Charlie Cook: “Mark Sanford’s victory Tuesday in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District tells us only one thing about the 2014 midterm elections–that Democrats still need to capture 17 seats to win back the House majority they lost in 2010. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Arguably, this fall’s Virginia gubernatorial race will be a better test. Historically a conservative and Republican state, Virginia–along, to a lesser extent, with its southern neighbor, North Carolina–has become more like the Mid-Atlantic states to its north in recent years. Other Southern states, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, largely retain their Dixie voting patterns. Each of those states has a bedrock Democratic vote made up chiefly of minority voters, along with indigenous white Democratic voters. But North Carolina and, even more so, Virginia have seen an influx of non-Southerners, who vote more like the country as a whole than like the Old South.”
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