CA-26: How Julia Brownley Defeated Tony Strickland

Update:

I hear that Tony Strickland is being mentioned as running for California State Party chairman.

UTimm Herdt has an analysis over at the Ventura County Star and some city by city results base on the unofficial results of votes that have been counted.

The key to winning in any political campaign is for a candidate to maximize his or her base of support while holding down the other in his base. The 26th Congressional District was no exception. An analysis of city-by-city vote results from Tuesday shows that Democrat Julia Brownley did the best job of accomplishing that objective — which is why she defeated Republican Tony Strickland.

(A complete city-by-city breakdown is at the end of this post.)

Brownley really ran up the score in Oxnard, winning that city 66 percent to 34 percent in the final unofficial vote count. That 32-point difference was four points better than the city’s Democratic voter registration advantage of 28 percent, meaning that Brownley solidly held the city’s Democratic base and won a sizeable majority of independents.

Oxnard voters provided Brownley with her entire margin of victory and then some. She carried Oxnard by 12,360 votes; she won districtwide by 7,099.

I will reserve a more complete analysis until final numbers are released by December 7. But, I think Strickland’s losing campaign mirrors that of his mentor Mitt Romney’s losing Presidential one.

There are some basic flaws which the Republican Party will have to correct if they wish to win competitive races.

In a nutshell they are:

• Candidate selection/recruitment
• Women
• Hispanics/Immigration

While Strickland may have lost a close race, he is not through politically and with better electoral conditions, I foresee him making a comeback either in the California State Senate or in a re-match in CA-26.