaign, he only had two issues on his website. (His original top issue was “Standing with Trump.”) He never even addressed the top issue for voters, containing the coronavirus pandemic, or the #3 issue, protecting our healthcare. (We were endorsed by the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, and every major physicians’ association). On the economy, we had many more local business owners donate to our campaign than he did. We were endorsed by the Houston Chronicle and numerous other organizations. He barely had any public events at all or ever answered any questions on the record. Losing by more than 28,000 votes against this campaign was a real shock.
However, when all the results came out, we realized it wasn’t just us. An unexpected “red shift” occurred across Texas and the country. Every single one of the 8 targeted Congressional races in Texas lost, and did much worse than their polling suggested. After flipping 12 state rep seats in 2018, we netted 0 gains across the state, despite Republican pollsters themselves freaking out (and the GOP frantically trying every voter suppression method possible to stem a blue wave they thought was coming).
Read more: https://texassignal.com/reflections-and-takeaways-from-sri-kulkarni/
