The Only Man Having a Worse Day Than Eric Cantor: Eric Cantor's Pollster, Who Projected Cantor Winning By a Thirty Four Point Margin of Victory

John McLaughlin needs you to know this is all Cooter's doing.

Less than a week before voters dumped the House majority leader, an internal poll for Cantor's campaign, trumpeted to the Washington Post, showed Cantor cruising to a 34-point victory in his primary. Instead, Cantor got crushed, losing by 10 percentage points.

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Then McLaughlin cited the "Cooter" factor – the fact that former Rep. Ben Jones, a Georgia Democrat who played Cooter in The Dukes of Hazzard, had written an open letter [published in the Huffington Post] urging Democrats to vote for Brat to help beat Cantor.

"Over the weekend Democrats like Ben Jones and liberal media were driving their Democratic voters on the internet into the open primary," McLaughlin wrote. "Eric got hit from right and left. In our polls two weeks out Eric was stronger with Republicans at 70% of the vote, but running under 50% among non Republicans."

"Untold story," McLaughlin continued, "is who were the new primary voters? They were probably not Republicans."

He also noted that turnout was relatively high for what was supposed to be a snoozer primary -- it was only 45,000 in 2012, but jumped up to 65,000 yesterday.

As for the Cooter Conspiracy: eh, there might be a little something to that, but not a lot.

posted by Ace at 02:15 PM

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