Poor turnout by Democratic base voters ensured McAuliffe defeat in Virginia

[W_HAMILTON]

17. Oh bullshit.

This is a familiar refrain, often from the exact type of people that don't turn out in these elections that cost us these elections, just so they can deflect blame from their own (in)action.

McAuliffe won his Democratic primary by more than 40%. If there some better mythical candidate out there, Democrats sure didn't want him/her. They wanted McAuliffe.

Contrast that with Youngkin, who was installed in the position by Republican elites rather than going through the typical primary process.

If McAuliffe were such a bad candidate, he wouldn't have been overwhelmingly selected by Virginia primary voters in an OPEN primary and if Youngkin were such a great candidate, he wouldn't have needed to be selected by the Republican Party political elite to be gifted the nomination because he couldn't win the nomination if left up to the voters.

And yet Youngkin won and McAuliffe did not.

Why? Because Republicans voted for their candidate regardless and -- as often is the case in these sorts of closely contested elections that Republicans almost always seem to eke out -- just enough Democrats failed to turn out and vote for the Democrat, as this article posits.