Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412230135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
In an 85-page analysis of the election released this week, Sabato said affluent GOP-voting precincts across the state abandoned their traditional patterns and contributed to Democrat Charles Robb's re-election.
``The GOP split over North doomed the Republican nominee,'' Sabato said. ``North managed only 74 percent support among Republicans, with independent J. Marshall Coleman and Robb each drawing 13 percent. Nationally, 91 percent of Republicans stuck with their party nominees.''
The straying Republicans in Virginia, he said, ``were disproportionately suburban and highly educated. All across Virginia, upper-crust, reliably GOP precincts turned in disappointing results for the blue-flannel-shirted North. What blue-collar voters loved in North, blue-blooded Virginians were repelled by.''
Sabato, a University of Virginia professor, has written a ``Virginia Votes'' analysis of every state election since 1969. He named this year's report ``The 1994 Election in Virginia: The Senate Race from Hell.''
Robb won 45.6 percent of the vote to North's 42.9 percent and Coleman's 11.4 percent.
Democrats were more loyal to Robb than Republicans were to North. Robb won the votes of almost nine of every 10 Democrats who voted, Sabato said.
North prevailed among independent voters, capturing 46 percent to Robb's 38 percent and Coleman's 16 percent, ``but it could not compensate fully for the loss of his own partisans,'' Sabato said.
North, the Iran-Contra figure, was attacked throughout the campaign by Republican leaders including Virginia's other senator, John Warner, who supported Coleman, and former first lady Nancy Reagan.
Black and female voters contributed heavily to Robb's victory, Sabato said.
``Black votes for Robb amounted to 41/2 times his 56,000-vote victory margin, so he absolutely owes his election to black voters,'' Sabato said. ``Robb's 37 percent of the white vote was exceptionally low, less even that Douglas Wilder's 41 percent in 1989'' when Wilder won the governorship over Coleman by 7,000 votes.
Sabato said women favored Robb by 7 percentage points while men chose North by 3 percentage points, and working women picked Robb over North by a 19-percentage-point margin.
Sabato said that contrary to speculation during the last month of the race, Coleman did not take many more votes away from Robb than North.
``The unquestioned assumption was that Marshall Coleman would take many more votes away from Robb than North,'' Sabato said. ``In the end, the opposite was true. ... Many Virginians who might otherwise have preferred Coleman chose Robb as the lesser evil to stave off a North victory.''
Sabato said Coleman's decline from the 15-percent to 18-percent range down to his final 11 percent ``resulted from the independent's loss of thousands of anti-North voters.''
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB