I'm not trying to be mean to @McCreadyForNC. Its not his strategy that fell short on this winnable race, it was his consultants' strategy. Candidates aren't campaign experts, they rely on campaign strategists to structure their approach. nytimes.com/2019/10/14/opi…
And although a moral victory is nice, a victory- victory is even better, and in this environment, this "deep red" district was winnable, w the right approach. @McCreadyForNC didn't want to run on M4A, but he DID need a strategy built around acceptance that winning would
require winning on turnout, not conversion of moderate Rs. And since this basic fact was never accepted, the campaign's approach was constructed around the latter, which requires intentional neglecting of the former. eqvanalytics.com/nc09-dashboard…
A big part of the conversion strategy is this idea that if you can just hide the candidate's membership in the Democratic Party, you can win over some soft partisans with mailers like this. The problem is, of course, when the voter enters the ballot box they see McCready w the D 
the D next to his name versus the R next to the other guy's name. The party label reveals all! I don't have access to polling in NC-9, but I'm guessing honest polling (non-push, party labels included on the ballot q) doesn't find anything over the avg 10pts of "crossover" voting.
Knowing it was a September special, and knowing what turnout would be decisive, the GOP made sure the election was salient for their voters by bringing Trump into the district the night before the election. And the GOP nationalized the race, because nationalizing the race
is an effective way of getting voters who don't care about a random race in the House to care. This is how you nationalize a race. Bishop is tying his McCready to Pelosi, Sanders, & the Squad. The message is, "you don't know Dan Bishop, and you don't care about Dan Bishop BUT,
you DO know who these terrible people he's protecting you from are." GOP uses nationalized messaging frequently, to great effect while Ds STILL don't!! McCready never tied the act of voting for him as an act of defiance to Trump. And he couldn't have, you see, bc his
campaign was operating under the erroneous assumption that he would get Republicans to crossover and vote for him. The problem is, Rs are NOT going to do that and by not running effective turnout ads and by refusing to bring in D celebs like the Obamas to raise excitement you are
screwing the turnout of your own voters (both base and coalition voters). If Ds had brought in the Obama's, maybe a couple of hip-hop or rap stars, & made black voter turnout the key focus of the campaign's ground game, @McCreadyForNC could have won the race. Voter drop off
was predictable between the 2018 regular and the 2019 special. Indeed, somewhere around 80K voters "disappeared" between 2018 & 2019. The campaign teams on both sides knew this, or should know it anyway. The team that best mitigated that drop off was going to win the special.
Yet, it was clear through the cycle that Ds were not running a strategy focused on drop-off mitigation. And keep in mind, despite the scandal that caused the need for the special, the Ds failed to make the fact that a GOP operative stole ballots from black voters in an effort to
steal the seat in 2018 a major theme of the campaign. My request for direct mailers did not produce a single mailer on this topic. If you know of one, please send it. African American turned declined by 32% in 2019 from 2018. Again, this is not an accident but rather, it is an
element of a strategic approach the campaign was structured around, a flawed strategic approach, which prevented McCready from utilizing the scandal to encourage African Americans to vote because it might turn off the white Republicans they hoped t court who, keep in mind, my
research argues, are not going to vote for him anyway. That is why this approach is so problematic, it fails to deliver the goal it is designed to deliver (converted R voters) while simultaneously depriving the candidate the turnout he/she needs to win the election. The demos for
flipping NC-9 are there, the turnout was not, and that is a product of the campaign strategy deployed in the race.
Strategy can be adjusted and should be when the fundamentals render them outdated. Polarization has rendered conversion strategies outdated.
Strategy can be adjusted and should be when the fundamentals render them outdated. Polarization has rendered conversion strategies outdated.
