Chambliss Wins Georgia Runoff

Last night Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss scored a key win for the Republicans in his senate race against democrat Jim Martin. The race ended a month late because of an odd Georgia law that says that on November 4th, a candidate must get at least 50% of the vote or else there is a runoff election. Chambliss received 49.8%, and therefore could not be declared the winner. There was a runoff election yesterday and Chambliss won by 15 points. Many strong opinions were formed of Chambliss after he ran very harsh attack ads such as this in his first campaign:



Of course the blogs had much to say about this. For all statistic related news I went to the best statistical blog I know of, Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com. Nate said in his blog that the reason that Chambliss won was due to the fact that turnout was significantly lower in african-americans and democrats as a whole. Chambliss had republican heavyweights such as Sarah Palin and John McCain out campaigning for him while Obama was too busy to help Martin. The get out the vote efforts which got Obama into office, similarly got Chambliss into the Senate as well, according to Nate. He says that Chambliss "showed other Republicans the way."

Matt Stower at Open Left felt that Chambliss discovered that it was easier to organize people than to raise money. He said that this was a major night for Republicans and that they needed, under the leadership on Palin and Huckabee, to become a populist party while democrats become the party of big business. He says that this is the way for the Republicans to win in 2010.

Daily Kos offered a different perspective on the Chambliss win. Kos said that the win was expected for Chambliss and that democrats do well with high turnout. Obviously, because this was not on election day, turnout was very low and the Republican base was fired up for Chambliss with McCain and Palin's campaigning.

Democratic Strategist stated lessons to be learned from this loss. They included that money and ground game help a lot, both of which Martin lacked in. They also said that Georgia was not yet a purple state. The get out the vote and higher money for Obama still did not win him Georgia. The blog told democrats not to worry about this loss, only to learn from it.

Real Clear Politics talked about how Chambliss won by not losing as many voters as Martin. Obviously turnout was decreased, but in key democratic counties, Martin failed to get out the vote. It also said that the democrats goal of a fillibuster-proof majority is now gone and this is huge for republicans still having a say.

Real Clear Politics was the only blog I read on the issue that did not cite Fivethirtyeight.com's article or quote at at some point. Chambliss officially was declared the victor and will continue to serve. What it means for the way future campaigns are run, we still don't know, but there are many opinions out there on what it will mean moving forward.